Romans 1:18

"But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who push the truth away from themselves." (NLT)

For the past month I've been meditating on which verses I should discuss here. One of the continuing themes in the emails we receive is that some people feel that, because God loves everyone (true), God never gets angry with anyone. In the rare instances when we do something wrong, God just smiles at us and forgives us. Nor does God ever point a finger at people and say "you are wicked". Or "you are evil". Or "you've done wrong". And under no circumstances does God hate anyone or anything.

But that is not true. They are creating their own God, who accepts their, because this allows them to continue sinning. He's what God says about this:

Yes, God loves us. Not only does God love, but he loves so much that God IS love (See 1 John 4:8,16, for example). But, God is not one dimensional. As we see in Romans 1:18 above, God gets angry. In particular he gets angry at those who reject truth, and even more so with those who teach false "truth" to others. (We'll get to that topic later.)

Just a few verses later Paul writes:

"Instead of believing what they knew was the truth about God, they deliberately chose to believe lies." (Romans 1:25, NLT)

Here we see one of the reasons God gets angry with those who reject his truth. They know the truth, but deliberately choose to believe what THEY WANT TO BE TRUE. When we choose our own truth, when we choose to believe what we want to be true instead of God's truth, we are under God's wrath.

Why does God say they "deliberately" choose to believe lies? The answer in in the verse immediately following Romans 1:18:

"For the truth about God is known to them instinctively. God has put this knowledge in their hearts." (Romans 1:19, NLT)

We know the truth. So when we reject God's truth for our own "truth", although he still loves us , he gets angry with us--and we will experience the consequences of his wrath. What are those consequences? We'll talk about that next time.