Paul starts by declaring who he is in Christ. A servant, devoted to following Jesus’ way. An apostle, called to be sent and sharing the message of Jesus. He is set apart for the gospel, which fulfills the prophetic word God had been giving from early on. From this individual, the church in Rome receives this letter to help them understand their faith.

One of the most famous line in Romans is verse 16 – “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” Paul is clearly neither afraid nor ashamed to share the message. Even if it leads to pain and embarrassment.

Paul then shows God’s wrath in a unique way. I think we expect wrath to look like fire and brimstone, but Paul shows it to be the releasing of man to have his own way. In Romans 1, the wrath God shows us is allowing us to do our thing. We want something other than what He wants, and His response is to let us. This should be sobering to us. We feel His wrath by walking away. We experience His love by doing what He wants. Keep that in mind.

Paul states that God’s wrath is being revealed (v18). Even though God is obvious when you look around (v19-20, and how could all we see and experience just happen by chance?!?!), we move God out of the place of power and serve images of Him rather than Him (v21-23). So He gives us up to get what we want. And we choose impurity and pain instead of life (v24-25).

We sacrifice truth for lie and this leads to our further wandering to get what we want when we want it (v26-27). We then are so “messed up” that we have a mind that thinks nothing like God would want. We are selfish, arrogant, etc (v28-31). We don’t stop there. We don’t just invent evil, we honor those that promote and live out evil in all areas of life (v32). This feels like today. In politics, family structures, schools, businesses, churches, etc we are far from what God wants. This is human nature. This is our way. This is our way without God. So what does God do about this? You’ll have to wait for the rest of the argument.