Romans 1:18

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hinder the truth in unrighteousness.

The wrath of God was upon Jew and Gentile alike, but the Gentiles are that portion of humanity directly under consideration, beginning here and through Romans 2:16. The displeasure of God against the Gentiles resulted not from caprice, or happenstance, but from their unrighteousness and ungodliness, these two words standing for their irreverence and impiety toward God and for their faithless and immoral conduct toward their fellow human creatures. Whiteside noted that,

Ungodliness is worse than unrighteousness, though not generally so regarded. Our first and primary duty is to God. If we revere God as we should, we will respect his word, his church, and his worship. Those who blaspheme the name of God, or speak lightly of any of his commands, are ungodly. Through passion, or some weakness, a person might do wrong to his fellow man, and then be filled with great penitence toward God for the wrong he had done. Such a one still retained his reverence for God. David did that. He did unrighteous things, but his reverence for God was unfailing and always brought him to repentance. The ungodly are not so; they do not take God into account in anything that they do.[34]

The wrath of God ... is a phrase that describes the antagonism between the Creator and all sin and unrighteousness. As Barmby stated it,

"The wrath of God" is an expression with which we are familiar in the Bible, being one of those in which human emotions are attributed to God in accommodation to the exigencies of human thought. It denotes his essential holiness, his antagonism to sin, to which punishment is due.[35]

Revealed ... answers to the same word in the preceding verse, thus making the "righteousness of God" and the "wrath of God" antithetical, and both of them to be attributes of the Father. That wrath of God which is here said to be revealed should not be stripped of its emotional overtones when contemplated by sinful people; for it is obvious that the wrath of God is a personal thing. "It is God's holy revulsion against that which is the contradiction of holiness."[36] This wrath is living, active, dynamic, and constantly operational against all evil. God has a score to settle with sin; and some Day he will settle it. Not one little sin will ever be able to crawl by the eyes of the eternal God without being either: (1) forgiven through the blood of Jesus Christ, or (2) punished with everlasting destruction from God's presence.

Hinder the truth in unrighteousness ... This is a reference to the fact that the pre-Christian Gentile world had the truth and that they suppressed it and denied it through their sins and wickedness. This is a most interesting verse, for it immediately raises the question of just to what extent those ancient Gentiles had "the truth." Certainly, they did not know the truth to the extent that it has now been revealed in Christ; and yet a little investigation will show that they had far more than sufficient truth to make their shameful conduct absolutely unjustifiable. Paul, in later verses, here speaks of the obvious truth to be gleaned from the observation of nature and the inner promptings of conscience; but those pre-Christian Gentiles also possessed other very pertinent and significant truth concerning God and his will, as the very next verse will indicate.

[34] R. L. Whiteside, op. cit., p. 34.

[35] J. Barmby, The Pulpit Commentary (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1963), Vol. 18, 3p. 9.

[36] R. C. H. Lenski, op. cit., p. 35.