The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

The study and art of how to defend a person's faith is known as apologetics. This comes from the Greek word "Apologia," which means 'speaking in defense'. When it comes to Christians defending their beliefs, several common apologetic questions can almost be counted on to come up in a conversation with an unbeliever. One common question thread is this: What about the person who has never heard of Christ? What about the isolated tribesmen in the Amazon or Congo? Can they be saved? How can they call upon the name of Jesus if they have never heard that name before? Is never hearing about Jesus a valid excuse for not believing in him? These types of questions are not new. The idea of how a person is saved and spends eternity in heaven has been a pressing concern for thousands of years. Paul addresses that question in today's passage and declares that all people are without excuse because God Himself has been made clear and known to them. Even if a person has never heard the full, complete Gospel, the revelation of God as a higher being and intelligent designer is seen in his creation. It is also known deep within each of us that we are eternal beings because eternity has been established in our hearts when we were knit in our mother's womb. (Ecclesiastes 3:11) A person can recognize and realize their need for God even before ever hearing the gospel. We all know, on some level, that we are broken, fallen, and sinful people. The real question is what a person will do with that knowledge. They will either accept God or reject him, run to him, or rebel against him. This is the same for a person living in New York City or the middle of the Amazon rainforest. We are without excuse. God is everywhere. His presence can be clearly seen, felt, and acknowledged through what he created. This is known as the general revelation of God, and every human being has been shown this general revelation. It is that revelation that leads us to a place to either accept God as Supreme or reject him and choose ourselves as our own God. In that way, all mankind is without excuse because all mankind can and will make that decision of Lordship for themselves.

Salvation has worked the same way all through time. There wasn't one way people were saved in the Old Testament that somehow changed in the New. All salvation comes through Jesus because Jesus is eternal and has always existed. Salvation is better known throughout Scripture as a covenant, a two-sided agreement where God promises to uphold his part to love us, save us, and forgive our sins if only we do our part of confessing our need for a savior and accepting the free gift of salvation. In the Old Testament, this covenant was marked by obedience, and in the New Testament, this new covenant is marked by the blood of Jesus. But again, the covenant did not change or become something else. It was only more fully revealed to us through Christ. The covenant is still based on the grace and mercy of God, which we can do nothing to earn; we can only recognize and receive. God is also full of understanding, and he will only hold people responsible for the knowledge and capacity of their situation. In the same way, a child or person with a mental handicap is seen as having limited capacity. On a spiritual level, one who has never heard a clear gospel presentation will only be responsible for responding to what they have seen and been presented with. Either way, we are without excuse. In verse 16, Paul spoke of salvation and asked; but what are we saved from? Unless there is something to be saved from, there is no point in talking about salvation. First and foremost, we are saved from the wrath of God, which we righteously deserve. This wrath is the greatest peril facing the human race. The idea is simple but sobering – God’s wrath is revealed from heaven against the human race, and the human race deserves the wrath of God, even the native who has never heard the name of Jesus. This is why all mankind must be justified by faith; the human race, in general, is guilty. We were born guilty, and we would die guilty if not for the intervention of God. We can sometimes object to the idea of the wrath of God because we equate it with human anger, which is motivated by selfish personal reasons or by a desire for revenge. But we must never forget that the wrath of God is completely righteous and just.

In this portion of the letter, Paul’s goal is not to proclaim the good news but to first demonstrate the absolute necessity of the good news of salvation from God’s righteous wrath. Mankind continually suppresses the truth of God. Every truth revealed to man by God has been fought against, disregarded, and deliberately obscured by any means at their disposal. But God can never be fully hidden or veiled. He shows some of His eternal power and divine nature through creation, through what he has made. He has given this general revelation that is obvious and clearly seen both in creation and within the mind and heart of man and leaves all mankind without an excuse for rejecting it. The problem is not that man did not know God, but that he did know Him – yet refused to glorify Him as God. Instead of glorifying God, we often transform our ideas of God into forms and images more comfortable to our corrupted and darkened hearts. The word for image in Romans 1:23 is the ancient Greek word Eikon. It is a dangerous thing to change the glory of the incorruptible God into an eikon (image) of your own choosing. Yet mankind cannot seem to resist the temptation to re-create God into our own corrupt image or even in an image beneath us. Our rejection of God’s general revelation does not make us smarter or better. Instead, Paul explains that it makes mankind futile in our thoughts and makes our foolish hearts darkened – and we become fools. Once a man rejects the truth of God, he will fall for anything foolish and trust far more feeble and fanciful human systems than what he rejects from God. This futility of thinking and darkening of the heart leads to serious consequences even here in this life, which must also be seen as one example of God’s righteous wrath against those who reject what He reveals. God judges in part by allowing us to suffer the damage in this life that our sinful course leads to. In summary, it is essential that we continually compare our own conception of God against the reality of who God is as revealed in His Word. A lowered or diminished view of God will lead a person down a wide road they don't want to go down instead of the narrow road that leads to life.