Ep 270: The Active and Passive Wrath of God | Romans 1 and 6

In this episode I explore the relationship between God’s active and passive wrath, demonstrating how God’s wrath is often manifested by Him allowing people to suffer the consequences of their sins, which is what Paul has in mind when he thrice says that God “handed them over” to sinfulness in Romans 1. Romans 1 and Romans 6, focusing especially on Paul’s understanding of obedience, participation in Christ, sanctification, and the Christian life. I discuss the theological categories of “active” and “passive” obedience and consider whether these categories always fit neatly within Paul’s participatory and covenantal framework. A central theme throughout the episode is the idea that Paul does not merely present salvation as a legal declaration detached from transformation, but rather as incorporation into the Messiah himself. Romans 6, in particular, emphasizes dying and rising with Christ, liberation from the reign of sin, and becoming enslaved to righteousness. I argue that Paul’s theology consistently frames obedience within the context of union with Christ and the work of the Spirit rather than autonomous moral achievement. The episode also explores how Romans 1 introduces many of the themes Paul develops throughout the letter, including the “obedience of faith,” the kingship of Christ, the gospel as the fulfillment of Scripture, and the transformation of the people of God through participation in the Messiah. Along the way, I discuss tensions within Protestant theological traditions regarding sanctification, imputation, transformation, and participationist readings of Paul, while emphasizing the deeply Christological nature of Paul’s gospel.

Media Referenced:

More work on Romans:

Romans 8:29-30 Episode: https://libertarianchristians.com/episode/ep-268-christs-image-and-human-glory-a-political-reading-of-romans-829-30

Christology and Romans: https://libertarianchristians.com/episode/ep-261-the-christology-of-romans-and-romans-13/

Government as God’s Servant in Romans 13: https://libertarianchristians.com/episode/ep-243-government-is-gods-servant-romans-13-isaiah-10-and-jeremiah-25/

Why We Get Romans 13 Wrong: https://libertarianchristians.com/episode/ep-130-everyone-is-wrong-about-romans-13-including-me/

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Transcript

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This is the Protestant Libertarian Podcast, a project of the Libertarian Christian Institute and part of the Christians for Liberty Network. I really hope that you guys enjoy today's show. All right, guys, welcome to another episode of the Protestant Libertarian Podcast. I'm trying a couple things differently today. Number one, I'm not recording on StreamYard. I'm recording with Photo Booth on my Mac. So I'm not sure if the video quality is going to be better or worse because with StreamYard, sometimes my internet doesn't work very well, and I feel like the video comes out choppy. So I figured I'd give this a shot. I'm also not using my headphones today because when I record solo episodes, I don't know why I would use them. I mean, it does kind of get you locked into your podcast or in your own little world right there. But they're kind of uncomfortable in the long run, like when you're having them on your head for an extended period of time. And if I don't have a guest that I'm talking to, I really don't need them. So I'm going to try and see how this goes today. But welcome back to another episode of Theology Thursday. This is my second official Theology Thursday episode where I talk about an issue in the Bible that I am thinking through or wrestling with and just try to work it out with you guys. Again, with Theology Thursday, I'm always open to critiques and suggestions and conversations. The whole point is that I want to explore issues that have to do with biblical interpretation that are not necessarily related to political and economic themes in the Bible, although that's the majority of what I do in the show. I love the Bible and I just want to work through some of this stuff with you. And I've already had some listeners reach out to me and give me some great suggestions for future Theology Thursday episodes. So hopefully as we get into the summer and I start recording a bank of these to release, you know, at a later time, we'll get to that. And if you have a suggestion for a Theology Thursday topic, then please let me know. Today, like I said, this is going to be a shorter episode because Theology Thursday episodes are intentionally shorter. I want to talk about both the active and the passive wrath of God. Now, the wrath of God is a very big theme in the Bible. And in fact, the other day we watched for the first time that old cartoon, The Prince of Egypt, with my daughter, which is all about the Exodus. My wife and I watched this with our daughter, and I don't think that she appreciated it very much, the movie. Um, but it does do a very good job of portraying some of the plagues uh in uh in cartoon form from the book of Exodus. And when people think about the wrath of God, that's generally what they think about. They think about hail and lightning and frogs and boils and the firstborn son of the Egyptians passing away. Like when we think about the wrath of God, we usually think about it in terms of his active engagement, that God is actively exercising wrath against his people. And that's the way that we generally perceive the wrath of God. And in fact, there are many places in the Bible, not just in the Old Testament, but also in the New Testament, where God's wrath is actively portrayed in that way. But that's not the only way that God exercises his wrath over sinfulness. Another very prominent biblical motif is what we could call rightly the passive wrath of God. This is where God withholds his protection. So God is not actively necessarily involved in judging someone physically in that sense. Instead, what God does is he allows people to experience the consequences of their bad behavior. And because of that, human beings suffer on account of their sin. And that's also typified or explained in the Bible as the wrath of God. So if we want to distinguish between these two, we can call them the active and passive wrath of God, which there have been some theologians that have made that distinction before. This is not unique to me. I want to make the point that even with the passive wrath of God, God is still involved, right? So it's not as if when God is allowing people to experience the consequences of their sin that he's not involved in that process at all. No, of course he is, but we can distinguish between God actively sending, you know, burning Sodom and Gomorrah to the ground, all right, uh, and turning Lot's wife into a pillar of salt for turning around and looking at it. We can distinguish between that kind of active wrath and then the more passive wrath of God allowing people to suffer the consequences of their own bad decisions. And both of these are vividly portrayed in the Bible. Oftentimes, these are portrayed side by side. So there are a couple of passages that I want to take a look at, and I'm not gonna have anything on the screen today. I'm just gonna read through some of them in my Bible because there's not much to try to think through how we might be able to understand and reconcile both the active and passive wrath of God. I have been reading through Romans extensively over the last month or so, just kind of kind of had it on repeat, reading that one over and over again. I've read a couple of books on it for the show. You'll see some of these interviews that I'm gonna have with authors on Romans coming out soon, and I've done a little bit of work on Romans, and so I've been thinking about a lot of these issues. And I think that in Romans chapter one, we have an excellent example of the passive wrath of God, and that comes to an apex and a certain to a certain extent in Romans chapter six. Now, here's what Paul is going to say. So we know that Romans 1 16 through 17, or maybe maybe you don't know, but uh you should know that Romans 1 16 through 17 is kind of like the thesis statement for Paul's letter to Rome. And Paul says, 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. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, but the righteous man shall live by faith. Now, all of these words could be a theology Thursday episode in their own right, and actually probably a long series of theology Thursday episodes, and on pretty much every single letter of this passage has been scrutinized in great detail, and there are books uh like upon books, upon books, and articles written on exactly this passage. But the point that I want to make here without diving into the theological specifics is that Paul is saying that God's righteousness, whatever that means, is revealed in the gospel, which he articulates in Romans 1, 1 through 5, and also says in Romans 1 9 is the gospel of his son. So God's righteousness is revealed through the gospel. And I believe that righteousness is both a relational term, it's primary or primarily a relational term in the Old Testament, but it's also, it's also a judicial term. I think that both the relational aspect and the legal aspect, the penal aspect of that, of God's righteousness are at play in Romans, that God is righteous both because he is a righteous judge, but he's also righteous because he always upholds his end of the relational bargain with humanity, whether that be the covenant that he made with Israel or the fact that he is the sovereign creator over all creation. God is righteous in both of those sense, and he also has the right to judge humanity. So I think there's both of those ideas going on, even though theologians sometimes play those off against each other. But then Paul is going to immediately contrast the righteousness of God, which is revealed through the gospel, with the wrath of God, which is revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness. So he immediately jumps into this in verse 18. And you can see that he's clearly talking about the wrath of God being revealed through God's judgment, whereas the righteousness of God is revealed through the gospel. So here's what Paul says. I'm going to read this. I'm really probably going to read the rest of Romans 1. So this is Romans 1, 18 to 32, because I think that this does a great job of encapsulating what I'm trying to communicate by the passive wrath of God. So here's what Paul says. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth and unrighteousness. Again, you can already see here that the righteousness of God, which is revealed through the gospel, was kind of antithetical to the unrighteousness of man. And so God rightly punishes, rightly dispenses his wrath upon those who are unrighteous. And of course, we are going to see in Romans chapter 3 that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and are justified freely as a gift through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus. So we know how God is going to solve the problem of human sinfulness. It's through the sacrificial, atoning, vicarious death of Jesus. But God's wrath is still distributed upon people for their unrighteousness. And how is it distributed? Here's what Paul is going to say. Because that which is known about God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, his eternal power, and divine nature, having been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fool as in exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. So all of humanity is in view here, and I think that within the context of Romans, this includes both Jews and Gentiles, because ultimately Paul is going to get to the point where, yes, he condemns Gentiles for their idolatry, but he's also going to condemn Jews for failing to follow the law. Therefore, all have sinned. And you can see that in verse 18, Paul says, God's wrath is revealed against all ungodliness. And then if you flip over to Romans chapter 3, as I said before, in verse uh 23, Paul says, For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But at the very beginning of chapter 3, he talks about the faithlessness of Israel. So all of these ideas are bound up here, right? What Paul is doing, and interpreters have fought and are continuing to fight over exactly who Paul has in mind in this passage. And I gotta be honest with you, I'm not really sure what direction to take here. If you look at like Acts 17, Paul's speech in the Areopagus, it's very similar to what Paul says here, where he's like, hey, you guys are worried, you Greeks are worshiping this unknown God, but this God has revealed himself by sending you rain and good things. So you uh you kind of know who he is. Um but then also behind this text, I think, is Exodus 32 in the golden calf narrative. This is uh the professing to be wise, they exchange the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man, which if you read Psalm 106, I think it's verse 20, uh, the language is like almost exactly identical to what Paul says. Uh and what Psalm 106 is a reference back to Exodus 32. So I don't know. Whatever's going on in this passage, though, Paul is saying that people kind of know uh that they're doing the wrong thing, and God is going to judge them for it, and idolatry is uh obviously a part of this. But then here's what Paul says, starting in verse 24. Therefore God gave them over in the lust of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever, Amen. For this reason, God gave them over, same phrase, to degrading passions, for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire towards one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil, full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice, they are gossip, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents. I love that one, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful, and although they know the ordinances of God that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but they also give hearty approval to those who practice them. So, three times in this passage, Paul says that as a consequence of human sin, the wrath of God is dispensed upon humanity by God giving them over to their sin. That degregation, the loss of glory that human beings have. And if you listen to the episode that I had, I think on Tuesday this week, or maybe the week before, I don't know, but I did an episode on glory in Romans, and we talked about how glory is connected in the Old Testament to the authority that human beings were given in creation, and that glory is restored through Christ. But if we take a look at what Paul says here, God gives over those people who are being disobedient to him, who are choosing unrighteousness to their sin, and that through that sin they are degraded. And so this sin is ultimately, as Paul will make very clear in Romans 5 through 8, going to lead to death. So I think that this is a very good example of what could rightfully be called the passive wrath of God. God is not actively, in the sense of lightning bolts and hail and fire, punishing people for their unrighteousness. He's simply giving them over to the desires of their heart. If, as Paul says, sin leads to death, which is a very, very deeply entrenched idea in the Bible, both in the Old and New Testament, and Paul does a great job of explicating that in Romans, well, then the consequences of human sinfulness are going to be degradation and death. And so we see here at work in Romans chapter one, the passive wrath of God, that God is not necessarily actively involved, although he is, to a certain extent. What he's doing, though, more than being actively involved in dispensing his wrath, is he stepping back and allowing people to suffer the consequences of their own sinfulness. And in fact, we see many places in the Old Testament where this exact same paradigm works out. If you take a look at the fall narrative in Genesis chapter three, you will see that human beings are actively punished by God. They are kicked out of the garden, and then you have that whole litany of, you know, Eve is going to be punished because the husband will be over the woman from now on, the man is punished because gardening is going to be difficult, and they're physically removed from the garden and they're not allowed to come back. But one of the things that happens more passively in that story is that humanity loses the ability to eat from the tree of life. So humanity loses its immortality. So one of the consequences of sin is not being able to access immortality anymore, which is an example of an extension of God's passive act of wrath. Yes, God did actively kick them out of the garden, but the passive aspect of the wrath of God in that particular instance is that human beings die and become degraded over time. And so this is a matter of allowing God's people to undergo the consequences of their own sinfulness. And if we look at the covenant, like the final expression of the covenant in Deuteronomy 27 through 32, the very end of the book of Deuteronomy, the last articulation where God outlines, sorry, the covenant blessings and curses, we see this same dynamic at play, alternating between the active and passive wrath of God. On the one hand, if Israel is disobedient to the covenant, God is going to actively punish them with the nations. He's going to actively punish them by sending them in exile. He's going to actively punish them by making farming and agriculture difficult. But he's all it's also presented as a withholding of God's protection. So that would be more of an example of God's passive wrath being dispensed on Israel. Not only is God actively punishing them for their sins, but he's stepping back and allowing whatever is going to happen in them to happen. He's withholding his protection of Israel and allowing natural consequences to run their course. And I do think that it is important, even though the active and passive wrath of God are intrinsically connected in the Bible, I do think that it is important that we maintain a distinction between both of those things, because I think that in the modern world, God primarily works through and in the in the new covenant era that we're in right now, God's wrath primarily operates passively, that God isn't actively, physically judging us in the present. However, God does give us over to the desires and the consequences of our sin if we allow them to dominate us and control us. So I think that that's a very important distinction that we need to make there. So we can see how this dynamic plays out. And in Romans chapter one, it really does appear as if what Paul has in mind is more of the passive wrath of God, God giving humans over to the consequences of their sinfulness, which ultimately lead to death. Now, we know that this is one of the issues that Paul is dealing with here, or at least one of the ways that Paul is thinking about this, because when we turn to Romans chapter six, Paul has already talked about how in Romans chapter five, death was introduced to humanity through the sin of Adam and that death spread through to all men, and that Jesus, who is the second Adam, was able to redeem us from the curse of death. He was able to redeem us from the curse of Adam, and this is portrayed in Romans 5 very powerfully as the gracious gift of God. So this idea of grace is that even though all human beings are dead in their sinfulness, and so death spread to all of humanity, and all have kind of fallen into the same rut as Adam, the same sinful rut as Adam, Jesus Christ, through his sacrificial atoning death for our sins, rescued us from that sin and death, so that we could overcome. And this is viewed as God's grace. And at the very end of Romans chapter 5, Paul says, uh, the law came in so that transgression would increase, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. So sin reigned in death, but as sin increased, God's grace also increased, and therefore we're able to reign through right righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. And of course, this brings up the immediate question that Paul is going to address. Well, okay, so if the gravity of sin meant that God had to dispense this incredible and gracious gift, well, then why not just continue to sin so that God's gift will abound? And Paul says, are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? Uh may it never be, how shall we who die to sin still live in it? And then throughout Romans chapter six, Paul uses the imagery of death and resurrection and also a baptism to say that we have died to sin. And for Paul, a part of the logic of sin is sin is that thing that kills us. So when human beings give in to sin, this is going back to the idea of the passive wrath of God in Romans chapter one, we are choosing death, that there is only one path down the road of sin, and that will ultimately lead in degradation and death, which is the path, an example of the passive wrath of God. So those who are in Christ Jesus, who have been justified by his blood, no longer walk the path of sin, which leads to degradation and death. We walk the path that leads to life through the righteousness of Jesus. And this happens through our obedience and as a result of the work of the Spirit, the sanctifying work of the Spirit. Now, here's what Paul is going to say at the at the end of Romans chapter 6. I'm going to read this and we'll wrap this up for today. But here's what Paul says he says, What then shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be. Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death or of obedience resulting in righteousness? But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed. And having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh flesh, for just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification. Again, sanctification is the process of becoming what we are already declared at our justification. We're whole declared holy, and so we become this through sanctification, which is the work of the Spirit. For what were you for when you were slaves of sin, and here's here's the point, right? For when this is starting in verse 20 of chapter six. For when you were slaves of sin, you are free in regard to righteousness. Therefore, what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the outcome of those things is death. But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification and the outcome eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. So this is very similar to what Paul is saying about the passive wrath of God in Romans chapter one. The wages of sin is death. So no matter what you do, if you continue to live in your sin, you are going to go down the path of degradation and death. That has been the human lot, and God has graciously given us Christ so that we can overcome that pattern of sinfulness and death, which is portrayed in Romans mostly as the passive wrath of God, God allowing us to experience the consequences of our sin. And if we choose not to accept the atonement which is offered for us through Jesus Christ, then we too will still be stuck in our sins and we will die. And what Paul is saying is that God has made a way for us to get out of this process. Through the sacrificial death of Christ and the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, we can overcome the pattern of sin that leads to death, and therefore we are no longer under the passive wrath of God. Now, this could also be conceptualized to a certain extent as the active wrath of God, right? Like we know that degradation and death are the result of human sinfulness, and this is the consequence that God gave to humanity. But this is very much distinct from the idea that God is actively intervening in people's lives to punish them for individual sins. It's that sin itself is a problem because sin leads to death and degradation, and God has graciously provided the solution. Now, the theological payoff, I think, for all of this today is that instead of thinking about how, and this is very common in a lot of popular Christian circles, it's almost like we have a Western Christianized version of karma where there's this idea that if you do something bad, God is going to actively punish you for it. So you did something bad and then someone runs into the back of your car and then drives away and you wind up having to pay for it. You say, well, well, God is judging me for that. Well, I don't necessarily think that that's how this works. I don't think that that's God actively judging you for it. Now, maybe in some instances it is. I don't know. Who am I to know the mind of God? But I do think that what we need to make sure we always have in the front and center of our minds when we talk about the wrath of God, is this death that results from sin, that sin destroys us, it degrades us, right? It is it is the force and the power that causes the image that God created us in to be tarnished, and it causes us not to reach the potential that He gave to us as His human beings. And so when we think about why we should turn away from sin, and those of you that have been in the faith for a long time, you you intrinsic like you can kind of inherently understand this is that the more that you give in to Your sinfulness and the more you give in to your sinful inclinations, the easier it is for you to start slipping. And we see that the long-run consequences of those are lives that are more complicated, more broken, more challenging, and less healing and life-giving. And that is an example of God's wrath dispensed upon us for choosing sin over Jesus. And so that's really the challenge that comes from this issuing of the passive wrath of God. Like we shouldn't not sin because we're worried that God is going to send a lightning bolt down and destroy us actively. We should worry more about the passive response of God, God allowing us to suffer and experience and undergo the consequences of our sin. Now, God, I think does this graciously because I know that I've met a million people that have had to hit rock bottom before they understood and discovered that God wanted more for their lives and they changed their heart. And so God can work graciously even in our sin, as Paul says in Romans chapter five. But once we've turned away from sin, we either have two choices. We can either go back to it, in which case the passive wrath of God, where we slowly decay and corrupt, is going to be the consequence for that action. Or we can choose to actively be obedient. And Paul loves the language of obedience in Romans. He uses it at many points in the letter, including Romans 6 in the passage that we just read. We can choose to be obedient, which again, this is not something that we earn on our own. This is something that was graciously given to us, and the Holy Spirit is what enables us, as Paul's going to say in Romans 8, to put to death the deeds of the flesh. So we can't we can't take credit for this. But we do need to remember that we have an obligation to turn away from sin. Therefore, we don't suffer the passive wrath of God, which is being given over to the degradation of our bodies and the destruction of our life. And I think that there are so many American Christians that just want to live in the brokenness and that want to live in the sin and want to live in the chaos and don't realize that there is a way out of that and that our lives would be so much better if we chose to cooperate with God and allow the Spirit to transform us from the inside out instead of being negatively judged by the passive wrath of God. All right. Well, that's it. That's my big distinction between the active and passive wrath of God. I think this is a really interesting theological issue. I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Again, I'm not the first person to come up with this, but for and I wanted to get on here and sound off on it for this episode of Theology Thursday. I really hope that you guys enjoyed this episode and that it did something to you. Uh, as you can see, if you look back here, this is my uh if you're watching on YouTube, this is my brand new book, Politics, Economics, and New Testament Interpretation. I'm proofing it right now. There are a ton of minor grammatical mistakes, especially in my chapters on the gospels. Uh, it's mostly, you know, the way I apostrophized Jesus and then not capitalizing law whenever I was referring to the Jewish law and not capitalizing Gentiles. I made an editorial decision to capitalize Gentile and capitalize law, which I explain in the book. And there were a lot of places I did not do that. So we got a little bit of proofing to do before we get this done. But again, looking like September or maybe early August at the absolute latest for the book. We'll continue to give you more updates as this becomes available. But keep your eyes out for this. I'm excited to get it out to you. There's a lot in there, and I think it's gonna be amazing for you guys to read it and engage with it. So thank you for everything you guys do. As always, please consider giving the show a five-star review on whatever podcast app you listen to, or hit the like button on YouTube. Leave me a review, that would be extremely helpful. It just gives me a little bit more of an edge in the algorithm. Share this with your friends, share this on social media, help get these ideas out there so that people can join the conversation. I am so thankful for everything you guys have done. Uh, do for me and do for me all the time. I love you guys, and I'll see you guys on Tuesday. Have a great day. Thank you for listening to another episode of the Protestant Libertarian Podcast. If you have any questions or comments, please reach out to me at theprotestantlibertarian at gmail.com. You can also find me on Twitter. You can follow me at the handle at Pro Liberty Pod. Again, that is at Pro Liberty Pod. And you can also visit me at the Protestant Libertarian Podcast.com. At the Protestant Libertarian Podcast.com, you can also support the Christians for Liberty Network and the Libertarian Christian Institute. Thank you guys so much for listening to this episode, and we will see you next Tuesday.