“What’s wrong with the world?” someone asks. Many explanations are on offer: economic turmoil, moral collapse, political extremism. Certainly these are things that are going wrong. But are they “what’s wrong with the world”?
Why is there turmoil? Why is there moral collapse? Why do we all run to our corners?
When the apostle Paul wrote to the church of Rome in the middle of the first century AD, he identified one thing at the root of it all: “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men” (Rom. 1:18).
Wrath against Sin
“Come on,” says somebody. “Don’t start on this ‘wrath of God’ thing! The God of Christianity is the God of love, not of wrath.”
But of course He is a God of wrath! How could a God of love not be a God of wrath? God’s wrath is not an emotional response—angry, irrational, and uncompromising. It’s not vain, malicious, or vengeful. Rather, it is His determined opposition to the thing that would destroy what He loves—like an oncologist’s resolve to eliminate cancer (but with perfect effectiveness). God’s wrath is His settled hostility toward sin.
“Now you’re on about sin? What even is sin, anyway? It’s such an old-fashioned word.”
Sin is when we violate God’s moral law that He has laid out for us. In Romans, Paul puts it in terms of “ungodliness and unrighteousness”—or, as the NIV has put it so provocatively, “godlessness and wickedness.”
Godlessness is the essence of sin: the attempt to rid ourselves of the God who created us in His image to reflect His goodness and love in the world (Gen. 1:26–27). We cannot get rid of God by ignoring Him or by saying we do not believe in Him, but we can live as if He were not there. So even though God’s creation testifies to us that He is there and we should honor Him, we ignore Him and honor created things instead —which, in our day, largely means putting ourselves first, making gods of ourselves and our desires.
Wickedness is the manifestation of sin. As we pursue our own self-centered paths, we depart from the path of the loving and good Creator—and as we do so, we depart from the path of love and goodness. The result is “envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness,” and all such things (Rom. 1:29).
Even though God’s creation testifies to us that He is there and we should honor Him, we ignore Him and honor created things instead.
This godlessness and wickedness is destructive, and it is deceptive. It grows and spreads and results in all the chaos we perceive in the world. And the good and loving creator God is settled in His opposition to it.
God’s Wrath through Sin
“I haven’t seen many sinners struck by lightning lately,” someone says.
No—but there is a day coming when God will return the report cards, so to speak. Paul says in another place that God has “fixed a day on which he will judge the world” (Acts 17:31). God raised Jesus from the dead and exalted Him to His right hand (Eph. 1:20), and when He did this, He showed that He can and will raise all people from the dead and hold them accountable for what they have done.
Of course, Paul says that God’s wrath is being revealed. Today, we see it in the presence and prevalence of sin. When people gave God up in exchange for unnatural relations, idolatrous images, and all sorts of wicked folly, “God gave them up.” He “gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity” (Rom. 1:24), He “gave them up to dishonorable passions” (v. 26), and He “gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done” (v. 28).
God has allowed the world to experience the consequences of its sin, walking the path of godlessness and wickedness it set out on when human beings first disobeyed Him. Why do we live in a sex-crazed society, obsessed with what is perverse, degrading, and dehumanizing? “God gave them up.” Why are so many hungry for gossip and slander? Why do people admire the proud and boastful? Why do some encourage the dishonoring of our parents? Why does the broader culture often celebrate the foolish, faithless, heartless, and ruthless? Because “God gave them up.”
The world has chosen sin, so God has handed it over to sin. This is why things are the way they are. And this is why Paul says he’s not ashamed of the good news about Jesus Christ rising from the dead (Rom 1:16). Because in that good news is the power to make all the wrong things right again—to flip the script from godlessness to godliness.
God’s Kindness to Us
“Paul’s ‘Gospel’ seems like a really dismal thing,” someone may say. “Is it all sin and wrath?”
By no means! The bad news, as bad as it is, comes before good news that’s even better than we could imagine. In the good news about Jesus Christ, Paul says, “the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith.”
“Well, I’m trying to be good and righteous,” someone says. “I try to do the right thing.”
How righteous are you today? How righteous were you yesterday? How righteous can you really expect to be tomorrow? And how righteous will you have to be to satisfy a God of perfect love and goodness who, in His zeal for all that is good, is resolute in His opposition to sin?
The good news—the Gospel—is that when Jesus died on the cross, He made the righteousness of God freely available to people who do not have it and do not deserve it. The loving God who hates sin has, out of love, made a way to save people from their sin. And God, in His kindness, has delayed the day of His final judgment so that people may take hold of this gift of salvation. God considers everyone righteous who comes to Him in genuine faith, entrusting their fate to Jesus.
“But what is ‘faith’?” someone asks. “How do we entrust our fate to Jesus?”
We start by admitting to ourselves and to God how sinful we are, holding no excuses to bring to God on the day of His judgment. And then we say, “Lord Jesus, You are good enough that You can get Yourself in and get me in too. When You died on the cross, You swallowed up God’s wrath against my sin, and You made it possible for me to turn around and come back to Him. So I am grabbing Your coattails, and I am following You back into the goodness and love of God’s presence.”
We have nothing to say in our defense, and we have no power to make ourselves better. But the blood of Christ is on the evidence table, and it testifies that our sentence has already been served. Because of the blood that Christ shed on the cross, we can be innocent in God’s eyes.
His simple invitation is extended to you: “Come to Me.”
This article was adapted from the sermon “What’s Wrong with the World” by Alistair Begg.
