The Creator Clearly Seen

Despite his wonders, they did not believe. (Psalm 78:32, ESV)

Theophilus sits in a coffeehouse with a latté and his Bible. His classmate, Epicurus, can’t resist needling him, “I don’t get you Christians. How can you say that God sends people to hell who have never heard? A God like that can’t be true.”

What should Theophilus say? “We don’t really know what God does with the unevangelized”?

Romans 1:18–21 has a more direct answer to modern Epicurus. Those who have never heard are willfully guilty for rejecting God because God has revealed Himself clearly in the wonders of creation.

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all impiety and injustice of men, who are seeking to suppress the truth by means of their unrighteous lives. (Romans 1:18)

God is angry with us. Notice why. God’s anger swells up because men are “suppressing the truth.”

The Greek word translated “suppress” means “holding down,” like chains in a prison. This same word was used to describe Joseph’s imprisonment in Genesis 39. God seethes with anger because unbelievers attempt to “imprison” the truth by their wicked lives.

Yet no matter how hard people wrestle to suppress God’s truth, God will not let them put it in a cage. Humans are “seeking”—but failing—to suppress the truth.1

Our sin against what we know about God has reached the point that it would be immoral for God not to act.

God’s anger is not ordinary anger. Paul uses the Greek word or-gē for “wrath.” This word comes from the verb that describes fruits swelling with juice. The idea is of a swollen indignation. Our sin against what we know about God has reached the point that it would be immoral for God not to act.

This or-gē “is being revealed” from heaven.2 God lets everyone know about His anger, not just once or occasionally, but continually. All of us know it . . . including Mr. Epicurus.

God directs this wrath against two things—“impiety” and “injustice.” Impiety, or ungodliness, refers to mankind’s failure to fulfill his obligation to his Creator. He holds the very molecules of our bodies together (1 Corinthians 8:4–6), and He enables the neurons in our brains to fire. So we are indebted to God, not just for health and life but for our ability to move and think. In return, we owe our Creator an infinite debt; we owe Him our complete love and devotion. Failure to pay this debt is impiety.

God’s indignation also swells against our “injustice.” Injustice refers to our failure to treat other human beings—God’s special creations—with the respect that we know they deserve. When we abuse or neglect others, we shred God’s Mona Lisa and smash His David into pieces. We commit a great offense against God’s creations, but our offense against their Creator is even greater.

Because the thing which can be known about God is evident in them, because God made it known to them. (Romans 1:19)

When we witness to people, we don’t have to worry about proving God’s existence. According to this verse, God makes Himself evident, open, and plain to everyone. He literally placed evidence “in them.” Apparently God placed a knowledge of Himself within all men—inside their minds, in their hearts, in the very core of their being.

The verb is present tense. God did not reveal Himself in the past and then stop. He continues to reveal Himself within us now.

So when people like Epicurus try to appease their conscience and justify their sin, they must suppress their knowledge of God. They grab at straws to patch together a cage around the truth. But God’s truth breaks free, like a tiger ill-suited for captivity.

The King of Heaven does not rely on petty heralds to share who He is. Nor does He post little notes on bulletin boards, hoping we’ll see them. God Himself takes a personal interest in making sure that each one of us has knowledge of Him.

God knows that all people fight against this knowledge. Jesus could say to everyone what He once said to Saul, a zealous Pharisee, “It is hard for you to kick against the pricks” (Acts 9:5). He pricks every heart, letting each person know about Him.

For his invisible attributes are thoroughly known from the creation of the cosmos, being known by means of the things which have been made, whether his eternal power or divinity. . . . (Romans 1:20a)

The Creator is Clearly Seen

Commonplace and mysterious pictures copyright 2008 Jupiterimages Corporation, microscopic picture copyright Rocky Mountain Laboratories, and intangible picture copyright Life Issues Institute.

What can we see about God? His invisible attributes! The Greek verb kathoratai intensifies the standard Greek word meaning “to see.” So we don’t merely “see” God’s attributes, but we literally see them “down” to the core. We clearly perceive, we abundantly know, we thoroughly recognize God’s invisible attributes.

Poor Epicurus was just bluffing. Everyone sees God clearly, even if they never saw a Bible or heard about Him.

God reveals Himself in two ways. One is through the special revelation of the Bible. Through the Bible God spells out the path to salvation (see “Do All Creationists Go to Heaven?” p. 64). God also communicates through the “general” revelation of creation. While it does not replace the saving truths that mankind must learn in the Bible, creation clearly teaches all men and women that God exists and that certain things are true about Him.

We know these things presently and continually. The moment God created the world (cosmos in Greek), His world began proclaiming things about the Creator, and it has continued ever since.

Psalm 19:1–6 is an important Old Testament parallel. God’s creation, surpassing all limits of language, culture, gender, and age, preaches about God constantly and effectively. The world does not need science to acquire knowledge of the Creator. According to the Bible, people already know the Creator and are desperately seeking any excuse to dispute His existence. As 2 Peter 3:5 says, “They deliberately ignore” the evidence that everyone plainly sees.

Romans 1:20 spells out the attributes that we can see in the world—God’s eternal nature and divine power. The Greek word for eternal, “a-i-di-os,” is unusual. It is related to the Greek word meaning “always.” God has caused an “always-ness” to be evident in the created order, and people connect this “always-ness” with the idea of a personal God.

His divinity, deity, divine nature is “thei-ot-ēs.” This term summarizes all the attributes that make God who He is. So God’s revelation of Himself is pretty all-encompassing. (See “Wonder of God” below.)

“. . . so that they are without excuse.” (Romans 1:20b)

These are sobering words. The wonders of God preach His glory to all men. No man or woman can say, “I did not know” or “The revelation was not clear.” This God, who reveals Himself and knows all hearts, concludes of every man, woman, and child, “They are without excuse.”

What can be so plain and evident, when we behold the heavens and contemplate the celestial bodies, as the existence of some supreme, divine intelligence, by which all these things are governed?
Cicero, De Natura Deorum, 2.2

For, although they were knowing God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks. (Romans 1:21)

Not only did we know about God at one time, we knew Him in person. We “were knowing God.”

Our modern-day, latté-drinking Epicurus has no right to accuse God of wrongdoing. Epicurus is guilty because he has willfully turned away. His mockery is only bravado, hiding what he knows in his heart about God. He knows that the real debate is not about the pagan in Patagonia. It is about sinners in Seattle trying to convince themselves that God does not exist.

God has given us ears to hear, eyes to see, and hearts to understand. He could have left us in the dark because of our willful effort to cage His truth and because of our impiety and injustice. Yet God wants all to take His free offer of salvation through Jesus Christ.

God graciously transforms lives that were without form and void—lives dark with the disease of sin and dead to God’s ways, sinking under the abysmal waters of His wrath. This powerful God, who once transformed the empty vastness of space with just a word, is so great in His mercy that, in spite of our willful ignorance, He sees us in our darkness and cries out, “Let the light of the glorious gospel shine in their hearts!” (2 Corinthians 4:6).