Romans 1:16 I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile.
There is a moral law in life that says that men and women are left to the consequences of their own freely chosen course of action, and unless this tendency is reversed by divine grace, their situation will go from bad to worse. The cause of mankind's moral bankruptcy arises from wrong ideas about God. Wrong ideas about God did not arise innocently. The knowledge of the true God was accessible, but men and women closed their minds to it. Contemplating God's work in creation, man can grasp enough of His nature to prevent him from the error of identifying any of the created things with the Creator, enabling him to keep his conception of God free from idolatry. Men refuse to believe or acknowledge Him. Deliberate ignorance is mankind's choice. It is a choice to not believe.
Therefore God gave them up to the consequences of their choice. God's wrath is the principle of retribution, which must operate in a moral universe. To a man so convinced as Paul was that the world was created and controlled by a personal God of righteousness and mercy, this retribution could not be an impersonal principle; it was God's own wrath. He gave them what they wanted. C.S. Lewis wrote that the lost, "enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded, and are therefore self-enslaved." In death they are free to themselves and apart from God, this is torment, to be separated from the love of God.
The truth is that sinful man cannot solve the problem he finds himself in. Although he desperately needs a solution to it: it is his problem; it is he who needs to be forgiven. And what Paul tells us here is that the problem has been worthily solved by the grace of God. He has presented Christ as the solution, the means of forgiveness, the guarantor of our acceptance by God. All that is required is that we should embrace by faith what God's grace has provided. By the principle of faith the law is upheld, sin is condemned, righteousness is vindicated and the Old Testament scriptures are fulfilled.
Sounds like Good News to me...
Romans, A Commentary by F.F. Bruce, pgs. 70-86
