Because what is known of God is manifest among them, for God has manifested [it] to them,
God's anger against ungodliness is not random, and this verse says why: God did not hide Himself from people — He showed them what could be known of Him. So two questions follow: what could people know, and how did God show it?
Verse 19 opens the long section where Paul proves human guilt. One writer compares it to a light carried into a filthy room:
The Spirit of God brings this unrighteousness and ungodliness fully into the open from Romans 1:19 to 3:20. This is the part where God's "light" comes in and shows all that we are by nature. It is like carrying a light into a dark room full of every kind of filth and corruption. While the room is dark you see nothing of what is inside. Bring the light in, and it shows all the filth and dirt that are there. From verse 19 to the end of chapter 1 we find the dreadful state of the pagan world described. It shows that they should have known God's eternal power and divine nature from the things He made.
The phrase does not mean the knowledge people already had. Commentators differ over whether it points inward, to self-knowledge. Kelly argues that the evidence stood outside people, in plain view:
"What can be known" of Him means the knowable rather than the known. The evidence was full and clear, but their eyes were dull… If the verse appealed to self-knowledge, as many think, it seems to me it would have used the word for inward knowledge, and the reflexive pronoun as well. This was knowledge of an outward kind, lying open in the middle of them all. The words that follow confirm it — "for God has shown it to them," not the work of conscience, which has its proper place in Romans 2.
The next verse answers the "how". God put His power on display in the things He made, and even a famous thinker of the ancient world had to admit it:
People have perceived His invisible things — not all of them, of course, but His eternal power and divinity — ever since the creation of the world. The mind grasps them through His works. The things He made stood before every eye, and they did produce convictions far above the ordinary run of human thought… Even the famous ancient thinker who allowed only what he could observe could not write his book on the world without stating that "God, though He is invisible to every mortal being, is seen from the works themselves."
The evidence was hard to miss. One writer says the fault was not a misreading of it:
Creation lies open for everyone to see, and it is full of signs of God… Notice that what we must charge man with is not merely a misreading of the evidence, but a wholesale rejection of it. You would think there was little room for mistake — unless the hearts of men really wanted some other meaning. Yet that is exactly where the fault lies. They would gladly credit anyone or anything but Him with the glory of such work.
This means the religious history of mankind runs downhill, not uphill:
Those peoples that are now heathen once knew God. Man's course has not been from many gods up to one God, as some dreamers would have us imagine, but the other way round. They have sunk out of light into the darkness.
The witness of the created world takes away excuses. It does not do more than that:
Nothing here suggests that creation bore witness to the gospel, or that it revealed God as He is in His nature. It witnessed to the Creator. Yet man, instead of turning to the Creator through this witness, turned away from Him… Rejecting the witness of creation leaves man without excuse, even if he has never heard the gospel.
So the verse points beyond itself. Sinful people need more than evidence of a Maker:
The testimony of creation leaves man without excuse, but it does not bring him the knowledge of God. Creation shows God's power, but God Himself is known only in the Person of the Son. Man is a sinner, held at a distance from God by sin. To claim to worship God and share His company in the works of His hands ignores man's sinful condition, his guilt, and his need of salvation.
- Shown — God did not stay silent. He set what could be known of Him before every eye in the things He made.
- Knowable — The word means what could be known, not what was known. The evidence was clear; human eyes were dull.
- Rejected — People did not misread the evidence. They threw it out, and gave the glory to anything but God.
- Downward — The result is a fall out of light into darkness, not a climb from many gods up to one.
- Not enough — Creation shows a Creator and leaves everyone without excuse. It never preaches the gospel. God Himself is known only in the Son.
-- for from [the] world's creation the invisible things of him are perceived, being apprehended by the mind through the things that are made, both his eternal power and divinity, -- so as to render them inexcusable.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.