Romans 1:18

18. Wrath Divine wrath is the intense divine opposition of good against bad, of right against wrong, of holiness against depravity. It exists most intensely in the most holy nature, and therefore most perfectly, and in truth infinitely, in the heart of God. It reveals itself in the form of penalty against those who embody the evil guiltily and responsibly in their own persons, such penalty being in the form of misery or destruction.

Revealed from heaven Commentators have indicated various ways in which the apostle could truly say that God’s wrath is revealed from heaven: by Scripture revelation, by the monitions of conscience, by the terrors and convulsions of the elements, by the judgment at the last day. We do not think the apostle had any one mode in view; but by a strong and almost poetic conception he describes what is true to the eye of an awakened conscience, the wrath of God disclosed like lightning from the sky upon the guilty head.

Ungodliness All apostasy from God first.

Unrighteousness All wickedness against man, second and consequent. Yet God appropriates both as sin against himself, and over both are lowering the revelations of his wrath.

Hold Impede, hold back, repress. Truth would destroy wickedness, and so wickedness fights against and forces back truth.

In unrighteousness Or by unrighteousness, the meaning would be much the same. The truth designated by the apostle is the truth of the divine nature (Romans 1:19; Romans 1:25; Romans 1:28) and of the death-worthiness of sin, (Romans 1:32.) It is these truths that human wickedness, to secure its own existence, opposes and represses, so that they lose all ascendency and known existence.