02 Do Good People Go to Heaven? (Romans 1:18-32)

by Krisan Marotta | May 28, 2013 | 01 Podcasts, Romans

Do Good People Go to Heaven? Romans 1:18-32. An open Bible rests on a rustic wooden table in soft morning light.

Updated November 2026

In Romans 1:18–32, Paul opens his case against the pagan world and shows why no one is without excuse. He names God's wrath as a principled, judicial response to our exchanging the Creator for created things and he answers the vague, feel-good religion many people actually believe.

Key Takeaways

A major study of 3,000 teenagers found most hold a belief system researchers called "moralistic therapeutic deism," a vague faith where God exists, wants you to be good, and mostly stays out of your life.
Romans 1 directly contradicts nearly every tenet of that worldview.
God's wrath is not an emotional outburst. It is a principled, reasoned, judicial response to human rebellion.
Paul's core argument is that we exchanged God for lesser things, and that God's response was to give us over to the consequences of that choice.
No one is without excuse. Creation itself points to a creator.
The right response to this passage is not depression or self-righteousness but humility and compassion.

The Religion Most People Actually Believe

If you were to walk up to people on the street and ask them who God is, or whether God exists, have you ever thought about what kind of answers you'd get? Two researchers took on that question. Kristen Smith and Melinda Lunquist-Denton are secular scholars who completed a study where they asked 3,000 teenagers who God is and what he is like. They published their findings in a book: Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, C

I read about it in a magazine called Plugged In, put out by Focus on the Family. The cover says it all: "Choosing Their Religion: An iPod Mentality Has Teens Shuffling Their Doctrines to Suit Their Personal Ideals." That's really what they found. Teenagers tend to take a little here and a little there, whatever works. The scary thing was that the research found no statistical difference between teenagers who grew up in a church and teenagers who didn't. They all tended to shuffle their beliefs.

To be fair, there was a remnant, though the researchers didn't use that word, a core group with what we would recognize as an orthodox, historical Christian faith. But the majority just had a pick-and-choose approach, and they weren't rebelling against their parents' beliefs. They just didn't know better. This is what they were taught.

The Five Tenets of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism

The researchers summarized their findings under the term "moralistic therapeutic deism," characterized by five statements. Keep these in mind as we study Romans.

A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.
God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
God does not need to be particularly involved in one's life except when god is needed to resolve a problem.
Good people go to heaven when they die.

That sounds familiar to me. I've heard it from neighbors and co-workers. It seems to be the politically correct view of religion we get in the media. The scarier question is what if this is what's being taught in our churches? Are we offering spiritual cotton candy? Sweet, melts in your mouth, no calories, nothing to digest. We're probably all guilty to some extent, because no one wants to be controversial.

What you're going to see in this passage alone is that Paul counteracts all of those statements except the first one. He's going to say there is a God, he's personal, there is a right and wrong, it matters, and ignoring what God says has serious consequences.

Bad News Before Good News

Before we get to the good news of the gospel, we're going to spend three chapters on the bad news. Paul acts like a prosecuting attorney presenting his case. The first case we're looking at today is his case against the pagan, the person who doesn't believe in God. Next week he turns his attention to the religious person or the moralist. Then in chapter three he expands to the whole human race.

He's going to spend three chapters making the point that no one can keep the law, no one is righteous. That is a direct contradiction of moralistic therapeutic deism's claim that good people go to heaven.

God's Wrath

Romans 1:18: "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them."

The first thing to notice is that his wrath is revealed in human experience. Unlike moralistic therapeutic deism, where God doesn't really care and isn't really involved unless you need him, Paul says God is involved, he cares, he has opinions about right and wrong, and it matters.

The second thing is that God's wrath is personal. This is not some cosmic force like fate or bad luck that trips you up now and then. Paul argues there is a holy God who has established a holy order, he will uphold it, and he will bring judgment against those who rebel. Three times in this passage he uses the phrase "God gave them over," which is a legal term. He is dealing out judgment.

Third, God's wrath is principled and controlled. We think of anger as arbitrary, explosive, uninhibited, motivated by vindictiveness or rage. God's wrath is not like that. It is a reasoned, principled, justified, controlled reaction. No animosity, no outburst, just a principled response. Paul will go on to argue that it's even delayed. God has been postponing it for a long time.

Fourth, God's wrath is not prompted by our ignorance. Notice how many times Paul says "they are without excuse." We have enough evidence right in front of our faces, and we suppress the truth.

A Million Pennies Face Up

My father is an atheist, and over the years we've had many conversations that go nowhere. He doesn't convert me and I haven't converted him yet. But one time I said, "Dad, if you came upon a sidewalk and there were a million pennies lined up in rows, all heads up, would you think they randomly landed that way, or would you assume someone arranged them?"

He looked at me like I was stupid, because he knows the astronomical odds against a million pennies landing face up. He said, "Of course someone put them there."

I said, "But Dad, look at the world. It's like looking at a million pennies all face up. How can you think creation just randomly happened?"

He was not impressed. But I think that's the point Paul makes in verse 19, where he says that which is known about God is evident within them, and then goes on to talk about creation. Creation is screaming that there is a God, a designer behind the design. Paul will go on to say don't worship the creation. There's a God behind it.

Back to Back With God

Here's a visual for how to remember this passage. If my left hand is us and my right hand is God, and I hold them up palms forward, we're face to face. We start out in fellowship with God. The problem is we rebelled, so we turned our backs on him.

Paul argues there are two consequences to that. The first is that we now experience death, and by that he means more than dying. Skip to the end of the chapter, verse 29, where he gives a long list: unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil, envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice, gossip, slander, hatred of God, arrogance, boastfulness, disobedience to parents, being untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful. That's death. All of that in our lives is the consequence of sin.

We don't have to plan to lose our temper. That just happens. But we do have to say to ourselves, "Okay, next time I'm going to take a deep breath and count to ten." The angry, selfish part comes easy. The calm, patient part takes work. When we turn our backs on God, we experience death in all its forms: anger, selfishness, frustration, bitterness, marriages falling apart, parents and teenagers becoming alienated, friends hurting each other's feelings.

Now I'm going to jump ahead for a moment. The good news is life, the exact opposite of all that. Imagine a world where marriages automatically and inevitably grew closer together without any effort, because that's just the way things were. Or parents and children naturally understood each other. Or friends never let each other down. Without sin, that's the kind of life we would have. That's the promise of the gospel. One day you will be the kind of person that everyone is better for having met, and you don't even have to try. That's just who you are.

But right now we're still in the bad news.

God Gives Them Over

The second consequence is even graver. God turns his back on us. That is the wrath of God, the just and reasoned decision to say, you want sin, you've got it. He withdraws the offer of life.

The term Paul uses, "God gave them over," is a legal term meaning to hand someone into the custody of sin and death. It's the same term used for what Judas did to Jesus in the garden, handing him into the custody of the Roman guards. Paul's argument is that God hands us into the custody of our sins so that we are now prisoners, trapped in sin and death.

We rebelled and turned our backs on God. His wrath is that he turns his back on us. What we did was not just unfortunate, it was wrong. There is a judicial penalty that must be paid, and the wrath of God must be satisfied.

You know the end of the story. God satisfies that justice with Jesus' death on the cross. He then turns back to us and calls us to him. The good news is that God will solve the problem of his wrath by sending Jesus to die in our place. But right now, for the first three chapters, we are still back to back.

Romans 1:18–32

EXCHANGE: 18For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. 19For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.

REBELLION 21For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

RESULT: 24Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

RESULT 26For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

REBELLION: 28And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. 29They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, 30slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

EXCHANGE 32Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

Why Paul Brings Up Homosexuality

Paul picks on homosexuality in this section, and some people argue it's because it's the worst sin. But this is not a progression from worst to least. The list includes murderers, haters of God, the insolent, and also people who gossip. That's not really an ordered ranking.

I think he mentions homosexuality because it's an argument from creation. He's not saying it's a worse sin, it's an obvious one. If you look at creation, you can see this is not how the parts were designed. It's easy to look at something like selfishness or anger and say everyone does that, that's just normal human behavior. Paul picks homosexuality to say you can tell from creation this is not what God designed. It's meant to be obvious. All sin is bad. All sin is worthy of condemnation.

The Progression of Idolatry

Notice the progression through this passage, because I think it's insightful about the nature of idolatry. Idolatry is essentially exchanging the glory of God for something else of no value. We don't tend to worship trees and rocks anymore, but we have our own idols: career, money, success, fame, beauty, being the perfect parent.

Paul uses the word "exchange" three times, and that's really what sin is. We exchange God's place for ours. We exchange truth for a lie, the creator for creation, life for death. As Jeremiah says, we exchange the fountain of living water for a broken cistern that can't even hold water.

Notice how the progression works. It starts with the eye. In verse 23, they exchanged the glory of God for an image of something else. We see something and think, that looks good, I want that.

Then it moves to the heart. Verse 25, they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature. We see it, we want it, now we worship it and serve it.

Then it takes over the whole body. Verse 26, they exchanged the natural function for the unnatural. It moves from your eye to your heart, and now you're addicted to it. It takes over your whole body.

That's the progression of idolatry. It can be money, it can be fame, it can be success, it can be looking good on Sundays, it can be being the perfect parent. We can put anything in that place and let it take over us.

Revisiting the Five Points of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism

Let me go back through those five points now that we've read the passage.

The first point: a God exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.

That's true, but he does more than watch over. He is in control. He is Lord, Creator, Master, and Almighty, not a watchmaker who wound up the universe and disappeared.

The second point: God wants people to be good, nice, and fair.

True to a point, but the standard is higher. As we'll see next week, Paul argues the standard God requires is nothing less than complete, total holiness, inside and out, in heart, speech, and deed, all of it, all the time. One transgression is enough to disqualify you.

The third point: the central goal in life is to be happy and to feel good about yourself.

I don't think that's even close to the gospel. And in a fallen world, where we constantly rub shoulders with other sinful people, it may not even be possible. Things will go wrong. People will disappoint each other. Even in your small groups, someone will say something that hurts your feelings, or you'll say something that hurts someone else's. That's part of the process. God uses even that, as we'll see in chapter eight. The goal is not necessarily happiness. The goal is faith and worship.

The fourth point: God does not need to be particularly involved in your life except when you need him to resolve a problem.

This is the dangerous one. Notice how many times Paul says "they are without excuse." God is involved, he cares, he has a standard, he enforces it, and there is a judgment coming. Notice what Paul says at the very start of chapter two: "You therefore are without excuse." He shifts the pronoun directly to the reader. He's not going to let us get away with pointing at other people.

The fifth point: good people go to heaven when they die.

What Paul argues is that apart from the grace of God, there are no good people. This is his first case. Next week in chapter two he looks at the religious person, the moralist. In chapter three he looks at everyone else. His conclusion is we all have the same disease and we all need the same cure, which is faith in Jesus Christ and what he did for us on the cross. He won't get to that until chapter four, but you know the end of the story.

So What?

What are you supposed to do with this, go home and be depressed?

The first thing to realize is that this is the first part of an argument. Paul is building a case for how you get out of this problem. How do you go from being back to back with God to face to face? His first point is that left to yourself, you can't. That's an important thing to be hit with now and then.

For evangelism, it's also a good starting point. We're in a postmodern society. A lot of people are very comfortable living with contradictions. What do you do? How do you meet someone there? Well, everyone experiences sin and death. Everyone knows what it's like to be hurt, to be disappointed, to be let down, to say something they wish they hadn't said. And a lot of people are sick of that. They don't want to be in that kind of existence anymore. That's where we can reach our culture. The first part of saving faith is knowing I'm sinful and I can't solve the problem on my own.

The second response is humility. It's tempting to say, well, I'm not like those drug dealers and prostitutes, go throw the book at them. But the first thing to realize is that you're in the same boat. The response ought to be not self-righteousness but humility.

There are moments when that hits you in the face. You say something or do something, and suddenly everyone around you knows you're sinful. You were hiding it for a while, but then it slipped out. It hurts because you've hurt people, and they're disappointed. You resolved to be a better spouse or parent, and then you did the very thing you said you wouldn't do. The response to that is to ask for forgiveness, admit it, and thank God that he shows you your sinfulness. A broken heart is the first step of faith. How many of us have sung "prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the one I love"? That's us. Facing that honestly ought to make us humble, and that humility is the first step back toward reconciliation with God.