Romans 2:5Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

"But according to your hardness and impenitent heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself." When a man is not softened by goodness and is not bent by fear, what could be more crude than he?

The Apostle has already shown God's love for mankind. Now he speaks of punishment, namely, that it will be unbearable for the one who does not turn back, even under such conditions.

See how precise are the expressions he uses when he says: "You are storing up wrath for yourself." He presents it as something being generally saved up. He shows that the cause of the wrath is not the judge, but the defendant himself.

You are storing up wrath for yourself, he says. God is not storing it up for you; you yourself are storing it up for yourself. How? By your unyielding heart, hard toward good. For what could be harder than you, when you are neither softened by goodness nor bent by fear?

Then, having spoken of the day of wrath, he adds: "of the revelation and righteous judgment of God." He does so rightly, lest someone think judgment is an act of passion. He means the revelation of everything.

Therefore recompense corresponds to what is revealed, and because of this the judgment is righteous. Here justice does not always prevail, because deeds are hidden. But there, after the revelation, righteous judgment follows.

Note this passage by comparing it with the following: "I will harden Pharaoh's heart" (Ex 4:21). For Paul explains himself in almost the same words.

Wrath, as it is said, means vengeance.

The one who hopes to remain unpunished for sins not only becomes hardened in his inability to turn and remains incorrigible. He also sins still more, being confident that there will be no recompense. His heart does not repent and does not know that it is storing up wrath for itself on the day of wrath.

Since your heart is hard and you remain in wickedness, you pronounce upon yourself the decree of punishment. God now delays it in mercy, but He will reveal it on the day of consummation and will measure out His recompenses according to deeds. The Apostle spoke well when he said, "you store up for yourself." He shows that none of our words or deeds is given over to oblivion. On the contrary, lovers of virtue store up good things for themselves, and workers of wickedness do the same.

The one who departs from Him, despises His commandments, dishonors by his deeds the One Who made him, and by his own choice blasphemes the One Who nourishes him, brings upon himself a most just sentence.

This is what the Apostle says in the Epistle to the Romans concerning Christ, for God is Christ: on the day of wrath and revelation the righteous judgments of God will be accomplished. Without doubt this is said of Christ, since He will also be the Judge.

Until the revelation of God's righteous judgment comes upon you, this day says to us all: behold the man, and behold his works. Therefore we must turn more quickly to Christ, so that we may not be cast out of the body with a hardened heart. Let us not be found deprived of the faith of Christ, which the law and the prophets promised us.

You make God's longsuffering toward you a pretext for every kind of indecency. Therefore know with certainty that, according to your hardness, you are storing up wrath against yourself.

By the word "store up," Paul indicated that individual sins, gathered together through the Judge's longsuffering, become an increase of punishment for those who are incurably sick.

If a man sins once or twice and without any pretense hastens to the medicine of repentance, he will at once regain his former blamelessness. But if he begins to heap sins upon sins and prefers to hide festering spiritual wounds rather than heal them through confession and repentance, then the apostolic word may be fulfilled in him: "Do you not know that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?" (Rom. 2:4).

God offers you all the treasures of divine grace, but you exchange them for treasures of wrath. "According to your hardness," the Apostle continues, "and impenitent heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself." Thus it is just that you should experience what you deserve.

Have you forgotten God? Be forgotten by Him. He called you, and you did not will it. Now you will plead, and He will not will you. "The righteous judgment of God," says Gregory of Nyssa, "acts according to our disposition. What we ourselves do, the same He assigns to us from Himself."

There are many such examples in Holy Scripture. But the most outstanding of them is the lamentable example of Zedekiah, king of Jerusalem (2 Chr 36; Jer 37).

By His longsuffering, God leads the sinner to repentance. But if he does not heed this, and despite it remains in the same sins, then he sinks more and more deeply into sinfulness. From this the heart hardens, and feeling becomes dull in receiving impressions that awaken repentance through comforting and fearful divine truths. When passion carries one away and sin is committed, conscience rises up, threatening judgment, and compels one to repent and amend. If someone heeds it, it is well for him. If he does not heed it, he falls again into sin. But conscience rises again, only more weakly than before. If the same thing is repeated again, this voice becomes still weaker. At last it falls completely silent. The sinner sins indifferently.