[Editor’s Note: This is part of a devotional series through the book of Romans.]
Romans 2:5
But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.
Paul presents us with a most dreadful reality: “the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.” We love to think of future days that will bring us joy and gladness like birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, etc. But what Paul points us to in this verse is not like those days. The day of wrath, as the apostle warns, is full of “wrath and fury” (Romans 2:8). And it’s coming.
In a most profound sense, the gospel is salvation from wrath. Consider these other arresting statements from the apostle Paul:
1 Thessalonians 1:9–10: “For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.” (cf., 1 Thessalonians 5:9: “For God has not destined us for wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ”).
Romans 5:9: “Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.”
Colossians 3:5–6: “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming.”
This is one significant reason why pastors care deeply about conversions. Whether in the pulpit, teaching, counseling, one-on-one discipleship, etc. a pastor sees his first and primary work as ensuring that the people he’s ministering to are actually saved. The pastor, of all people, knows that it’s “a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31).
In his classic work The Reformed Pastor, Richard Baxter exhorted the pastors of his day to not neglect the work of conversion given what is at stake: “The work of conversion is the first and great thing we must drive at; after this we must labour with all our might. Alas! the misery of the unconverted is so great, that it calleth loudest to us for compassion.”1
Knowing that the day of wrath is coming, the pastor’s heart cry is the echo of 2 Corinthians 6:1–2, “Working together with him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain. For he says, ‘In a favorable time I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you.’ Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.”
Baxter, The Reformed Pastor, 94.