Some people have strange value systems; some have values that are downright perverted.  The Apostle Paul identifies a group of such people in his letter to the believers at Rome.  He describes them, as people who, through persisting in two attitudes, not only invite God’s judgment but routinely add to the judgment that awaits them when they stand before God at the Great White Throne Judgment.   The AV translates Paul’s words as follows:  “But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God” (Rom. 2:5).

             Attitude 1:  “hardness.”  God is by nature tenderhearted.  Peter describes Him as “longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (II Pet. 3:9).  Many are the means He uses to soften the hearts of rebellious sinners, including unmerited goodness and patience (Rom. 2:4) in many cases, and in others, severe difficulties (Lk. 23:39-43).  Some who do not yield to the invitations of the former graciously succumb to the provocations of the latter.  The vast majority, however, continue in their hardhearted ways, refusing to be moved by the mercy of God and His clearly manifested love.  There is no excuse for man to reject the gracious salvation that God has provided, but the reason for it may be found in his proud, rebellious nature.  In our text, God gives the hardhearted a gracious warning of what lies at the end of such an attitude.

             Attitude 2:  “impenitent heart.”  The certain end for sinners is judgment at the hand of a holy God who exercises righteous wrath against sin.  The only remedy against such an end is a penitent heart”—a faith that works repentance, or “godly sorrow.”  There is no hope for a sinner who, when confronted with his sin, refuses to turn from that sin with its associated death to a gracious God who is willing and “able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him” (Heb. 7:25).  No sin but unbelief prevents a sinner from being saved and delivered.  Furthermore, God extracts no payment from the sinner in order to deliver him from his sin:  He billed that expense to the account of Christ, who has paid the debt “to the uttermost farthing” through His vicarious suffering and sacrificial death.  In light of such great indebtedness and so gracious a deliverance, the unrepentant are truly thankless rebels.

             Fruit of those attitudes:  a treasuring up of wrath.  Paul makes the end for the sinner who persists in his hardness and impenitence intensely personal:  a storing up of wrath “unto thyself.”  God totes up His various mercies and graces to sinners and keeps an account of the refusals and rejections committed by those who rebel against Him.  Awful is the pronouncement by Paul that God “will render to every man according to his deed . . . Unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, [There will be] tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil” (vv. 6, 8, 9).  Paul assures us that there will be no exception to such judgment because “there is no respect of persons with God” (v. 11).

             Because the Spirit of God is also careful to encourage us that those who believe unto righteousness and through faith obey the Word will assuredly receive blessing (vv. 6, 7, 10, 11), we may be certain of treasured up blessings as well.  But the reality is that every person is treasuring up either the unmerited blessings of the grace of God or the well-deserved judgment of the wrath of God.  Sinner, heed His loving warning.