Our feet are held to the ground by the earth’s gravitational pull. We appreciate that invisible pull lest we float into oblivion with no control over our steps! But the earth appreciates gravitational pull as well. It consistently orbits around the sun over the period of a year, held in its orbit by the enormous pull of the sun’s gravitational power. The same is true for the rest of the planets. Each has its place in the orderliness of the solar system due to the constant focus of dependence upon the sun.
But suppose that Earth and Saturn decided that they find the pull of the sun too restrictive? They prefer to hitch their orbit to a satellite in the solar system. Forget the sun! So they latch on to one of the orbiting NASA satellites. That satellite becomes the focus of their orbit. Though created to depend upon the pull of the sun; they rebel and follow another satellite.
Would the solar system continue with each planet in its respective orbit? Of course not! Chaos would immediately ensue!
Obviously, that’s an impossible picture in the scope of the universe. Yet it’s a very realistic picture of the moral chaos afflicting our world. The Creator is the “sun” around which each of us created in God’s image finds our orbit. But when we reject the Creator by seeking to center our orbit on another god, then chaos ensues. Every disorder, whether sexual, social, emotional, physical, or mental has its roots in abandoning the glory of God for other gods [adapted from John Piper, www.desiringgod.org, “The Other Dark Exchange: Homosexuality, Part 2, Oct 18, 1998, pp. 1-2].
That’s precisely what Paul shows us in Romans 1:18-32: denying, ignoring, rejecting, substituting, rearranging the revelation of God to suite our sinful desires, inevitably leads to disaster. But it’s not just disaster in eternity; it’s present degeneration and disaster. Paul repeats the phrase, “God gave them over” three times, showing that unrestrained sin evidences God’s judgment. Judgment begins when God abandons man to his sin. We know that there is a Day of Judgment at the consummation of ages. But what we must grapple with is the reality that judgment begins now as a foretaste of eternal judgment, showing just how bad the bad news of our sin really is.
Paul’s teaching of the good news in Christ is against the backdrop of bad news regarding our sin. Man prefers sin to worship—that’s the fruit of the fall. So, if God gives men what they want by abandoning them to their sin, will they not be happier by indulging in more sin? One might think this the case if he knows nothing of the destructive nature of sin. Sin kills and destroys. Sin cannot bring lasting happiness because only God can do that. Sin deceives and dupes. It cannot satisfy one made in the image of God. Consider with me how Paul develops this certainty of badness of bad news.
After explaining that the righteousness of God is revealed in the gospel, Paul hastens to add that God intentionally reveals Himself through evidences in creation (1:19-20). Everywhere man turns he sees something of God’s majesty, power, holiness, and sovereignty. He is without excuse when it comes to the basic knowledge of God. Yet, because he has rejected this revelation of God’s “invisible attributes…eternal power, and divine nature,” God revealed His wrath “from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” Unbelieving man possesses a three-pronged rebellion against God: he suppresses the truth in unrighteousness, he does not honor God as God, and he is not thankful to Him (1:18, 21). This leads to exchanging the glory of God for some lesser thing; ultimate glory rejected for fleeting glory.
So, does man just go free? Evidences of God’s morality abound in nature and in the human conscience. Man knows intuitively that God the Creator is not like mankind. Can man rebel against God’s self-disclosure with impunity?
Some think so, saying, “Well, God has given us a free-will, so we can pick and choose whatever we want. So why should He mind if we choose something other than Him?” Paul points out that such human wisdom is no wisdom at all—but foolishness. One can be a fool if he wants to be a fool but in the process, he will pay the price of a fool before God. And that brings us to the description that the Apostle gives concerning the judicial act of God toward the unbelieving.
Make no mistake about it. God takes decisive judicial action against unbelief. “Therefore God gave them over in the lust of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.” And again, “For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions.” The ‘therefore” [dio] draws a conclusion or explains the result of exchanging the glory of God for idols. The God who created the world and who revealed Himself in the creation is substituted for some carved image or molten image or some idolatrous ambition or some unrestrained lust. He is rejected for another god or for some re-invented version of God that suites man’s desires. So, He takes action. Though one may not notice any change in the heavens; though one may not feel anything emotionally or see anything physically, he can be assured that God is not passive when it comes to rejecting His glory for that which holds no eternal glory. God acts! And He acts decisively with judgment.
Paul is not speaking of something future tense but of present acts of judgment by God. That’s why he earlier explained that “the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men.” The present tense of the verb indicates that it is a continual revelation of wrath. It is happening now.
The phrase, “gave…over” (paradoken) is used of the religious leaders giving Jesus over to Pilate, and of Pilate giving Jesus over to crucifixion. It carries legal connotations—to give over or hand over due to some legal reason. It can be used in other ways but the context dictates the legal implications. What does this mean? First, it means that God removes the restraints that He has established in the conscience and in society. There are different levels of restraint that we all experience. We are restrained from sin by our parents and their rules. As we are under their authority as children we are inclined to be held in check when tempted to do some unrestrained act. Beyond that, we find restraint in the laws of society. As long as we respect that God-ordained authority, laws keep many sinful impulses in check. But there are many things that are sinful that do not come under the category of a stated law. Our conscience, in such cases, restrains our behavior. Yet even more so, the unseen power of God restrains the sinfulness in humanity—at least to a point. But when God “gave them over” He loosed the restraints with sin.
Secondly, God abandons the moral care of those pursuing idolatry. As we’ve noted, God’s sun shines on the just and the unjust (Matt. 5:45). His common grace is shown even to the defiant and recalcitrant. The Psalmist exclaimed, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord!” (Ps. 33:12) It is that recognition that God intervenes for such people. But what happens when He consciously abandons the moral care of a people? They are given over to their sin.
Third, this action is judicial. “God judges sin by sin” [Ligon Duncan, www.fpcjackson.org, “God Gave Them Over,” part 2, p. 5]. Judgment takes place by giving the sinner over to his sin; stuffing him with his lusts. Picture a child with a plate of cookies before him. He eats one and then another and another, and unless a parent restrains him, he will eat until he can eat no more—and then eat a bit more! Then he loses everything! Likewise, God gives man over to his sin so that he stuffs himself with the sin until it sickens him and destroys him. Though he wants more sin he never finds satisfaction in it.
“God gave them over.” It is personal. God doesn’t just cast a blanket of judgment upon humanity in general but focuses the aim of His wrath upon individuals. Now, quite obviously, this affects the rest of society. None of us is an island separated from the mainland. So, even those not involved in the same wretched sins will be affected by the dust of judgment on them. Paul says that in this judgment, “their bodies would be dishonored among them.” “God hands over the sinner to the terrible cycle of ever-increasing sin” [Doug Moo, NICNT: Romans, 111]. In the wake of such magnified uncleanness, society feels the weight. For believers, this serves only to purify us and to help us cast our dependence upon the Lord. But for society in general, it brings degeneration.
Do we need to look far to see this? If you could strip the commercials with sexual innuendos from the airwaves, there would be very few commercials to watch! Advertisers seem to reveal more and more of the baseness of humanity in order to appeal to their products. The problem is that we become inoculated to it; so they become more explicit. That is judgment on society: for Christians, it serves to show our weakness and give us cause to die to self; for unbelievers, it satiates with more and more sin.
One of the areas affecting our society is the rise of homosexuality and its acceptance as a legitimate lifestyle. Recently, one of the leading candidates for president stated that he would use the position of President as a “bully pulpit to urge states to treat same-sex couples with full equality in their family and adoption laws” [www.bpnews.net, 2/28/08]. He further advocated the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act that affirms heterosexual marriage. We would not have thought of such a stance forty years ago.
But what happens when society ignores the foundation of society in the family as ordained by God? Kairos Journal offered this observation about the degenerating effects of homosexuality: “As psychiatrist and physician Jeffrey Satinover has demonstrated, “What we call the ‘gay lifestyle’ is in large measure a way of life constructed around unconstrained sexuality.” Wherever homosexuality flourishes and the cultural limits of sexuality are broken, not even children are safe from the effects.” [www.kairosjournal.org, quoting Jeffrey Satinover, Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1996), 61]. This was illustrated recently by the news out of Colorado of an eight-year old boy that wanted to cross-dress because he felt more like a girl than a boy. His parents petitioned the local school board to allow him to dress trans-gender. That this happens shows how judgment has fallen on our nation so that it tolerates reprehensible actions even in children.
Why does God give them over? “For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.” Even in the midst of such horrid description of sin, Paul is gripped by the majesty of God. That God would show mercy to such creatures—just like you and me—gives pause to stop and worship: the Creator is blessed forever. So be it! Even if men reject Him and spurn Him and exchange His revelation for the worship of another creature, God is unchanging; He is blessed forever!
To exchange the truth of God for a lie implies that men deny that God is God (that’s the “truth” implied, that God is revealed as God) and instead, since God is not God in their estimation, then it doesn’t matter who or what I worship as long as I worship something (that’s “the lie” as the Greek puts it).
To fail to worship God is to give oneself to worshiping another. We are religious creatures. You are worshiping and serving something if you are not worshiping and serving God. When a vacuum is created by the absence of worshiping God, then it immediately sucks something else into your life that is exchanged for the truth of God. Whether it is an image or a person or a concept or a philosophy or another religion, it is a costly “lie,” that hands you over to the destructiveness of your sin.
This is why you need the gospel! Christ alone through His death to pay the penalty of your sin, and through His resurrection life to raise you from deadness to walk in newness of life, can deliver you from idolatry so that you might live to the glory of God.
God’s judicial action does not wait until the Day of Judgment. It is a present reality. Living in a fallen world means that the effects of the fall remain until God puts every enemy under Christ’s feet (Heb. 10:13). The judgment in those effects for the Christian has already fallen on Christ. God does not judge us double for our sin. Christ’s death is sufficient because He is altogether sufficient to satisfy eternal justice. Yet, we still feel the brush of judgment as it falls around us. But it serves to purify us and teach us more of God’s all-sufficient grace rather than to fill us with hopelessness and despair. (This was a big part of the message in the book of Revelation).
But that is not the case for those who have exchanged the truth of God for a lie. Paul narrows his argument from the more general sexual impurity of verse 24 to the particular sins under the category of homosexuality. These are not the only sins that God judges. The next paragraph identifies twenty-one more that are not of a sexual nature. So why does he single out this type of sexual sin? I believe it is because this kind of sin gives the clearest evidence of a society that has (1) cast aside moral restrain, (2) abandoned the creation design for man and woman in marriage, (3) destroyed its moral fiber, and (4) condones every type of immoral behavior, including abortion and infanticide.
Paul saw it happening in the Greek and Roman cultures. Though laws existed in Rome to preserve marriage, it did not stop the practice of concubinage or homosexuality. The Greek culture notoriously accepted homosexuality as the pattern of life. Even Greek soldiers were encouraged to bond as a unit through homosexuality within the unit. Romans complained about the Greek’s corrupting influence but engaged in similar practices nonetheless—even though blaming it on the Greeks. By the way, where are those two empires today? Their downward slide into the abyss of sin, rebelling against the Creator, led to their destruction.
So common was the practice that some, maybe even many, of the believers in the strong Greek and Roman influenced communities were made up of those who had practiced adultery and homosexuality. Notice how Paul pointed this out in his epistle to the Corinthians (6:9-11).
Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.
The term used in verse 24, “impurity,” has to do with sexual uncleanness or sexual aberration. It’s not clearly defined other than that it constitutes lusts (uncontrolled desires) and that it is dishonoring to the body in the way God created and purposed us. Paul’s point is that when God gives a sinner over to this kind of sin, it further leads to an ongoing shamefulness and dishonor.
Why does he begin with sexual sin rather than with murder or gossip which he addresses later? I think it is because sexual sin breaks the covenant relationship that should serve as a mirror to the soul for the greater covenant faithfulness with the Lord. Ephesians 5 shows how the relationship between Christ and His Church is mirrored in the covenant faithfulness between a husband and his wife. To violate this covenant by any kind of sexual impurity is to distort and defame the meaning of covenant relations. It consequently affects the way that we look at the covenant relationship with the Lord. What should have been a picture to encourage us becomes a broken, shattered mess.
Sexual impurity degrades God’s gift of sexual intimacy between a husband and his wife. It cheapens the dignity of the one engaged outside the marital covenant as well as the one betrayed. Even if he or she is single and engages in sexual impurity, it destroys the dignity of one made in God’s image. It dulls the sensitivities to purity, honor, trustworthiness, truth, and dependability. Life becomes a big lie. It distorts the kind of covenant intimacy found only in the fidelity of marriage. What God intended for supreme pleasure and enjoyment in marriage becomes enslaving, dirty, and destructive. Sexual impurity destroys family trust, unity, and honor.
Here’s the point: idolatry in any fashion, can lead to sexual impurity as the substitute for God-honoring worship. When that brings on God’s judgment against it, the sin mounts so that the sinner is satiated with sexual impurity and ultimately, their bodies are dishonored or treated shamefully. And it’s not a quiet dishonoring: it is “among them.” That is a curious preposition unless it means some type of corporate dishonoring.
The further denigration that comes in sexual impurity is shown by lesbian and homosexual practices. Paul explains this in verses 26-27. They exchanged the glory of God for some corruptible image, and that further leads to “their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural.” Natural function implies the distinct way that God made a woman to correspond sexually to her husband. She does not correspond to another woman. Similar language is used for men; in this case abandoning the natural function of the woman and burning with consuming passions toward other men. That is “unnatural” or against nature. Very simply, Paul explains that there was never in God’s purpose in creating male and female even a hint of homosexual practice to take place.
Some argue that their homosexual practice is natural for them. But this is an argument that begins with experience or feeling rather than beginning with Scripture. You don’t start building the building on the second floor but on the foundation. The biblical ordinance of one woman and one man in marital fidelity is the foundation. “For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). To branch off from this or to distort this in any way wrecks those involved. One need only take a look at every occasion in the Old Testament where homosexuality is practiced. God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah for their widespread practice of homosexuality (Gen. 19). Israel, though certainly lacking godliness at this point in their history, recognized the wickedness of the Gibeonite homosexual practice. They consequently destroyed the Gibeonites (Judges 19-21). God called homosexuality “an abomination” and “a detestable act” (Lev. 18:22; 20:13). He further condemns it and calls it contrary to the gospel in 1 Tim. 1:8-11.
The language is striking: “the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts.” To abandon or to leave off implies bailing out or roughly cutting off what God intended for blessing. It is a spiteful abandonment, choosing what God will never honor. Burning in desire conveys the idea of degrading passions or disgraceful passions; losing control over one’s inward passions and giving them over to that which will always be disgraceful.
The inevitable consequence is stated: “men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.” The word “due” implies a necessity; it has to be done because it is morally reprehensible and dishonoring to God. The penalty affects the person. Any study of the homosexual community shows a higher rate of suicide, lower tolerance to disease and sickness, a shorter life-span by 25-30 years, the likelihood of infections and debilitating and deadly diseases, and the decreased likelihood of a stable, nurturing, family life [cf. Ligon Duncan, ibid. p. 6]. Is that worth the risk to pursue such a lifestyle? Yet, Paul’s point was not to campaign against homosexual practice but rather to demonstrate that suppressing the truth of God in unrighteousness leads to this type of sin and this time of judgment.
This doesn’t mean that homosexuals have no hope. Thank God, many have been delivered from this sinful practice as well as other perverse practices. Remember that some in the church community at Corinth were former effeminates and homosexuals. They were delivered by Christ. So there is hope through Christ to be delivered from worshiping and serving the creature so that one might worship and serve the Creator. This also doesn’t mean that the Christian community must shun homosexuals. More than any other, we must reach out to them with the compassion of Christ. Probably, most all of us have friends that are homosexuals. Let us treat them with the love and compassion of our Lord. Let us point them to Christ who alone can liberate them from bondage into the freedom of being a child of God.
But this warning does serve as a reminder of eternal judgment. The temporal physical, emotional, and mental effects of this idolatrous sin cannot compare with the eternal judgment that awaits those who have rejected the truth of God for a lie. So, the warning is an act of divine mercy. The present judgment portends eternal judgment. That’s bad news! That’s very bad news! But the good news is that Jesus Christ came to save sinners. Sexual impurity and homosexuality and any of its wide-ranging practices are not unforgivable. The power of the cross of Christ sets us free from the bondage of sin and liberates us to worship and serve the Creator as our Eternal Father. God has revealed His wrath (1:18) but more importantly for each of us, He has revealed His righteousness in the gospel of His Son (1:17).
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