Romans 1:24-32 (NIV)
Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator–who is forever praised. Amen.
Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
Paul here is detailing his statement in verse 18 that God’s wrath is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people. As was seen in verses 18-23, rejection of God leads initially to depravity of religion, with men worshiping created things rather than the creator, and inventing gods of their own, made in their own image, instead of serving the true God who made us in His image.
Now Paul shows the next stages in the process of this growing depravity. One of the areas that this shows up in is in the area of sexuality. In the beginning, God created sexuality to create and solidify the “one flesh” bond between the man and the woman, joining back together that which had once been united in the one man, but which was now separated into man and woman (Genesis 2:20-25). God also created sexuality as the means to create more people in whom was the breath of life, an eternal spirit, and the image of God.
But when mankind rejects God, an early sign of that rejection and the resultant depravity is the rejection of God’s purposes in sexual expression. Sexuality thus becomes an end in itself and is quickly warped and twisted out of its proper shape in a quest for more varied and exciting experiences and expressions.
Soon even these new expressions quickly lose their punch, causing people to continue to push the envelope, seeking even “edgier” sexual expressions. But as they get farther and farther from God and His intentions for sexuality, their growing depravity eats away at their souls, and puts an even greater gulf between them and the God whose creation they are twisting and distorting.
Paul details the next step in the decline of mankind with a horrendous but not exhaustive list of sinful practices, attitudes and habits. As people’s minds and hearts fall further from the experiential knowledge of God and His ways, they begin to embrace ways of thinking and acting that are diametrically opposite His character and His requirements. And, as Paul points out, in the end they not only do those dreadful things, but they embrace them as norms, glorify them in their entertainments, engraining them into the very fabric of their society, and thus bring God’s judgment on them, individually and on the whole society.
Father, it is easy for us to get so caught up in detailing these individual sinful symptoms that we miss the flow of the individual and societal decline that opens the door to these signs of increasing depravity. In reality, as Paul clearly explains, it is our initially turning away from You and Your righteous commands that darkens our hearts and starts us moving along the continuum into ever-increasing darkness and depravity, ultimately condemning ourselves and our whole society, and drawing down Your wrath on ourselves. As always, the only corrective is repentance, hopefully before Your wrath is fully unleashed, so that we can be restored to light, to reason, to sanity, and to Your favor. It is easy to see that our society is currently far down in this process, and that many of these symptoms are even appearing among people who claim to belong to You! Help us to see the light, repent, and be saved, Lord. Amen.