The Race To Ruin Pt. 2 (Rom. 1:26-32)

Romans 1:26 NKJV

For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature.

The Race To Ruin Pt. 2

Romans 1:26-32

Man started out intelligent, but having held down God’s truth and refusing to acknowledge God’s glory, man was left without a god; and man is so constituted that he must worship something, so man became spiritually ignorant.

If he will not worship the true God, he will worship a false god, even if he has to manufacture it himself! This fact about man accounts for his propensity to idolatry.

Man exchanged the glory of the true God for substitute gods that he himself made. He exchanged glory for shame, incorruption for corruption, truth for lies.

Note that first on the list of false gods is man. This fulfilled Satan’s purpose when he told Eve, “Ye shall be as God!” (Gen. 3:5, nasb) “Glory to man in the highest!”

Satan encouraged man to say. Instead of man being made in God’s image, man made gods in his own image—and then descended so low as to worship birds, beasts, and bugs!1

1 Warren W. Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996), 518–519.

We will continue to look at the last steps man takes on his way to ruin:

4 Immorality: vs. 24-28

Again it is stated that “God gave them over” (cf. v. 24). God’s anger against sin leads him to withdraw from the sinner who willfully continues in wickedness.

The penalty for sin is sin itself with all its inevitable consequences. Because people failed to glorify God and give him thanks, God gave them over “to sexual impurity” (v. 24).

Because they exchanged the glory of God for a lie, he gave them over to the “passions that bring dishonor” (v. 26).

“The lie” is that man is his own god, and he should worship and serve himself and not the Creator. It was “the lie” Satan used in the Garden to lead Eve into sin: “Ye shall be as God!”

Satan has always wanted the worship that belongs only to God (Isa. 14:12–15; Matt. 4:8–10); and in idolatry, he receives that worship (1 Cor. 10:19–21).

Romans 1:26–27 contains the clearest teaching in the New Testament on homosexuality. In this section Paul described the practice as “shameful,” “unnatural,” “indecent,” and as a “perversion.”

By contrast, the Greco-Roman society of Paul’s day tolerated homosexuality with considerable ease. Among some advocates it was viewed as superior to heterosexuality.

Barclay notes that “fourteen out of the first fifteen Roman Emperors were homosexuals.”31

Edward Gibbon wrote a collection of books on the “Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire” in which he listed the leading causes of its fall.

1 Sexual Immorality

2 Brutal forms of entertainment

3 Public spending

4 Decline of religion

In Jewish culture, however, it was regarded as an abomination. Barrett comments that “no feature of pagan society filled the Jew with greater loathing than the toleration, or rather admiration, of homosexual practices.”

The Old Testament specifically prohibits homosexuality. Leviticus 18:22 says, “Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.” The penalty for both participants was death (Lev 20:13).

In 1 Cor 6:9–10 Paul specifically said that “homosexual offenders” will not “inherit the kingdom of God.”

Against this background it is difficult to understand why some contemporary teachers—even some who claim to be biblical—make allowance for a practice clearly condemned in both the Old and the New Testaments.35

Achtemeier writes that the kind of life Paul described in vv. 26–27 “cannot be understood as an alternative life-style, somehow acceptable to God”

but rather as “a sign of one of the forms God’s wrath takes when he allows us free reign to continue in our abuse of creation and in our abuse of one another as creatures.”1

1 Robert H. Mounce, Romans, vol. 27, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1995), 82–83.

1:26

“Affections” is pathēma (παθημα), “an affection, a passion.” “Vile” is atimia (ἀτιμια), “dishonor, ignominy, disgrace.” The Greek word for “honor,” timē (τιμη), comes from tiō (τιω), the verbal form, “to estimate, honor.”

Thus to honor someone is to evaluate the worth of that person and to treat him with the consideration, respect, and love due his character and position.

To dishonor a person is to either put an incorrect appraisal upon his worth and treat him accordingly, or, having properly evaluated his character, to refuse to treat him with the respect and deference which is his due.

The passions controlling these of whom Paul is speaking caused them to put an incorrect estimate upon the sacredness, dignity, and purity of the physical body and thus to use it in a way which dishonored it.1

1 Kenneth S. Wuest, Wuest’s Word Studies from the Greek New Testament: For the English Reader, vol. 2 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 35.

1:27

“Burned” is ekkaiō (ἐκκαιω), “to burn out.” Vincent comments. “The terms are terrible in their intensity. Literally, ‘burned out.’

The preposition indicates the rage of lust.” Robertson defines, “to inflame with lust.” The word ek (ἐκ) prefixed to the verb, intensifies its meaning.

Their lust was satiated. It was an all-out endeavor to satisfy their totally-depraved natures.

“Unseemly” is aschēmosunē (ἀσχημοσυνη), “want of form, disfigurement, deformed, one’s nakedness, shame.”

The word refers here to that which is unseemly in that it is immodest, shameful.

“Recompence” is antimisthian (ἀντιμισθιαν) “a reward given in compensation, requital, recompense.”

The word here refers to that natural result of their sin which pays them back for what they have done, as a person says who contemplates doing something wrong, “I suppose I shall pay for this.”

1:28

Truth rejected leaves its mark. One’s ability to think clearly about moral issues is undermined. Turning from the light of revelation disqualifies a person to think correctly about the issues of life.

Secular education, which rules out the hand of God in history, is seriously flawed because it attempts to understand the whole without acknowledging the most significant part.

God gave these people over to a reprobate mind, since they came to the conclusion that God was not necessary as one of life’s basic presuppositions.

As a result they “do what ought not to be done.” This expression refers not only to the debased sexual activity outlined in vv. 24–28 but also to the sins listed. (cf. vv. 29–32) as they have been abandoned to their own sinful natures1

1 Robert H. Mounce, Romans, vol. 27, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1995), 84.

To act ‘against nature’ means to violate the order which God has established, whereas to act ‘according to nature’ means to behave ‘in accordance with the intention of the Creator’. Moreover, the intention of the Creator means his original intention.

What this was Genesis tells us and Jesus confirmed: ‘At the beginning the Creator “made them male and female”, and said, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” So they are no longer two, but one.’

Then Jesus added his personal endorsement and deduction: ‘Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.’36

In other words, God created humankind male and female; God instituted marriage as a heterosexual union; and what God has thus united, we have no liberty to separate.

This threefold action of God established that the only context which he intends for the ‘one flesh’ experience is heterosexual monogamy, and that a homosexual partnership

(however loving and committed it may claim to be) is ‘against nature’ and can never be regarded as a legitimate alternative to marriage.1

1 John R. W. Stott, The Message of Romans: God’s Good News for the World, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 78.

5 Indulgence (vs. 29-31)

When man began to feel the tragic consequences of his sins, you would think he would repent and seek God; but just the opposite was true.

Because he was abandoned by God, he could only become worse. Man did not even want to retain God in his knowledge!

So, “God gave them over” this time to a “depraved mind” (Rom. 1:28, nasb), which means a mind that cannot form right judgments.

They now abandoned themselves to sin. Paul names twenty-four specific sins, all of which are with us today. (For other lists, see Mark 7:20–23; Gal. 5:19–21; 1 Tim. 1:9–10; and 2 Tim. 3:2–5.)1

1 Warren W. Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996), 519.

Words that describe shameful human character

Words that describe shameful human conduct

Words that describe shameful human conversation

Words that describe shameful human concepts

Words that describe shameful human companionship

6 Impenitence (vs. 32)

Verse 32 is a concluding summary of the human perversity Paul has been describing. First, they know. Yet again he begins with the knowledge possessed by the people he is depicting.

It is not now God’s truth that they know, however, but God’s righteous decree, namely that those who do such things deserve death.

As he will write later, ‘the wages of sin is death’ (6:23). And they know it. Their conscience condemns them.

Secondly, they nevertheless disregard their knowledge.

They not only continue to do these very things, which they know deserve death, but (which is worse) they actively encourage others to do the same, and so flagrantly approve the evil behaviour of which God has expressed his disapproval.1

1 John R. W. Stott, The Message of Romans: God’s Good News for the World, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 79.