Romans 1:25-32 – The Reprobate Mind

As a result, their foolish hearts were darkened and although they professed to be wise they became fools, and they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image like a corruptible man and to birds and four footed beasts and creeping things.

We saw all that in Romans 1:19-25 and this is humanity in freefall.

Pauls constantly talking in the third person here, they and them, and yet we see these conditions within ourselves and the world today.

We need to understand this so that we can recognise the ditch before we fall into it, because sin still exists even for a Christian and don’t want to go down the road of degradation that man has gone down millions of times before.

In summary, instead of accepting the truth of what they knew through what God had presented to them they didn’t want God or that truth.

Instead, they changed it into a lie and worshiped the creature more than the Creator.

They used philosophy and religions of humanism which professes loving God and loving your neighbour and human flourishing above all else.

Materialism becomes a religion. What we make from matter was made by us, but of course matter was created by God.

The idea that the physical and the material and nature, Mother nature is all in all falls under serving the creature or the creation and not the Creator.

Pantheism, or the belief that God is everything was developed.

But everything was created by God and so again serving the creature not the Creator.

Every false religion Falls by this error because what they’re doing is creating a religion or creating a god that itself is a creation.

They’re worshiping what they see around them with their natural senses.

2 Timothy 3:1-9 describes the state of a God rejecting world and it’s not pleasant. It includes being lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God.

It’s not that pleasure itself is wrong though often it can be, it’s that loving it more than God makes it our god. By devoting ourselves to it we’re serving the creature more than the Creator.

In Colossians 1:15-17 we see that Jesus Christ is God and we read,

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 

For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. 

And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist, (or are held together by Him).

The expression firstborn over all creation has nothing to do with physical birth. It’s the same meaning as in Psalm 89:27 where God speaks of King David saying,

Also I will make him My firstborn, The highest of the kings of the earth.

And notice again verse 17, Colossians 1:17,

And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist.

That wouldn’t be true if he was the first created thing.

So we see what Paul’s saying here it’s not that the material things are bad or that nature is bad. It’s what God created.

And its not that the world and all things in it aren’t connected in some way as pantheists, but what connects every and holds everything together is God the creator of all things.

So the first step in man’s decline was to reject God and His truth even though they knew God

Romans 1: 21 says they didn’t glorify Him as God, and they weren’t grateful to Him. They rejected Him. The one consistent thing through the whole history of mankind seems to be this rejection of God by all but a small remnant.

Step two to man’s decline is to declare our own wisdom above God’s.

Then step three to man’s decline is to invent our own philosophy, our own worldview our own religion and our own object of worship, that thing we’ll devote ourselves to which is what worship means, to devote ourselves to something.

This is the summary of man’s decline from Romans 1:19-23.

All of us have done and still do these things to varying degrees when we’re ignorant of the Bible and ignorant of God’s will and we don’t know what He wants.

We think within ourselves, “I don’t know what he wants, and I don’t want to read the Bible is too hard or I’m too stupid or something.”

Then we say, “Well, then God must be speaking to me some other way, through other people’s so called prophecies or through dreams or through my circumstances and we don’t realise that we’re making that our religion.

Scripture is where we can find God’s revelation. We come to the bible, and we read.

Why? Because in my sin influenced nature I’m always capable of inventing truth and I need to know the real truth, uninfluenced by man’s distortion.

I need to determine what I need to be doing do based on what God’s saying because I’ll always go off on the wrong track on my own.

But this book will get me on and keep me on the right track. I both need and want God to get me right and keep me right. So this’s what Paul’s describing here in Romans 1:20.

We’re all without excuse because this’s what man’s done from the creation. God made us to worship or to love, adore, devote ourselves to something. That’s worship.

Reprobate, God rejecting man worships according to a religion of their own making.

Look at Psalm 106:1. How powerful this is when we look at it in the context of Romans 1, where Paul says in the beginning, from the creation, they did not thank God, they didn’t glorify Him as God.

King David starts this Psalm:

Praise the LORD! That’s, of course, Hallelujah in Hebrew.

That’s what they didn’t do from the creation. So David’s at least is on the right track.

Then he says, Oh, give thanks to the LORD, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever.

That’s good and true and right worship, understanding that the Lord’s deserving of praise and thanks and Romans 1:21 people didn’t want to do that from the beginning. The first step to decline.

Psalm 106:2

Who can utter the mighty acts of the LORD? Who can declare all His praise? Who can utter the mighty acts of the Lord? Who can show forth all his praise?

The humility of David!

Some things we can’t know because God did them by his power, and we can’t ever figure out God entirely. That’s the idea here.

Psalm 106:3-5.

Blessed are those who keep justice, And he who does righteousness at all times! 

Remember me, O LORD, with the favour You have toward Your people. Oh, visit me with Your salvation, 

That I may see the benefit of Your chosen ones, That I may rejoice in the gladness of Your nation, That I may glory with Your inheritance. 

The chosen here and the “Your nation” is, of course, the nation of Israel. They’re the elect people in the Old Testament, and even some of them died as reprobates.

“Your inheritance” is the covenants and promises given to Israel by God.

Psalm 106:6-8,

We have sinned with our fathers, We have committed iniquity, We have done wickedly. 

Our fathers in Egypt did not understand Your wonders; They did not remember the multitude of Your mercies, But rebelled by the sea—the Red Sea. 

Nevertheless He saved them for His name’s sake, That He might make His mighty power known.

Now David’s writing this Psalm here praising God, and he’s admitting sin. It’s similar to how Paul’s teaching in Romans, from the beginning, we were sinners. The “fathers” here are the fathers of Israel.

God didn’t save Israel because they were better people; He saved them because He had a purpose for them. It was for His own name. He made a promise, and He had to fulfill it. He had to keep His side of the bargain.

Psalm 106:9-12

He rebuked the Red Sea also, and it dried up; So He led them through the depths, As through the wilderness. 

He saved them from the hand of him who hated them, And redeemed them from the hand of the enemy. 

The waters covered their enemies; There was not one of them left. 

Then they believed His words; They sang His praise.

What wonders and miracles of God these people experienced. They believed God’s words after He did something to save them.

But they soon started doubting God despite that.

Psalm 106:13-20 reads,

They soon forgot His works; They did not wait for His counsel, But lusted exceedingly in the wilderness, And tested God in the desert. 

And He gave them their request, But sent leanness into their soul. 

When they envied Moses in the camp, And Aaron the saint of the LORD, The earth opened up and swallowed Dathan, And covered the faction of Abiram. 

A fire was kindled in their company; The flame burned up the wicked. 

They made a calf in Horeb, And worshiped the molten image. 

Thus they changed their glory Into the image of an ox that eats grass. 

Just as Paul writes in Romans 1.

Though they knew God and knew that He’d delivered them from Egypt, they rejected and doubted that He could save them.

There’s water in front of them and an army behind them.

What do they do?

They declare their own wisdom after they forgot that He saved them. They started pursuing after their own lust and tempted God, asking, “Why have you brought us out here?” as if He didn’t think this through.

They declared their own wisdom, invented their own religion because Moses went up the mountain. What did they do? They started worshiping a calf. “We’ve got to worship something down here, and Moses is gone. He’s abandoned us.” So they worshiped this golden calf, which was just a picture of their darkened hearts.

Romans 1 says: They changed the glory of the incorruptible God into that of a corruptible man, a four-footed beast, and all that. They changed the truth of God into a lie, right? So, there it is. They changed their glory, not God’s glory. Their glory is not the image of God anymore; it’s now the image of a golden calf.

Let’s compare gods: there’s the God, creator of the universe, full of mercy, love, justice, and holiness. Then there’s a golden calf.

They declared themselves to be wise, but they became fools. They created a whole religion there, and they didn’t do it in 5 minutes.

How did they melt the gold down? How did they collect it? Look at the organization, the priests they’d require for the mediation between this golden calf and everyone else. See, it was a whole system of thought.

Psalm 106:21-28,

They forgot God their Savior, Who had done great things in Egypt, Wondrous works in the land of Ham, Awesome things by the Red Sea. 

Therefore He said that He would destroy them, Had not Moses His chosen one stood before Him in the breach, To turn away His wrath, lest He destroy them. 

Then they despised the pleasant land; They did not believe His word, But complained in their tents, And did not heed the voice of the LORD. 

Therefore He raised His hand in an oath against them, To overthrow them in the wilderness, To overthrow their descendants among the nations, And to scatter them in the lands. 

They joined themselves also to Baal of Peor, And ate sacrifices made to the dead. 

Baal of Peor, or Baal-peor, was a god worshipped by the Moabites and Midianites. The name “Peor” refers to a mountain in Moab where this god was worshipped. Baal-peor became a symbol of apostasy and unfaithfulness to God

It’s passages like this that cause people to say you can find Jesus on every page of the Bible because you could definitely read this knowing the New Testament, and say, “Look at that, Moses is a shadow of Jesus.” And that’s for sure. It’s just that Jesus isn’t taught in Psalm 106 except by shadow.

Meanwhile, you see how reprobate man creates their own religion and worships it according to their own making. And that’s just an example of it.

Modern idolatry takes other forms such as that of philosophy.

When we are worshiping the mind and what we can know and discover through philosophy, then that becomes our God and there’s many religions like that.

Now to Romans 1:26,

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

Because they changed the glory of God, because they became idolaters.

It says in verse 24 (Romans 1:24):

Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonour their bodies among themselves 

President Obama during a speech on immigration policy in Nashville on December 9, 2014, was discussing the topic of homosexuality and mentioned this passage, Romans 1:24, which he described as an obscure passage of the Bible.

He said he’d much rather follow other passages of scripture that were more loving or something.

But Romans is not an obscure passage of the Bible. Romans, as we’ve already discussed, is the very foundation of the Christian faith. Without it, we don’t have the Christian faith.

In Romans 1: 24-27, Paul is describing things that directly clash with today’s political correctness.

What he writes is not political, but people will hear this and say we’re getting political. We’re not. We’re discussing the Bible. Is what Paul’s teaching these passages right or wrong?

Well that’s obvious from the scripture, but what’s less obvious is why it’s here?

Is it just listing what’s right and wrong or is it how man fell and why men are without excuse, and how we can discern things from seeing these acts both performed and even encouraged in our society.

We just saw in Psalm 106 that God gave up on the people. Also we see Psalm 81:11 God speaking,

But My people would not heed My voice, And Israel would have none of Me. 

So I gave them over to their own stubborn heart, To walk in their own counsels. 

The king James renders it like this,

So I gave them up unto their own hearts’ lust: and they walked in their own counsels. 

Because they created their own religion, their own truth, and rejected God, He gave them over to their own darkened heart as Romans 1:21 describes.

Jesus describes the heart in Mark 7:21-23,

For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: 

All these evil things come from within, and defile the man. 

See, what feels natural is what becomes normal in this situation.

There’s the truth of God, which they reject that, and then they change His glory into something else, something more created and natural, and they worship that. As a result what feels natural and what they desire to do, they do.

And the religious idea today, according to the world’s perspective and fallen man’s perspective, is that we should do what feels natural to us.

We soon start worshiping our own standard and religion.

And so they, God gave them up to uncleanness. He says, “Well, if that’s the religion you want to serve, go on! Do it! See how that works out for you.” He gave them up to uncleanness.

Now, he says uncleanness here. Uncleanness in Israel’s law wasn’t simply that you’re counted unclean because you’re physically unclean.

You weren’t baptised in Israel’s Old Testament religion because you were dirty in your flesh, like you had mud on you or something. In fact, you had to be cleaned of your physical dirt before you could be baptised in the temple or in the mikvah. The mikvah is a ritual bath used in Judaism for achieving ritual purity.

It wasn’t the same as a shower or bath. God wasn’t communicating to Israel about the uncleanness of their outward flesh but the uncleanness of their heart and spirit.

The uncleanness is their darkened hearts, their filthy hearts, their wrong thinking.

We see this when people reject God, their hearts get defiled.

Look at Psalm 51. This is another psalm of David and he’s writing this after Nathan rebuked him, the king of Israel, for his sin. His sin of adultery and murder for which the penalty under the law of God was death.

And yet God allowed David to live, not just because He showed favouritism, to him.

See, He had already promised David that He would give him certain mercies so that his son would sit on the throne of Israel.

Usually when a king messed up like that, like Saul, for example, who didn’t do something as bad as David did, got kicked out.

But David was given a promise of sure mercy. So when he committed adultery and murder, God kept His promise and showed him mercy so that his son could be on the throne, that son being Jesus ultimately.

David prays in his guilt and again we see his heart here. The Psalms are really a testament to David’s heart. Even when he sinned, his heart was right with God, and he wanted forgiveness. He wanted to be clean. He didn’t simply create his own religion to justify his actions.

In Psalm 51:10: David says,

Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me.

Only God can do that. That’s why he’s saying it. Without God, our hearts are unclean; with God, they’re clean. Again, it’s not the physical heart we’re talking about; we’re talking about the spirit and soul.

You and I, after further revelation, know, after God’s revelation in the whole Word, how God’s accomplished this through Jesus Christ. So maybe you and I praying this prayer may be showing a little ignorance of what Christ has done. But this is the right attitude, isn’t it? “Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me.”

Psalm 51:11:

Do not cast me away from Your presence, And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.

David saw the value of God. He glorified Him as God; he knew he himself wasn’t God.

He’s asking and begging for His mercy and cleanliness in his heart to sanctify him. “And don’t leave me, please.” David’s expressing, “I don’t want to leave you; please don’t leave me.”

This is the attitude the people in Romans 1:21 should have had.

What was David thinking when he committed adultery and murder? Not about God, and His glory.

Psalm 51:12:

Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, And uphold me by Your generous Spirit. 

Here we see David asking for forgiveness. You see him in verse 11 asking, “And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.”

The Holy Spirit today, upon belief in the gospel of God’s grace, dwells in us and seals us and doesn’t leave us when we sin.

Ephesians 4:30 says,

And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 

Should we feel guilty for sin today?” Yes, because sin is bad, and we reap what we sow.

However, do we stand guilty before God? No, we stand dead before God and alive in Christ, even though we’re guilty of sin and deserving of death.

Thank God for crucifixion when Christ died for our sins, and we died in Him.

But David didn’t know any of that here. You see in the Old Testament that wasn’t how God was operating, and so he pleads with God, ” Do not cast me away from Your presence, And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me. ”

He knew sin deserved death and he was unworthy of God.

Psalm 51:15-16:

O Lord, open my lips, And my mouth shall show forth Your praise. For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it; You do not delight in burnt offering.

Again, the world thinks that’s what God wants, sacrifice.

No, that’s not what He wants. He wants a right heart as David states in the next verse, Psalm 51:17,

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, A broken and a contrite heart—These, O God, You will not despise. 

Look at Psalm 53:1:

The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, and have done abominable iniquity; There is none who does good. 

That’s why God gave us that conscience, that desire to worship and esteem and revere and to seek Him.

But the fool says there is no God. Why is that foolish? Because that’s what God has put in us to seek, and we’re rejecting it.

We’re rejecting the very thing we were created to seek. That means we have to replace it with something of our own invention. That’s why it’s a foolish thing.

Psalm 53:3

Every one of them has turned aside; They have together become corrupt; There is none who does good, No, not one. 

You see that? They’ve gone back. Gone back from what? Understanding, holiness, and become corrupt or filthy.

So, seeking God is seeking cleanliness and righteousness and truth, and rejecting God is desiring the filth and the dirt and the darkness.

The Bible lays that out clearly.

Of course the world doesn’t describe it that way.

To the world, pursuing Bible study and pursuing the Maker and Creator of things as going back to ignorance and going back to the Dark Ages, even though that’s not what made the Dark Ages dark.

It’s going back to a time of ignorance, and that’s far from true.

Let’s look at Proverbs 28:26:

He who trusts in his own heart is a fool, But whoever walks wisely will be delivered. 

So the fool has said in his heart, “There is no God,” or he might say, “There’s a God, and I’m going to trust my heart to lead me to Him.”

The Bible says a fool does that. Why are you trusting your heart?

Nowhere in Romans 1, when we talk about God’s revelation, does it talk about Him revealing it in your heart.

Who can know the heart?

In Jeremiah 17:9 Jeremiah asks,

“The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?”

Verse 10, Jeremiah 17:10 God answers with,

I, the LORD, search the heart, I test the mind, Even to give every man according to his ways, According to the fruit of his doings. 

We can cross-reference that to Mark 7:21-23, where Jesus explains,

For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness:

All these evil things come from within, and defile the man.

Jesus, being The Lord God does know the heart of man.

We see that in other places in Jesus earthly ministry as well.

Matthew 9:4, Jesus, has just healed a man in front of the Scribes who said within themselves, “This Man blasphemes!”

Knowing their thoughts, Jesus says to them,

“Why do you think evil in your hearts?”

The heart is deceitful above all things, desperately wicked. Who can know it? “I, the Lord,” Jeremiah 17:10 says. And Jesus says, “Oh, you think evil in your hearts.” He knew their hearts too.

Then in Luke 16:15: again in Jesus’ earthly ministry and this time the Pharisees were deriding Him,

And He said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God. 

Again we see the road of man’s decline, rejecting God’s truth, and declaring yourself wise.

The objection the world has to Christianity when it says it was created by men is a reasonable one, except they get it wrong.

God wrote the scripture, but there’s a lot about religion and a lot about Christianity that’s made by men, and we need to question that. Jesus says, ” but God knows your hearts. For what is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God.”

Jesus says, “God knows the heart.” Jeremiah says, “The Lord knows the heart.” And then Matthew 9, Jesus says, “I know your hearts.” That’s saying something about who He is.

But in Romans 1:24, Paul says,

“God gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts to dishonour their own bodies between themselves.”

This is not you dishonouring your own body. It’s between each other, bodies among bodies, if you like.

Sexual deviancy and sin have been there since the beginning. God made our bodies; He made them for good. He made marriage before sin entered, and He made man and woman to be compatible in every way before sin entered.

In Romans 1, we’re pretty far into the passage of man’s decline before we talk about this sexual deviancy among bodies.

We’ve already dealt with rejecting God, professing themselves to be wise, changing the glory of God, creating their own religion, justifying themselves and changing the truth of God into a lie.

Then God gives them up here to do what they desire to do according to their own thoughts about how things should be.

Christians get all upset and bothered about homosexuality. But the Bible declares it simply as a sin and the result of the rejection of God.

Before coming out was a thing in the late 80s and 90s and early 2000s, people had affairs in secret, because you didn’t want the shame of showing it publicly. Few have any qualms about that today.

Grace can save sinners, all sinners. There’re no degrees of sin. Salvation is free to all today and yet it’s in no way a justification for sinning.

It shows something about the state of a person’s mind if they think that sin is acceptable because of God’s grace.

Romans 6 talks about this.

And what about Ephesians 5:12,

For it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret. 

Notice in the next verse, Ephesians 5:13, that first word is “But.”

Is it a shame to speak of these things which are done in secret? Yes.

This is Paul, by the way, saying this. He’s the one who just said we’re saved by grace, not of works, who said we’re in the body of Christ, not by what we did or didn’t do, but by Who we believe in. Ephesians 5:13,

But all things that are exposed are made manifest by the light, for whatever makes manifest is light.

For instance, when Jesus condemned the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, their practices hadn’t seemed very evil to the disciples, but when Christ threw on them the pure light of truth, that hypocrisy was exposed, or made manifest.

We’re to “reprove” or convict the sinner but this absolutely doesn’t mean that the believer is to become a reformer, a crusader for a sinless world. That’ll never happen until way in the future, after the last judgement.

It does mean that the light of God’s Word rebukes or condemns the works of darkness, sin.

Light reveals what the darkness conceals. Darkness is not driven away by preaching at it; darkness is eradicated by the presence of light and that light is God’s Word, not the individual, still sinning, Christian’s condemnation.

We mustn’t forget the powerful 2 Timothey 3:16,

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, 

Too many Christians try to correct an unsaved person by saying, “You shouldn’t be doing that.” But that’s not the way to approach spiritual darkness.

We’re to show the light of God’s Word through the gospel of salvation.

We can’t tell people what to do and what not to do.

Our business is to turn on the light of the Word of God, and that which God calls right.

We’re not able to bring a person to believing and trusting in the salvation offered by Christ by lecturing him on what he’s doing wrong. We’re not to try to get an unsaved person to change their conduct; they simply can’t change their conduct.

And what if we succeeded? Let’s look at a scenario.

We say to a homosexual, “you’ve got to stop that behaviour because it’s against God’s will.”

The homosexual says, “Oh. OK. I didn’t realise that. I’ll stop.” And he does stop. Has he been saved through ceasing to continue in homosexual acts? No! Those acts are just one of the countless sins he commits every day, exactly like all of us.

The only way to salvation is hearing and believing the gospel of Christ, the gospel of salvation and that’s the only possible foundation for change. Not a single one of us are saved and in the Body of Christ because we stopped sinning. Neither are we sealed in our salvation by never sinning anymore. If we were, not a single soul would ever be saved, and Jesus Christ’s suffering and death on the cross to pay the wages for sin would have been futile and obscene.

However, as we’ve already said, It shows something about the state of a person’s mind if they think that sin is ok and acceptable because of God’s grace.

We’ve been saved from the penalty of sin and as we’ll see in Romans 3 we’re in

the body of Christ.

But we’re not past the presence of sin. Sin is still with us. The penalty of sin has paid for by Christ’s death and through our hearing and believing the gospel of salvation we’ve been saved from the power of sin to condemn us to eternal death.

But, on earth, not in our heavenly home where, as a Christian, we’ll soon be. On earth, the presence of sin will be a reality until after sin has been eradicated totally after the great white throne judgement in the future, after the first 1000 years of Christ’s eternal reign in the earthly kingdom. Then and only then will there be no presence of sin on earth.

Now to move on and complete Romans 1 we need to look at verses 25 to 32 in the light and the context of what we’ve already discussed at length in Romans 1:24.

So let’s now look at the whole remaining passage to understand the context.

Romans 1:24

Therefore.

Now let’s stop there for another moment. The “therefore” means as a result of or for that reason. So what about to see is the result of or the reason for something. The result or reason for what?

All that’s been shown before this verse, obviously.

Romans 1:20-23 and because of its importance to the entire study we’ll see it again.

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 

Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. 

Now we have Roman 1:24-32,

Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonour their bodies among themselves, 

Verse 25,

who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. 

Verse 26

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

Verse 27

Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due. 

Verses 28 and 29 to 31

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful;

And then verse 32

who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them. 

So, looking at this passage, we need to ask is the passage really directed at sinfulness of homosexuality? No.

It’s describing a condition that mankind has devolved into because God gave them up to uncleanness. He simply said, “Ok, since you won’t listen and learn of me. Even though I’ve shown you Who I am and my eternal power since the creation of the world, mankind. But you’ve rejected all that I’ve shown you and look at the result! You’ve become futile in your thoughts, and your foolish hearts are darkened. So now, hey, go for it! Do what you want to do!”

This condition man has fallen into isn’t just the dishonouring of their bodies. There are twenty four other things that are also a result of God giving them over to their own lusts and none of them are pretty!

You see these verses are describing the results of God giving them over to a debased mind.

We must never forget that this is a condition of the result of man’s rejection of God.

However, and it’s a wonderful however, individual humans have a remedy for this condition.

We reverse the devolving process when the light of God’s Word is switched on within us, when hear the gospel of salvation.

That gospel is the good message that God Himself in the form of Jesus Christ came into His creation as the one and only perfect, sinless man. Sinless because He circumvented the sin line of Adam by being born of a virgin, and conceived not of the seed of man but of the seed of God. He was 100% God and 100% man.

He was crucified in that perfection and sinlessness, taking the punishment, the penalty of sin that each of us was due. But because of His sinless perfection, death could not hold him and after three days in the belly of the earth He rose from the dead proving he was God. All this was according to age old prophecy in scripture.

The good news is that mankind does not need to be in this dreadful condition that we’ve seen in these passages. It’s every person’s choice. And there’s no other way no other way. As Acts 4:12 says,

Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.