Therefore God also gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to uncleanness, that their bodies should be dishonored among themselves;
Parallel Translations
-
Therefore God also gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to uncleanness, that their bodies should be dishonored among themselves;
-
Wherfore god lykewyse gave the vp vnto their hertes lustes vnto vnclennes to defyle their awne boddyes bitwene them selves:
-
Wherefore also God gaue them vp to their hearts lusts, vnto vncleannesse, to defile their owne bodies betweene themselues:
Cross-references (15)
Passages linked to Romans 1:24 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Psalms 81:11-12 But my people didn’t listen to my voice. Israel desired none of me. So I let them go after the stubbornness of their hearts, that they might walk in their own counsels.
- Acts 7:42 But God turned, and gave them up to serve the army of the sky, as it is written in the book of the prophets, ‘Did you offer to me slain animals and sacrifices forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel?
- Matthew 15:14 Leave them alone. They are blind guides of the blind. If the blind guide the blind, both will fall into a pit.”
- Acts 14:16 who in the generations gone by allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways.
- 2 Thessalonians 2:10-12 and with all deception of wickedness for those who are being lost, because they didn’t receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. Because of this, God sends them a working of error, that they should believe a lie; that they all might be judged who didn’t believe the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
- Ephesians 4:18-19 being darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their hearts. They, having become callous, gave themselves up to lust, to work all uncleanness with greediness.
- Romans 1:26-28 For this reason, God gave them up to vile passions. For their women changed the natural function into that which is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural function of the woman, burned in their lust toward one another, men doing what is inappropriate with men, and receiving in themselves the due penalty of their error. Even as they refused to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting;
- Leviticus 18:22 “ ‘You shall not lie with a man as with a woman. That is detestable.
- 1 Corinthians 6:13 “Foods for the belly, and the belly for foods,” but God will bring to nothing both it and them. But the body is not for sexual immorality, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body.
- 1 Corinthians 6:18 Flee sexual immorality! “Every sin that a man does is outside the body,” but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body.
- 1 Thessalonians 4:4 that each one of you know how to control his own body in sanctification and honor,
- Acts 17:29-30 Being then the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold, or silver, or stone, engraved by art and design of man. The times of ignorance therefore God overlooked. But now he commands that all people everywhere should repent,
- Hosea 4:17-18 Ephraim is joined to idols. Leave him alone! Their drink has become sour. They play the prostitute continually. Her rulers dearly love their shameful way.
- Romans 6:12 Therefore don’t let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts.
- 2 Timothy 2:20-22 Now in a large house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of clay. Some are for honor, and some for dishonor. If anyone therefore purges himself from these, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified, and suitable for the master’s use, prepared for every good work. Flee from youthful lusts; but pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (23 sources)
Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.
Private notes
Saved on this device only — never synced or sent anywhere.
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain 24. God therefore gave them up, etc. As impiety…
24. God therefore gave them up, etc. As impiety is a hidden evil, lest they should still find an evasion, he shows, by a more palpable demonstration, that, they cannot escape, but must be held fast by a just condemnation, since such fruits have followed this impiety as cannot be viewed otherwise than manifest evidences of the Lord’s wrath. As the Lord’s wrath is always just, it follows, that what has exposed them to condemnation, must have preceded it. By these evidences then he now proves the apostasy and defection of men: for the Lord indeed does so punish those, who alienate themselves from his goodness, that he casts them headlong into various courses which lead to perdition and ruin. And by comparing the vices, of which they were guilty, with the impiety, of which he had before accused them, he shows that they suffered punishment through the just judgment of God: for since nothing is dearer to us than our own honor, it is extreme blindness, when we fear not to bring disgrace on ourselves; and it is the most suitable punishment for a reproach done to the Divine Majesty. This is the very thing which he treats of to the end of the chapter; but he handles it in various ways, for the subject required ample illustration.
What then, in short, he proves to us is this, — that the ingratitude of men to God is incapable of being excused; for it is manifest, by unequivocal evidences, that the wrath of God rages against them: they would have never rolled themselves in lusts so filthy, after the manner of beasts, had not the majesty of God been provoked and incensed against them. Since, then, the worst abominations abounded everywhere, he concludes that there existed among them evidences of divine vengeance. Now, as this never rages without reason, or unjustly, but ever keeps within the limits of what is right, he intimates that it hence appears that perdition, not less certain than just, impended over all.
Read full note →
As to the manner in which God gives up or delivers men to wickedness, it is by no means necessary in this place to discuss a question so intricate, (longam — tedious.) It is indeed certain, that he not only permits men to fall into sin, by allowing them to do so, and by conniving at them; but that he also, by his equitable judgment, so arranges things, that they are led and carried into such madness by their own lusts, as well as by the devil. He therefore adopts the word, give up, according to the constant usage of Scripture; which word they forcibly wrest, who think that we are led into sin only by the permission of God: for as Satan is the minister of God’s wrath, and as it were the executioner, so he is armed against us, not through the connivance, but by the command of his judge. God, however, is not on this account cruel, nor are we innocent, inasmuch as Paul plainly shows, that we are not delivered up into his power, except when we deserve such a punishment. Only we must make this exception, that the cause of sin is not from God, the roots of which ever abide in the sinner himself; for this must be true,
“Thine is perdition, O Israel; in me only is thy help.” (Hosea 13:9)
By connecting the desires or lusts of man’s heart with uncleanness, he indirectly intimates what sort of progeny our heart generates, when left to itself. The expression, among themselves, is not without its force; for it significantly expresses how deep and indelible are the marks of infamy imprinted on our bodies.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain As a just judge.
As a just judge.
The unrighteousness of men he setteth forth first, in this, that even against nature following their lusts, they defiled themselves one with another, by the just judgment of God.
Read full note →
The contempt of religion, is the fountain of all mischief.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain 24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness…
24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:
Ver. 24. Gave them up to uncleanness] Aristotle confesseth the disability of moral knowledge to rectify the intemperance of nature; and made it good in his practice; for he used a common strumpet to satisfy his lust. Socrates is said to have had his catamite {a} inter Socraticos, & c. (Juvenal.)
Read full note →
{a} A boy kept for unnatural purposes. ŒD
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain Wherefore; their impiety was the cause of what followed:…
Wherefore; their impiety was the cause of what followed: this is repeated again, that it may be the better observed. The contempt of God and of religion is the cause of all wickedness.
God also gave them up; this phrase is thrice used in this context, viz. Rom 1:24,26,28; it seems to be taken out of Psa 81:12. Some think his giving them up, is only’ his withdrawing his grace from them, and permitting them to sin; but there seems to be more in it than a bare subtraction or permission. He did not only leave them to themselves, but, in a judicial way, he put then, into the hands of Satan, and of their own lusts; as it is said, Psa 69:27, he added iniquity to their iniquity, making the latter iniquity a punishment of the former.
Read full note →
Between themselves; some read it, in themselves, and some read it, one among another; so the same word is rendered, Eph 4:32; Col 3:13. The apostle here speaks more generally of all kinds of pollution and uncleanness that was committed by them, whether natural or unnatural.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain Observe here, 1. Another infamous sin charged upon the…
Observe here, 1. Another infamous sin charged upon the Heathens; namely, the sin of uncleanness; yea, base, unnatural uncleanness, and pollutions of the most odious kinds.
Learn thence, That idolatry and uncleanness often go together. Solomon’s uncleanness led him to idolatry, and his idolatry increased his uncleanness. The city of Rome at this day, which is a grove of idols, the chief seat of idolatry, is next to Sodom for uncleanness; witness their allowing of stews by public authority.
Read full note →
Learn, 2. That all kinds and degrees of pollutions both natural and unnatural, are to be detested and abhorred, as dishonouring the body. Our bodies are Christ’s members, the Holy Ghost’s temples; let us therefore glorify God with our bodies on earth, which shall be subjects capable of glory with himself in heaven.
Observe, 2. God’s judiciary tradition of these idolatrous Heathens to the sin of uncleanness. Wherefore God gave them up to uncleanness. Almighty God often doth, and always righteously may, punish sin with sin: God punished the idolatry of the Heathens here, by delivering them up to vile affections, to uncleanness, and unnatural lusts.
But how is this consistent with God’s holiness and hatred of sin? Thus, God neither infuses sin into their hearts, nor excites to sin in their lives, but leaves sinners to themselves, to act without restraint, according to the inclination of their own lusts and corruptions: And also, gives them up to Satan, that unclean spirit, who will not fail to provoke them to such uncleanness as he knows their inclinations stand ready to comply with.
Lord, keep back thy servants from sinning against the light of nature, against the light of scripture, lest we be judicially darkened, and given up to a sottish and injudicious mind, to hardness of heart, and the vilest of affections.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness,.... Not…
Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness,.... Not by putting any into them, but by leaving them to the pollution of their nature; by withdrawing his providential restraints from them, and by giving them up to judicial hardness:
through the lusts of their own hearts. The heart of man is the source of all wickedness; the lusts that dwell there are many, and these tend to uncleanness of one sort or another: by it here is meant particularly bodily uncleanness, since it is said they were given up
Read full note →
to dishonour their own bodies between themselves; either alone, or with others; so that as they changed the glory of God, and dishonoured him, he left them to dishonour themselves by doing these things which were reproachful and scandalous to human nature.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain Wherefore - One punishment of sin is from the…
Wherefore - One punishment of sin is from the very nature of it, as ver. 27; another, as here, is from vindictive justice. Uncleanness - Ungodliness and uncleanness are frequently joined, 1 Thess. iv, 5 as are the knowledge of God and purity. God gave them up - By withdrawing his restraining grace.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 24. God-gave them up, c.] They had filled…
Verse 24. God-gave them up, c.] They had filled up the measure of their iniquities, and God, by permitting them to plunge into all manner of irregularities, thus, by one species of sin, inflicted punishment on another.
Dishonour their own bodies] Probably alluding here to what is more openly expressed, Ro 1:26-27.
Read full note →
Between themselves] ενεαυτοις, Of themselves, of their own free accord none inciting, none impelling.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Rom 1:24-25. Wherefore God gave them up — As…
Rom 1:24-25. Wherefore God gave them up — As a punishment of this most unreasonable and scandalous idolatry, God withdrew his restraining grace from them as he did from the antediluvians, Gen 6:3; the consequence of which was, that their lusts excited them to commit every sort of uncleanness. The truth is, a contempt of religion is the source of all wickedness. And ungodliness and uncleanness particularly are frequently united, 1Th 4:5, as are the knowledge of God and purity. Observe, reader, one punishment of sin is from the very nature of it, as Rom 1:27; another, as here, is from vindictive justice. Who changed the truth of God — Those true conceptions which they had of him by nature; into a lie — False opinions of him, and the worship of idols. And they represented his true essence, his incorruptible and immortal nature, by images of men and brute creatures, which are fitly called a lie, as being most false representations of the Deity, who does not resemble them in any respect whatever. Hence idols are called lying vanities, Psa 31:6. And every image of an idol is termed a teacher of lies, Hab 2:18. And worshipped and served the creature — And not only God’s creatures, but their own creatures, the images which their own hands had made. The former expression, εσεβασθησαν, signifies inward veneration, reverence, esteem, and such like qualities felt in the mind. The latter word, εγατρευσαν, denotes the paying outward worship and service to beings thought to be gods. The heathen gave both to their idols, reverencing and respecting them inwardly, and performing various acts of outward worship to them, in token thereof. More than the Creator, who is blessed for ever — Who is eternally glorious, and to whom alone all honour and praise everlastingly belong. Amen — It is an undoubted truth, and to him let it be ascribed accordingly.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain Wherefore - That is, because they were unwilling to…
Wherefore - That is, because they were unwilling to retain him in their knowledge, and chose to worship idols. Here is traced the practical tendency of paganism; not as an innocent and harmless system, but as resulting in the most gross and shameless acts of depravity.
God gave them up - He abandoned them, or he ceased to restrain them, and suffered them to act out their sentiments, and to manifest them in their life. This does not imply, that he exerted any positive influence in inducing them to sin, any more than it would if we should seek, by argument and entreaty, to restrain a headstrong youth, and when neither would prevail, should leave him to act out his propensities. and to go as he chose to ruin. It is implied in this,
Read full note →
That the tendency of man was to these sins; That the tendency of idolatry was to promote them; and, That all that was needful, in order that people should commit them, was for God to leave him to follow the devices and desires of his own heart; compare Psa 81:12; 2Th 2:10, 2Th 2:12.
To uncleanness - To impurity, or moral defilement; particularly to those impurities which he proceeds to specify, Rom 1:26, etc.
Through the lusts of their own hearts - Or, in consequence of their own evil and depraved passions and desires. He left them to act out, or manifest, their depraved affections and inclinations.
To dishonour - To disgrace; Rom 1:26-27.
Between themselves - Among themselves; or mutually. They did it by unlawful and impure connections with one another.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain Wherefore God gave them [4] up, &c. That is,…
Wherefore God gave them [4] up, &c. That is, as St. John Chrysostom says, permitted them, in punishment of their wilful blindness, to fall into the foulest, most shameful, and unnatural sins of uncleanness here described. (Witham)
===============================
Read full note →
[BIBLIOGRAPHY]
Greek: to de paredoken, entautha eiasen esti.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain Wherefore God also--in righteous retribution.
Wherefore God also--in righteous retribution.
gave them up--This divine abandonment of men is here strikingly traced in three successive stages, at each of which the same word is used (Rom 1:24, Rom 1:26; and Rom 1:28, where the word is rendered "gave over"). "As they deserted God, God in turn deserted them; not giving them divine (that is, supernatural) laws, and suffering them to corrupt those which were human; not sending them prophets, and allowing the philosophers to run into absurdities. He let them do what they pleased, even what was in the last degree vile, that those who had not honored God, might dishonor themselves" [GROTIUS].
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 24. God also gave them up—The Divine Spirit, which…
24. God also gave them up—The Divine Spirit, which loves to draw to itself the willing and susceptible human spirit, being thus abandoned, substituted, rejected, and repelled with insult, withdraws Himself and leaves the apostate to himself.
To uncleanness—The spiritual in the man, unrefreshed and uninvigorated by the Divine Spirit, becomes faint and inert, and the animal reigns alone in power.
Read full note →
Dishonour their own bodies—The animal grows in lust and exerts its utmost power in sensuality, ascertaining by shameful experiment the full extent to which debasement in man can go.
Dishonour their own bodies—By unnatural and beastly practices they not only subject their bodies to what all pure minds hold to be infamy, but by effeminacy and vile diseases, the result of their abuse, they contract a permanent debasement to their persons.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 24–32. The same subject: heathen sin judicially aggravated
24–32. The same subject: heathen sin judicially aggravated
24. Wherefore God also gave them up] The inevitable connexion of idolatry with debased morality is stated here. Nothing but the knowledge of the Holy One, Eternal and Almighty, can ever really teach and enforce human purity; even though conscience (up to its light) always takes the part of purity. Manifold experience shews that mere social civilization and mental culture can never really banish even the grossest lusts. Nothing but the knowledge of God as He is can reveal to man both his fall and his greatness, his sin and his sacred duty.
Read full note →
God also gave them up] So Psa_81:11-12; Act_7:42. On the other hand man “gives himself over;” Eph_4:19. Experience as well as Revelation says that the most terrible, and just, penalty of sin is the hardening of the sinning heart. It is a “law;” though in using that word we must here specially remember that, as with physical so with moral laws, “their ultimate reason is God.” The “law” of judicial hardening is His personal will, and takes place along with His personal displeasure.
through the lusts] Lit. in the lusts: a pregnant phrase; q. d. “He gave them up to live in vile desires.”
to dishonour] The dignity and sanctity of the body is a main and peculiar truth of Revelation.
between themselves] Another reading gives “among them;” but the evidence is not decisive, and general reasons support the E. V.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (24-32) Hence they fell into a still lower depth;…
(24-32) Hence they fell into a still lower depth; for, in anger at their perversion of the truth, God refrained from checking their downward course. He left them to follow their own evil bent. Their idolatry developed into shameless immorality and unnatural crimes. At last the extreme limit was reached. As they voluntarily forsook God, so He forsook them. They ran through the whole catalogue of sins, and the cup of their iniquity was full.
In the passage taken as a whole, three steps or stages are indicated: (1) Rom_1:18-23, idolatry; (2) Rom_1:24-27, unnatural sins allowed by God as the punishment for this idolatry; (3) Rom_1:28-32, a still more complete and radical depravity also regarded as penally inflicted. The first step is taken by the free choice of man, but as the breach gradually widens, the wrath of God is more and more revealed. He interferes less and less to save a sinful world from its fate. It is to be noted that the Apostle speaks in general terms, and the precise proportions of human depravity and of divine judicial impulse are not to be clearly determined.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain Wherefore God (kai , here in the Textus Receptus,…
Wherefore God (kai , here in the Textus Receptus, is ill supported) gave them up in the lusts of their hearts unto uncleanness, to dishonour their own bodies between (rather, among) themselves. So tou atimazesyai , etc., is rendered in the Authorized Version. The verb, however, is probably passive, a middle use of it not being elsewhere found. In either ease the general meaning is the same. The genitive, tou atimazesyai , seems most naturally taken as denoting what the akayarsia consisted in, rather than either the purpose or the results of their being given over to it (cf. ver. 26, where paredwken eiv payh atimiav is followed by a description of what these were). Here is noticed a further stage of judicial degradation; the matiaothv of idolatry, itself judicial, had its further judicial consequence in the akayarsia of abominable sensuality. Similarly, in Ephesians 4, the ergasia akayarsiav pashv en pleonexia , prevalent among the nations, is traced to their mataiothv , in that they had become "alienated from the life of God." It is notorious that idolatrous worship was not uncommonly accompanied by debauchery; notably that of the Phoenician Astarte, and of Aphrodite and Dionysus (see Livy, 39:8, for an account of the Dionysus at one time in Rome; and Athen., 13. pp. 574, 579, and 14. p. 659, for the Aphrodisia at Athens and Corinth); cf. Numbers 25, etc., "The people joined themselves unto Baal-peor," and the allusion to it, 1Co_10:8. On that occasion no more is intimated than promiscuous intercourse between the two sexes, sinking men in that regard to the level of the brutes; but still worse "uncleanness" is in the apostle"s view, such as sinks them even below that level; and how common such unnatural vices had become, and how lightly thought of, no one conversant with classical literature needs to be reminded.
Vers. 24-27. Evil passion.
Read full note →
A more frightful exhibition of sin and its consequences than that given by the apostle in the latter part of this chapter could not have been presented; yet to have said less than this would have been to fall short of the facts of the case, which needed to be stated in order to prepare the way for the publication of a gospel of pardon and of purity.
I THE ROOT OF EVIL PASSION, OR LUST, IS IN THE WORSHIP OF THE CREATURE. The beginning of all evil is in departure from God. His works, and especially the most honourable and beautiful of all his material constructions the human body are intended to lead the thoughts and aspirations of men to the great Creator himself, whose attributes they in some measure display. The symmetry and grace and beauty of the human form and features are the crown of the physical creation. And to the Christian the body of man has this higher interest it was tenanted by the human mind, it was possessed by the Divine nature, of the Son of God himself. The attractiveness of the body is not only a fact indicative of the Divine delight in form; within lawful bounds it is intended to subserve the high purposes of social and especially of conjugal life. But when the interest centres upon what is corporeal, and does not pass beyond and above it, then the Divine intention is frustrated. Evidently the nobility, the enchanting loveliness characteristic of the human body in its grandest and fairest types, are designed to suggest the infinite and eternal spiritual excellence. "Thus beauty here points up to that above, And loveliness leads on to perfect love.
But when this great and precious lesson is missed, what follows? Inevitable degradation. The creature is worshipped, and the Creator is forgotten or despised. The mind and heart seek to rest in what can never satisfy them. The emblem is mistaken for the reality, the shadow for the substance.
II THE FRUIT OF EVIL PASSION, OR LUST, IS UNNATURAL AND DEBASING VICE. Readers of the ancient literature of Greece and Rome, students of anthropology, travellers and residents in heathen lands in our own time, are well aware of the lengths to which sinful passion can lead those whom it masters. There is no need to go into detail, and it is better for Christian people to remain ignorant of corruptions with which, happily, they are never brought into contact. But it remains true that, with idolatry, the filthiest rites and orgies have often been, and still are, associated. Those abandoned to "fleshly lusts" appear to exhaust their ingenuity in inventing forms of unlawful indulgence.
III THE PUNISHMENT OF EVIL PASSION, OR LUST, IS ASSURED BY THE RETRIBUTIVE ACTION OF GOD"S RIGHTEOUS GOVERNMENT. There is a natural belief in retribution. Nemesis is no mere invention of the human imagination; it springs from convictions and fears from which humanity can never free itself. Revelation confirms the natural utterances of human reason, assuring us that after death is the judgment, and that every man shall give account of himself to God, when evil deeds shall not go unpunished. The laws of nature to a large extent ensure some measure of retribution even here and now. Tribes and nations which have practised debasing and unnatural vices have paid the penalty in national deterioration, and individual sinners have reaped the bitter fruit proper to evil seed. And there is every reason to believe that the righteous judgment of God is not confined to this present earthly state.
IV THE REMEDY OF EVIL PASSION, OR LUST, IS PROVIDED IN THE GOSPEL OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST. It is the purpose of the apostle, in this Epistle to the Romans, to show that the mercy of God our Father has abounded to sinful men, in the provision of
(1) pardon for even heinous sin, upon the sinner"s repentance and faith; and
(2) purity of heart and life such as the Spirit of Christ alone can create.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness.
Rom_1:24-25
Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness.
Read full note →
The consequences of the Divine abandonment
You have merely to loose the connection, and the trucks by their own weight rush down the incline, and dash themselves to a thousand pieces. A physician has merely to retire when his orders have been repeatedly disregarded, to deliver his refractory patient over in his disease to protracted suffering and possibly to a premature grave. In like manner, if God judicially delivers over men who wilfully reject Him to their lusts, they will sink into the lowest depths of degradation, and come to everlasting destruction. (C. Neil, M. A.)
The Divine penalty attached to sin
Here Paul expresses the feeling of indignation raised in his heart by the thought and view of the treatment of God by the creation to whom He had revealed Himself so magnificently. There is something here of that exasperation of heart (Act_17:16), felt at Athens. This feeling is expressed forcibly by the conjunctions, διὸ, on account of which, i.e., of the sin just described, referring to the justice of the punishment in general. Καί, also, brings out more especially the relation of congruity between the nature of the punishment and that of the offence. They sinned, wherefore God punished them; they sinned by degrading God, wherefore also God degraded them. The word gave over does not signify that God impelled them to evil, to punish the evil committed. The holiness of God is opposed to such a sense, and to give over is not to impel. On the other hand it is impossible to stop short at the idea of a simple permission. God was not purely passive in the terrible development of Gentile corruption. Wherein did His action consist? He positively withdrew His hand; He ceased to hold the boat as it was dragged by the current of the river. This is the meaning of the apostle in Act_14:16. It is not a simple abstention, but the positive withdrawal of a force. Such is the meaning of Gen_6:3. As Meyer says, The law of history, in virtue of which the forsaking of God is followed by a parallel growth of immorality, is not a purely natural order of things; the power of God is active in the execution of this law. If it is asked how such a mode of action harmonises with the moral perfection of God, the answer undoubtedly is that when man has reached a certain degree of corruption he can only be cured by the excess of his own corruption; it is the only means left of producing what all preceding appeals and punishments failed to effect, the salutary action of repentance. So it is that at a given moment the father of the prodigal lets him go, even giving him his share of goods. The monstrous character of the excesses about to be described confirms this view. The two prepositions ἐν, through, and εἰς, to, differ from one another as the current which bears the bark along, once it has been detached from the shore, differs from the abyss into which it is about to be plunged. Lusts exist in the heart; God abandons it to their power, and the legions that fall which must end in the most degrading impurities. You have dishonoured Me; I give you up that you may dishonour your own selves. (Prof. Godet.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain Chapter 5
Chapter 5
MAN GIVEN UP TO HIS OWN WAY: THE HEATHEN
Read full note →
Rom_1:24-32
WHEREFORE God gave them up, in the desires of their hearts, to uncleanness, so as to dishonour their bodies among themselves.
There is a dark sequence in the logic of facts, between unworthy thoughts of God and the development of the basest forms of human wrong. "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God:-they are corrupt and have done abominable works". {Psa_14:1} And the folly which does not indeed deny God, but degrades His Idea, always gives its sure contribution to such corruption. It is so in the nature of the case. The individual atheist, or polytheist, may conceivably be a virtuous person, on the human standard; but if he is so it is not because of his creed. Let his creed become a real formative power in human society, and it will tend inevitably to moral disease and death. Is man indeed a moral personality, made in the image of a holy and almighty Maker? Then the vital air of his moral life must be fidelity, correspondence, to his God. Let man think of Him as less than All, and he will think of himself less worthily; not less proudly perhaps, but less worthily, because not in his true and wonderful relation to the Eternal Good. Wrong in himself will tend surely to seem less awful, and right less necessary and great. And nothing, literally nothing, from any region higher than himself-himself already lowered in his own thought from his true idea-can ever come in to supply the blank where God should be, but is not. Man may worship himself, or may despise himself, when he has ceased to "glorify God and thank Him"; but he cannot for one hour be what he was made to be, the son of God in the universe of God. To know God indeed is to be secured from self-worship, and to be taught self-reverence; and it is the only way to those two secrets in their pure fulness.
"God gave them up." So the Scripture says elsewhere. "So I gave them up unto their own hearts lusts"; {Psa_81:12} "God turned, and gave them up to worship the host of heaven"; {Act_7:42} "God gave them up to passions of degradation"; "God gave them over to an abandoned mind"; (Rom_1:26; Rom_1:28). It is a dire thought; but the inmost conscience, once awake, affirms the righteousness of the thing. From one point of view it is just the working out of a natural process, in which sin is at once exposed and punished by its proper results, without the slightest injection, so to speak, of any force beyond its own terrible gravitation towards the sinners misery. But from another point it is the personally allotted, and personally inflicted, retribution of Him who hates iniquity with the antagonism of infinite Personality. He has so constituted natural process that wrong gravitates to wretchedness; and He is in that process, and above it, always and forever.
So He "gave them up, in their desires of their hearts"; He left them there where they had placed themselves," in "the fatal region of self-will, self-indulgence; "unto uncleanness," described now with terrible explicitness in its full outcome, "to dishonour their bodies," the intended temples of the Creators presence, "among themselves," or "in themselves"; for the possible dishonour might be done either in a foul solitude, or in a fouler society and mutuality: Seeing that they perverted the truth of God, the eternal fact of His glory and claim, in their lie, so that it was travestied, misrepresented, lost, "in" the falsehood of polytheism and idols; and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. He casts this strong Doxology into the thick air of false worship and foul life, as if to clear it with its holy reverberation. For he is writing no mere discussion, no lecture on the genesis and evolution of paganism. It is the story of a vast rebellion, told by one who, once himself a rebel, is now altogether and forever the absolute vassal of the King whom he has "seen in His beauty" and whom it is his joy to bless, and to claim blessing for Him from His whole world forever.
As if animated by the word of benediction, he returns to denounce "the abominable thing which God hateth" with still more terrible explicitness. For this reason, because of their preference of the worse to the infinite Good, God gave them up to passions of degradation; He handed them over, self-bound, to the helpless slavery of lust; to "passions," eloquent word, which indicates how the man who will have his own way is all the while a "sufferer," though by his own fault: the victim of a mastery which he has conjured from the deep of sin.
Shall we shun to read, to render, the words which follow? We will not comment and expound. May the presence of God in our hearts, hearts otherwise as vulnerable as those of the old pagan sinners, sweep from the springs of thought and will all horrible curiosity. But if it does so it will leave us the more able, in humility, in tears, in fear, to hear the facts of this stern indictment. It will bid us listen as those who are not sitting in judgment on paganism, but standing beside the accused and sentenced, to confess that we too share the fall, and stand, if we stand, by grace alone. Aye, and we shall remember that if an Apostle thus tore the rags from the spots of the Black Death of ancient morals, he would have been even less merciful, if possible, over the like symptoms lurking still in modern Christendom, and found sometimes upon its surface.
Terrible, indeed, is the prosaic coolness with which vices now called unnameable are named and narrated in classical literature; and we ask in vain for one of even the noblest of the pagan moralists who has spoken of such sins with anything like adequate horror. Such speech, and such silence, have been almost impossible since the Gospel was felt in civilisation. "Paganism," says Dr. F.W. Farrar, in a powerful passage, with this paragraph of Romans in his view, "is protected from complete exposure by the enormity of its own vices. To show the divine reformation wrought by Christianity it must suffice that once for all the Apostle of the Gentiles seized heathenism by the hair, and branded indelibly on her forehead the stigma of her shame." Yet the vices of the old time are not altogether an antiquarians wonder. Now as truly as then man is awfully accessible to the worst solicitations the moment he trusts himself away from God. And this needs indeed to be remembered in a stage of thought and of society whose cynicism, and whose materialism, show gloomy signs of likeness to those last days of the old degenerate world in which St. Paul looked round him, and spoke out the things he saw.
For their females perverted the natural use to the unnatural. So too the males, leaving the natural use of the female, burst out aflame in their craving towards one another, males in males working out their unseemliness-and duly getting in themselves that recompense of their error which was owed them.
And as they did not approve of keeping God in their moral knowledge, God gave them up to an abandoned mind, "a reprobate, God-rejected mind"; meeting their disapprobation with His just and fatal reprobation. That mind, taking the false premisses of the Tempter, and reasoning from them to establish the autocracy of self, led with terrible certainty and success through evil thinking to evil doing; to do the deeds which are not becoming, to expose the being made for God, in a naked and foul unseemliness, to its friends and its foes; filled full of all unrighteousness, wickedness, viciousness, greed; brimming with envy, murder, guile, illnature; whisperers, defamers, repulsive to God, outragers, prideful, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, senseless, faithless, loveless, truceless, pitiless; people who morally aware of Gods ordinance, that they who practise such things are worthy of death, not only do them, but assent and consent with those who practise them.
Here is a terrible accusation of human life, and of the human heart; the more terrible because it is plainly meant to be, in a certain sense, inclusive, universal. We are not indeed compelled to think that the Apostle charges every human being with sins against nature, as if the whole earth were actually one vast City of the Plain. We need not take him to mean that every descendant of Adam is actually an undutiful child, or actually untrustworthy in a compact, or even actually a boaster, an άλαζν, a pretentious claimant of praise or credit which he knows he does not deserve. We may be sure that on the whole, in this lurid passage, charged less with condemnation than with "lamentation, and mourning, and woe," he is thinking mainly of the then state of heathen society in its worst developments. Yet we shall see, as the Epistle goes on, that all the while he is thinking not only of the sins of some men, but of the sin of man. He describes with this tremendous particularity the variegated symptoms of one disease-the corruption of mans heart; a disease everywhere present, everywhere deadly; limited in its manifestations by many circumstances and conditions, outward or within the man, but in itself quite unlimited in its dreadful possibilities. What man is, as fallen, corrupted, gone from God, is shown, in the teaching of St. Paul, by what bad men are.
Do we rebel against the inference? Quite possibly we do. Almost for certain, at one time or another, we have done so. We look round us on one estimable life and another, which we cannot reasonably think of as regenerate, if we take the strict Scriptural tests of regeneration into account, yet which asks and wins our respect, our confidence, it may be even our admiration; and we say, openly and tacitly, consciously or unconsciously, that that life stands clear outside this first chapter of Romans. Well, be it so in our thoughts; and let nothing-no, nothing-make us otherwise than ready to recognise and honour right doing wherever we see it, alike in the saints of God and in those who deny His very Being. But just now let us withdraw from all such looks outward, and calmly and in a silent hour look in. Do we, do you, do I, stand outside this chapter? Are we definitely prepared to say that the heart which we carry in our breast, whatever our friends heart may be, is such that under no change of circumstances could it, being what it is, conceivably develop the forms of evil branded in this passage? Ah, who, that knows himself, does not know that there lies in him indefinitely more than he can know of possible evil? "Who can understand his errors?" Who has so encountered temptation in all its typical forms that he can say, with even approximate truth, that he knows his own strength, and his own weakness, exactly as they are?
It was not for nothing that the question was discussed of old, whether there was any man who would always be virtuous if he were given the ring of Gyges, and the power to be invisible to all eyes. Nor was it lightly, or as a piece of pious rhetoric, that the saintliest of the chiefs of our Reformation, seeing a murderer carried off to die, exclaimed that there went John Bradford but for the grace of God. It is just when a man is nearest God for himself that he sees what, but for God, he would be; what, taken apart from God, he is, potentially, if not in act. And it is in just such a mood that, reading this paragraph of the great Epistle, he will smite upon his breast, and say, "God, be merciful to me the sinner". {Luk_18:13}
So doing he will be meeting the very purpose of the Writer of this passage. St. Paul is full of the message of peace, holiness, and the Spirit. He is intent and eager to bring his reader into sight and possession of the fulness of the eternal mercy, revealed and secured in the Lord Jesus Christ, our Sacrifice and Life. But for this very purpose he labours first to expose man to himself; to awaken him to the fact that he is before everything else a sinner; to reverse the Tempters spell, and to let him see the fact of his guilt with open eyes.
"The Gospel," someone has said, "can never be proved except to a bad conscience." If "bad" means "awakened," the saying is profoundly true. With a conscience sound asleep we may discuss Christianity, whether to condemn it, or to applaud. We may see in it an elevating programme for the race. We may affirm, a thousand times, that from the creed that God became flesh there result boundless possibilities for Humanity. But the Gospel. "the power of God unto salvation," will hardly be seen in its own prevailing self-evidence, as it is presented in this wonderful Epistle, till the student is first and with all else a penitent. The man must know for himself something of sin as condemnable guilt, and something of self as a thing in helpless yet responsible bondage, before he can so see Christ given for us, and risen for us, and seated at the right hand of God for us, as to say, "There is now no condemnation; Who shall separate us from the love of God? I know whom I have believed."
To the full sight of Christ there needs a true sight of self, that is to say, of sin.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain 24. Wherefore. Having chosen folly, God gave them up…
24. Wherefore. Having chosen folly, God gave them up to the consequences of their folly, and there followed an awful moral degradation which is now described. Their false religion was no check upon their lusts. They engaged in the lowest and most disgusting lusts. Language cannot describe the pollution of the Gentile world, when Paul wrote, as revealed by the pagan writers of that period.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain 24. “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts…
24. “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts unto impurity to dishonor their bodies among themselves,
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. W. McGarvey 1914 · Public Domain Wherefore God gave them up in the lusts of…
Wherefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts unto uncleanness, that their bodies should be dishonored among themselves :
J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 "Because what I have just said is true"
Therefore
"Because what I have just said is true"
Read full note →
God gave them over to
"God allowed them to indulge in"
them ... their ... themselves ... they
the "mankind" of Romans 1:18
the lusts of their hearts for uncleanness
Here "lusts of their hearts" is a synecdoche that represents the evil things they wanted to do. AT: "the morally impure things they desired greatly" (See: Synecdoche)
for their bodies to be dishonored among themselves
This is a euphemism that means they committed immoral sexual acts. You can translate this in an active form. AT: "and they committed sexually immoral and degrading acts" (See: Euphemism and Active or Passive)
who worshiped and served the creation
Here "creation" refers to what God created. AT: "They worshiped things that God created" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
instead of
"rather than"
translationWords
lust
heart
clean
true
worship
servant
create
eternity
amen
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 1:24 When human beings exchanged the living God for…
1:24 When human beings exchanged the living God for idols, God abandoned them, a point Paul makes twice more in this paragraph (1:26, 28). The word abandon includes a sense of “handing over,” suggesting that God actively consigns people to the consequences of their sin.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.