Romans 1.24-32: disordered sexuality (Copy)
BREAK: disordered sexuality
Romans 1.24-32
Jason Procopio
When we were planning out this series, we knew that we wouldn’t be able to hit everything. Romans contains a lot of passages in which Paul says something explosive, which makes our minds run in a million different directions…even though that explosive thing he said isn’t actually the main point he’s trying to make. If we want to be faithful to the text as he has written it, we need to remain focused on the main point, and not go down rabbit holes looking at secondary matters.
However, these secondary matters—even though they’re not the main point he’s trying to make—are often hugely important.
So we decided to do something a little different with this series. Most of the time we’ll simply preach through the text. But occasionally, we’ll take a break and focus on a smaller portion of the passage we saw the week before, to zoom in on those subjects which are still important.
That’s what we’re going to do today.
Last week Joe took us through Romans 1.18-32. We talked about how God created a world which is so majestic and so beautiful that all of us can look at creation, and know instinctively that it came from a loving Creator. It’s easy to deny the existence of God when you’re debating it in a classroom, or thinking about it over coffee. It’s a little harder to do when you’re standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon. People do it anyway—they stand there and they tell themselves, What a beautiful accident!—but there is always a moment, when our bodies tell us something that our minds don’t want to accept. As Joe said talking about a painting by Van Gogh, when we look at the painting, we don’t see the artist, but we can see his touch.
But we shake that off. We ignore it. All of us do this. All of us “suppress the truth,” as Paul says in v. 18. But what we don’t realize is that it’s not just ignorance or foolishness to do this; Paul calls it “unrighteousness”. It’s not just stupidity, but the worst kind of arrogance, to look at a gift and deny that there is a Giver. It is the definition of rebellion—I don’t want you, I just want what you can give me.
So because of our rebellion, God reveals his wrath against our unrighteousness. But he does it in a very particular way. When we told God we wanted nothing to do with him, he showed his wrath against us…by giving us exactly what we wanted.
We see it three times—in v. 24, v. 26 and v. 28: “God gave them up” to their corrupt desires. The word Paul uses here when he says God “gave them up” is the same word used in Greek to speak of Judas’s betrayal of Jesus, and Pilate’s handing him over to the crowds for crucifixion. This word carries with it the clear sense of imprisonment. Human beings were begging for prison, and God let them go: he gave them up to what they wanted.
That is the big point Paul is making here at the end of Romans 1.
So far, we can mostly be on board with this idea, at least in theory. But then Paul describes what this imprisonment looks like. He starts in general terms, and he finishes in general terms, but sandwiched between those sections is a very specific and undeniable example of what he’s saying.
That example is homosexuality.
Part of me really wishes he had chosen another example. I wish he’d chosen a different example because this subject is so much more present in the public consciousness today than it was even when I was a kid. I wish he’d chosen a different example because the church has handled this subject so badly over the years; the church has wounded people, and used this text as justification to do it. I wish he’d chosen a different example because I have gay friends, both here and in America, and I love them, and I don’t want to hurt them. I wish he’d chosen a different example because I know some of you here are attracted to members of the same sex, and I don’t want you to hear me say these things and feel like it’s an attack against you.
Part of me wishes he’d chosen another example.
However, if we take it within the bigger context of what Paul is saying, we see pretty quickly that it’s actually an excellent example of the point he’s trying to make.
So that’s part of what we’re going to try and see today. But if you’re struggling with these questions, please hear me and believe me: you are welcome here, and we love you, and I would love to speak to you after the service if you have any questions or responses to what I say this morning.
Why Does Paul Bring Up Homosexuality? (v. 26-27)
I said that homosexuality is only part of what we’re going to see today. That’s because Paul uses it as an illustration of a much bigger issue. So we’re going to talk about why he uses this example first, and then we’ll widen our scope.
Let’s read the verses, in v. 24-32
24 Therefore [because people desired to worship the creation rather than the Creator] God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
26 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. 29 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.
So you see what Paul does here. He starts general. He talks about “impurity.” He talks about “the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves.” And he ends general, talking about all manner of things that “ought not to be done.” It’s important to see that the things he lists at the end aren’t sexual in nature—it encompasses everything from murder to being disobedient to your parents.
What is he trying to show by all of these various examples? He’s trying to describe a humanity that has been changed into something it wasn’t created to be. Paul uses phrases like “the dishonoring of their bodies”—using our bodies in ways they weren’t meant to be used. Or “a debased mind”—our minds thinking things they weren’t meant to think.
So if our humanity has been changed into something it wasn’t created to be, the question has to be asked: how were we created?
We can see it in Genesis 1. God has just finished creating the world, and he finally creates human beings—but out of everything he has created, human beings are different. Different from the earth, different from plants, different from animals. We read in Genesis 1.27:
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
God created us in his own image. That is, he created us in such a way that we are designed to reflect something of God’s nature and character in the world.
But when humanity rebelled against God, their rebellion, their sin, warped that image. When I was a teenager, I accidentally left one of my favorite CDs (Radiohead’s OK Computer) on the seat of my car. It was summer. The sun beat down through my car windows all day long. When I got back in my car, rolled down the windows, and put the CD back in the player, the sound that came out was completely garbled. It was still recognizable—I could still tell it was those songs I loved—but they sounded like they were playing underwater.
That’s kind of what sin has done to us. The image of God is still present in every single human being…but it doesn’t play right. Sometimes that image still shines through, in believers and unbelievers alike. But we are no longer able to reflect God’s image as we were meant to.
What was natural for humanity—reflecting God’s image—has been twisted into something unnatural. (When Paul uses the word “natural” in v. 26, he means “according to God’s design.” Because God is the Creator of the world, everything “natural” functions as God intended. If it deviates from God’s plan, then it becomes, by definition, unnatural.) So in the place of holiness that shows God’s holiness, there is envy, malice, gossip, slander, disobedience, idolatry, the suppression of the truth.
Now here’s where Paul’s example in v. 26-27 comes into play. Paul uses homosexuality as an example of this shift from natural to unnatural, I believe, not because it’s the most egregious sin a person could commit (it’s not), but simply because it’s clear. When God creates man and woman, he creates them with complementary body parts that go together. When God tells them to be fruitful and multiply (which is called the creation mandate), that can only happen through sexual union between a man and a woman. Homosexuality takes sexual fulfillment (a good thing), and transports it to a place in which it cannot obey God’s mandate to be fruitful and multiply.
Now I know you can argue the point, that this is a simplistic understanding of what homosexuality is, how same-sex attraction works. My goal today isn’t to dive deep into that argument. For now, I’m just trying to help us see why this is the example he uses to show what sin does to us. Homosexuality, among many other things, removes sex from the sphere of the creation mandate, in which we are called to be fruitful and multiply, and places it solely in the arena of personal desire. That is the very definition of idolatry, as he laid it out in v. 21-25.
This is what all sin does. It takes something good, and disorders it. Sin makes us look at the gift instead of the Giver. That is the point Paul is trying to make.
So that’s why he chose this example. But what does this mean for sexuality in general? Paul is clear here that he’s not only talking about homosexuality, but about all kinds of impurity—he’s talking about the lusts of our hearts, not just the acts of our bodies.
So the question becomes, if sin makes us look at the gift instead of the Giver, what would it mean for sex if we thought about it rightly? What would sex look like if we remembered the Giver, and not just the gift?
God’s Plan for Sex
In order to see the deeper implications this text has for human sexuality, we need to take a step back: we need to look at the Giver, and not just the gift.
So we have to ask: What did God design human sexuality for, and why?
1. Sex exists for the creation mandate.
To see that, we need to go back to the very beginning, where we were just a minute ago. Genesis 1—God creates everything, and he creates human beings last. He creates the man in his image, and he gives him this charge, in Genesis 1.28:
“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
That’s the creation mandate we talked about before.
Now, fast forward a few verses. God has given the man this order to fill the earth and subdue it, and then he says in Genesis 2.18:
“It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”
And for this reason, God creates the woman.
The reasons for this are obvious: a man cannot be fruitful and multiply on his own, and he cannot be fruitful and multiply with another man. So the first goal of human sexuality is simple procreation, which is only possible for both man and woman together.
It’s important to remember that this was on purpose: this was God’s intention. He could have made us like termites or honey bees, who can multiply without a partner. But he didn’t. He made our bodies so that it would be necessary for a man and a woman to come together to reproduce.
2. Sex exists for union in marriage.
The second thing he created sex to do comes a little later in the chapter. God has just made the woman and presented her to the man as his wife. And then the author says, in Genesis 2.24,
24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh [the Bible is clear that this “becoming one flesh” is referring to sexual intercourse]. 25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
Procreation is not the only goal of human sexuality. Sex also exists for intimacy. Notice the way he describes sex here: it’s not just an act. Through sexual intercourse, the man and woman are united to one another—they become as one. This intimacy brings with it a deep sense of security and satisfaction: they were both naked and were not ashamed.
Most of us, at some point in our lives, have had dreams of being naked in the classroom, or at a business meeting. Those are not pleasant dreams. You feel exposed and you feel embarrassed and you want desperately to cover up. That’s not the case here: the man and the woman can be naked and feel no shame, because they are safe. The one-flesh union that their relationship provides allows them to be vulnerable and exposed, without being afraid of abuse or exploitation.
Now of course, abuse and exploitation still happen in far too many couples. But God’s intention from the beginning was that sex be the means by which a man and a woman can be united to one another, and satisfied by one another, in the context of a relationship in which they are safe with one another.
And that’s the other element we see here. In these verses, we don’t just find the goal of sex; we find the framework for sex, which is marriage between one man and one woman. (And before you come to me after the service: I know the author doesn’t mention marriage here. But later on in the Bible, it becomes explicit that that is what he’s talking about: Jesus is clear that this text is talking about the institution of marriage, and so does Paul.)
The Bible talks a lot about sex, both positively and negatively. Every single time it speaks of sex positively, it is sex within the context of a marriage—that is, a lifelong, publicly recognizable covenant—between one man and one woman.
We see this kind of sex—sex within that framework—celebrated in several places in the Bible. We don’t have time to do a deep dive on the Song of Songs, but that whole book is a picture of the joys of sexual intimacy, when it is pursued the right way, when it takes place within the framework God gave it.
Now if all that sounds impossibly idealistic to you, you’re right, because the man and the woman rebelled against God. Part of the consequence of their rebellion is that conflict has now entered the relationship between husband and wife, leaving it open to abuse and exploitation. Sex and relationships have become difficult now.
Difficult, but not doomed.
And that’s where the third reason for sex comes in.
3. Sex tells a story.
Perhaps the most surprising thing I learned about sex after becoming a Christian and reading the Bible was that sex tells a story.
If you’ve ever read the Old Testament—especially the books of the prophets—you will be regularly bombarded with a pretty outrageous word, and that word is whore. (Some versions use the less offensive version, “prostitute”.) It’s used as both noun and verb, and it’s used upwards of seventy times.
Every time the prophets speak of the people of God “whoring” or “prostituting” themselves, it is a picture of idolatry—of the people turning to other gods and ignoring the covenant that God had made with them. God established a covenant with his people—as inviolable as marriage—and the people have rejected the covenant and gone after other “lovers.”
Disordered sex is used very frequently in the Bible as a picture of rebellion against God.
But it also works the other way around.
In Ephesians 5, the apostle Paul speaks to husbands and wives, and how they are to live together. And in this chapter, he tells married couples that the way they live together as husband and wife also tells a story. He gives instructions to how the husband is to treat his wife, and how the wife is to respond to her husband. And then he says (Ephesians 5.31):
31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.
Those verses should surprise us. In v. 31, Paul is directly quoting Genesis 2.24, when God presents the first woman to the first man and they are both legally and sexually united to one another, becoming “one flesh.” And then Paul turns around and says that this one-flesh union, which we thought was merely about the two people wanting to spend their lives together, is actually much bigger than that.
Through their lives together—including the sexual intimacy they enjoy as husband and wife—they are telling the story of the union between Christ and his church, the faithfulness of Christ toward his church, the permanence and intensity of the love that exists between Christ and his church. (This completely changes the way we read the Song of Songs.)
If all this sounds a bit strange to you, I understand; it still sounds a little strange to me. But if you read the Bible, it is inescapable: sex outside of its proper framework is often used as a picture of sin and idolatry; and sex inside its proper framework is often used as a picture of union with Christ.
The question is, why? Why use sex as images of things that have nothing to do with sex?
Because few human experiences can come close to sex, in terms of intensity of feeling and the closeness that it produces.
John Piper said it this way:
“God created us in his image, male and female, with personhood and sexual passions so that when he comes to us in this world there would be these powerful words and images to describe the promises and the pleasures of our covenant relationship with him through Christ.”
These ideas are often hard to grasp. So God gave us sex, not just to have babies or enjoy ourselves, but so that our bodies might help us understand realities that our minds struggle to grasp.
Sex exists so that when we read about the horror of sin and the beauty of union with Christ, we might feel the weight and intensity of those realities.
It exists so that when we read about the woman and the King in Ezekiel 16, we might recognize how serious our own sin is.
It exists so that when we read about the intimacy and pleasure that God gives us in our covenant relationship with him, we might be able to look back on the sexual intimacy we have enjoyed with our spouse and say, “Wow—God is even better than that.”
Why Is This Good News?
And I bring that up because I know the question many of you might be asking. You’ll say, “That all sounds wonderful…IF YOU’RE MARRIED. But I’m not married; I’m single. Or—double whammy—I’m single and attracted to members of the same sex. How on earth is this good news for me?”
If that question hadn’t occurred to you before now, it’s probably because you haven’t thought it through to the end. We’ve already seen that in the Bible, the only proper framework for any sexual activity is marriage between one man and one woman. Everything else is out of bounds. The Bible refers to any sexual activity outside of that framework as “sexual immorality”. That includes things like pornography, masturbation, entertaining sexual thoughts about someone who isn’t your spouse (yes, sorry, Jesus really does go there, in Matthew 5.27-30). That term “sexual immorality” pops up a lot in the Bible, and it refers to any sexual activity or thought which does not take place for one’s spouse, with one’s spouse.
So that means, first of all, that sexual sin isn’t only the struggle of single people. You can be married and sleep with someone who isn’t your spouse. You can be married and think about sleeping with someone who isn’t your spouse. Being married doesn’t make sexual immorality impossible.
But I’ll freely admit that it makes it easier. If God is telling the truth, being married does give us a framework for sex, which single people, for the moment, don’t have. And it definitely helps.
So let’s just rip off the Band-Aid and say it plainly: if you are not married (no matter which sex you’re attracted to), God calls you to wait. Yes, he calls you to abstain from sexual activity and sexual thoughts, because if you’re single, no matter who it is you’re thinking about or acting with, that person is not your spouse.
That’s a scary thing to consider, because the reality is that no matter how much we may want it, not everyone will get married. And the idea of living your whole life without ever getting married, without ever having sex, is frightening.
But no matter how scary it is, this is still good news for you.
I don’t have time to unpack all the reasons why that’s the case. There are many, but for now I’ll give you just three.
The first is very simple and very basic, but it’s also the most important: God does not lie. God is truth. Lying isn’t just unthinkable to him; it’s contrary to his nature.
So if God tells us his will, and he tells us that his will is good, he’s telling the truth. It may seem illogical to you, it may be hard (or even impossible) to understand, but it’s still true. God does not lie: if he says that abstinence while you’re single—even if it lasts your whole life—is better than sex outside of the framework he designed it for, you can trust him.
The second reason this is good news is that God’s framework for sex allows you to remember the grace he has given you.
Remember what we read before, in v. 24, 26 and 28 of Romans 1: “God gave them up to impurity… God gave them up to dishonorable passions… God gave them up to a debased mind...” If you are in Christ, then that’s not true of you. God hasn’t given you up to your sexual desires. Through Christ’s sacrifice, he has freed us, both from sin’s power and from sin’s eternal punishment.
That means that sexual sin is no longer a foregone conclusion. For any of us.
It’s an amazing thing to celebrate God’s grace in your life by having a sinful desire…and saying no. Because now you can.
The third reason why this is good news is simply that God is better than sex.
Rachel Gilson is a young woman who has always been attracted to members of the same sex. But like Sam Alberry, whom Joe mentioned last week, Rachel met Christ and became convinced by the Bible that her natural desires were not what God intended for her. So she decided to say no, and to follow Christ, even if that meant being single and celibate for the rest of her life.
What made it possible for her was not a technique to try and smother her desires. What made it possible was knowing that her ultimate hope of fulfillment and joy was not in sex, or in marriage, or in any human relationship, but in God himself. She writes:
“The obedience of faith only works when it’s rooted in a person, not a rule. Imposed on its own, a rule invites us to sit in judgment, weighing its reasonableness. But a rule flowing from relationship smoothes the way for faithful obedience.
“When God’s teachings went against my instincts, denying my desires became a profound way of saying, ‘I trust you.’ ... We can’t say no to something good unless we’re saying yes to something even better.“
One of the most frequent and most dangerous lies Christians believe as single people is that they’re missing out. That you’re missing some fundamental human experience without which you are less.
And it’s true that, at least for now, you’re missing out on some pleasures that married people enjoy. But the lie is the idea that any one thing or any one person or any one experience can fill a void in you that only God is meant to fill. Not having what we desire is a daily opportunity to say “I trust you” to God in a far deeper way than we could have otherwise done.
And really, this is nothing new, is it? Isn’t that what we do every time we resist any temptation to sin? We say no to the fleeting pleasure of sin in order to experience fullness of joy in his presence, pleasures forevermore at his right hand (Psalm 16.11).
So please let me encourage you—if you’re single, if you’re married and struggling with sexual sin, or if you are attracted to members of the same sex: your life is not on hold while you wait. Even if you wait for the rest of your life, your life is not on hold.
You don’t need marriage to live a full life.
You don’t need sex to live a full life.
Because your hope is not in sex. Your hope is not in marriage. Your hope is not in any human relationship, and you are not doomed to be miserable if you never find it. If you are in Christ, you have God. And God is better.
So every one of us—no matter what desires we struggle with—let us live faithfully with that one truth firmly in mind: God is better. The Giver is better than the gift. Our Creator is better than our idols. Our Creator is better than sex or marriage or having children or any other thing we see as ultimate.
Our Creator is better. And we belong to him. We have everything we need. We can say no to something good because we’re saying yes to something even better.
