Romans 1:24-27 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
Man’s desire to serve himself, to please himself, rather than God placed him in the position of gratifying his flesh. This gratification took on many forms, but one easily identified form is the sin of sexual licentiousness. Men and women started to lust after their own gender, creating confusion in the basic desire of any being to procreate its own specie. The main point Paul addresses here and wants the people to consider is sexual impurity and the concept of not relying upon God’s truth. He is pointing to the tendency of people to turn from worshipping their Creator God to bowing down to the things of this earth. When we lose sight of our Lord and stop praising him with our lives, this idol worship that we discussed in the last breakfast permeates every area of our lives. Of course sin spreads throughout our choices and our actions, and soon we see the effects of man’s moral degeneration in his sexual behaviors. As we will read next week, Paul will go on to say, They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. (Romans 1:29) The pathway that leads us away from God is a slippery downhill slope. We do not fall by inches but by leaps and bounds as we give ourselves over to the world’s way of living, for the temptations are many. As the Bible says, For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. (1 John 2:16) Just as the Children of Israel quickly lost sight of God and built a golden calf to worship in the wilderness, Paul could see that the nature of men was to stray easily into hedonistic pursuits without God as their focus for living.
As Christians one of the most miraculous aspects of our salvation remains the Good News that Jesus died to save sinners. We possess this marvelous knowledge: But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8) This amazing mercy and grace poured out at the cross through the shed blood of Jesus Christ the Son of God demonstrates how greatly we are loved. We can rejoice and be exceedingly glad. If we consider the realities of our position in the family of God as joint heirs with Christ, we will remain true to God, following his desires and his will for our lives. Many scriptures have been set to music because they are an encouragement to our hearts and minds. As we meditate on the Lord, these songs bring hope and light into our days and nights such as: Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God. (1 John 3:1) Many times in the chaos and troubles of living, we need reminders of who we are in Christ and who He is in us. One of the songs we sing at church says, “I am a child of God.” We need to remember what that means and the price Jesus paid for our position in God’s family. Our adoption papers were signed with the blood of Jesus. He willingly went to Mount Calvary and said, “Not my will, but yours be done, Father.” Today’s verses go far beyond sexual immorality to mankind’s innate abandonment of God from the beginning of time, his desire to follow his own will. From Adam until the present day, the hearts of people have whored after fleshly desires. Men and women have shifted their allegiance from honoring God and his authority to promoting their own self-will and power. In the Old Testament, the people responded to the Law with, “We will do it. We will follow your laws.” This is the cry of a stubborn two-year-old, rejecting his mother’s help with a task beyond his grasp: “I can do it?” As with the unknowing child, we will fail miserably, but we should know better. We should know we need our God; we should know we cannot fulfill his part of the covenant. Still we strive to find the answers to life’s problems, to prove to God our knowledge and wisdom are great. We determine to live in peace and harmony through our own abilities and end up in strife and disharmony. We have always needed God’s help. The Law was his help—to bring obedience, but we could not fulfill its demands. Yet we stood in defiance, saying we could do it ourselves, not understanding our human weaknesses compared with his strength. Now this foolishness is even greater when the people of God reject the strength of the Lord given to us through Christ by the Holy Spirit, thinking once again, “We will do it.” We will give God some of our time and some of our money, but in reality we are trying to live through our own intellect, insights, and abilities. Our only hope is to return to the God of our salvation: All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:6)
Yes, in Isaiah’s prophecy concerning Jesus, the Bible also tells us that Jesus was despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. (Isaiah 53:3) Jesus was the perfect Lamb of God, giving all for a lost world. He was in no way like the false gods of God’s people, the gods they turned to so easily throughout the ages. They worshipped gods of nature and gods of the sun, moon, and stars. Continually, they turned back to Baal and Ashtoreth, gods with strong ties to prostitution, deviant sexuality. The sexual promiscuity in the temples to these gods was seen as a defiant fist raised against God by those who worshipped there. Yet Jesus prayed over his people saying, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.” (Matthew 23:37) We find it hard to believe that God so loved us that He would be willing to offer us redemption given the depth and the breadth of our rebellion against him. One of the reasons we experience difficulty understanding the love of God for a fallen creation is that we lack the faithfulness we find in his divine nature. In raising children, how many parents lose patience with minor indiscretions, let alone the major errors committed by their children. But the Bible tells us, God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. (1 Corinthians 1:9) Here again is another aspect of God that enters into many gospel songs: Great is thy faithfulness! Song writers through the decades have set to music the faithfulness of God. God is a good God, and He is good to his children. As we raised our children, we tried to show them grace instead of judgment. We prayed with them often and pointed them to Jesus as the answer to life’s problems. We also made a point of saying we were sorry when we were wrong. The main foundation for interactions in our home was to try to treat each other as we wanted to be treated. We were amazed how well that worked in a broad range of situations. Even a very young child can understand: Is that the way you want to be treated? If a brother hit a brother, we might say, “Brothers are for loving, not hitting. Would you want your brother to hit you? Of course not. Now talk about what happened and how you could handle it better.” Real parenting takes time and effort. You do not bow down to a statue made of stone. James tells us that if we lack wisdom, we can ask God for wisdom from on high. He also explains: But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. (James 3:17) We need not throw our hands up in despair when we do not know what to do next. We have the Holy Spirit within us, the Counselor, our Guide through the exigencies of life. If you are wandering, tempted, unsure, failing, or falling today because of the sinful and hurtful desires of your heart, turn to Jesus. He is waiting for you with arms open wide. Give everything to him, for He cares for you!
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