Paul has been getting right to the heart of man's basic problem: man has decided to worship himself in place of God. Out of all the living creatures that God made, only human beings are able to form a deep and satisfying relationship with Him. But because that relationship calls us to rise above animal instincts and live by moral laws, we have at many times and in various ways refused to step up our game. We found it easier to worship anything and everything other than a God who calls us to be holy. Idolatry is, at its core, self worship. Whether we bow our knees to graven images, or to the decadence of this world, or to the lusts of the flesh, in essence we are worshiping ourselves---we are worshiping ourselves. Our Creator says to us, "Be holy, because I am holy." (1 Peter 1:16) But when we go our own way we say to Him, "I like myself the way I am. Because You want to make something more of me, and because You want to make something better of me, I will seek gods who are content to leave me where I am. I will go where I want to go and I will do what I want to do. No one has the right to tell me I'm in the wrong. If I end up wallowing in the mud of sins and failures, so be it."
Paul points out that when we rebel against God and put our wants and needs above His commandments, we begin to give in to whatever our carnal flesh wants. "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. Amen." (Romans 1:24-25)
The apostle tells his readers, "God says to those who repeatedly refuse to obey Him, 'Fine! Have it your way! Do what you want to do!'" Paul views this as a form of punishment, because naturally when we go our own way we tend to get deeper and deeper into trouble. Often when we get ourselves deep into trouble we realize the error of our ways and decide to follow our Creator, so this well may be the Lord's intent when allowing us to go our own way. Even if we do not repent, we can never say God didn't give us a choice.
We are about to get into a very controversial subject this morning. I've struggled with the best way to approach it. I woke up several times in the night thinking about it. I don't know how this is going to go or how my readers are going to feel about it, but one thing I do know is this: God has not called me to defend His holy word. He has not asked me to apologize for anything the Bible says. So we are going to go straight through our verses today just as we always do and we are going to approach them with as much love and compassion and understanding as possible.
We of the modern era did not invent sex and we didn't invent the many forms sex takes. Ever since the first human beings began to walk the earth, men and women have been seeking fulfillment of their sexual desires. God created a framework within which sexual desires can safely be fulfilled, and that framework is marriage. In deciding what marriage would consist of, God chose the way that would be most beneficial to the continuance of the human race. He chose a combination that would be most easily accepted by society. He chose a merger of two beings of vastly different physical and mental and emotional attributes so that where one of them is weak the other is strong, and so that when put together these two incomplete creatures make one solid whole. This is why, in the garden of Eden, God placed a man and a woman. A man and a woman are capable of producing children, so this is the most practical form marriage can possibly take, for it keeps the human race alive. On another practical note, marriage between one man and one woman is accepted by every society on earth and it always has been, so the couple will not have to face opposition from the outside. When my husband and I went down to the chapel to get married, no one protested because no one cared about a man and a woman getting married. We faced no opposition from the outside when we took our marriage vows. It's difficult enough to deal with the conflicts and daily struggles that go on inside a home; God wants to spare us from having to deal with attacks on our marriages from outside the home. And on a note that is practical, emotional, mental, and spiritual, it makes the most sense to combine beings who don't have the same strengths and weaknesses. Where one is weak the other can be strong and vice versa. This makes the entire family unit more solid and better able to defend itself against the trials of the world.
Paul says many men and women chose to reject God and that God began taking a "hands off" approach with them. He is writing his letter from the city of Corinth where prostitution is legal and divorce is rampant. He is writing his letter to the people of Rome, a city where literally anything goes. Nothing is forbidden. Marriage vows can be broken without penalty. Declarations of love are meaningless. A Roman soldier was free to have a wife and children at home and to legally visit houses of either female or male prostitution and/or to openly maintain a female or male mistress on the side. Both men and women were free to initiate divorce on a whim. They could even marry and divorce multiple times a year. Imagine how traumatic this must have been for the children involved! Paul's assertion in today's passage is that when men and women rejected God, they also rejected His plan for marriage and family. God provided the example that is best for the family and for society when He joined Adam and Eve together as husband and wife, and now Paul finds men and women and children being hurt by the failure of the human race to follow God's plan. "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." (Romans 1:26-27)
Are we saying that you can't be a Christian if you still struggle with same-sex desires or with desires outside of your marriage? If we said that we'd have to also say you can't be a Christian if you still struggle with avoiding other things the word of God says to avoid. Are we saying you are going to hell if you feel physical desires that fall outside of God's "one man and one woman" plan for marriage? Well, the Bible also says we're in danger of hell if we've ever told a lie, or if we've ever been drunk, or if we've ever stolen anything, or if we've ever broken any laws, or if we've ever felt jealous, or if we've ever had sexual relations outside of marriage, or if we've ever envied anyone, or if we've ever cared more about anything else than we care about God. Who hasn't done at least one of these things? I've committed every sin on that list---every single one of them!
So what are we to take away from this? We are all lawbreakers. We are all sinners. We all need a Savior. My understanding of the Bible is that rejecting the holy and sinless Son of God is the only thing that can send our souls to hell. This doesn't mean we can accept Christ as our Savior and go on living in any way we choose; it means allowing the Savior to make us into new creatures. (2 Corinthians 5:17) He will show each person what needs changing in their life. This is why I don't feel called to point the finger at anyone and denounce them for their way of living. Does anyone ever respond favorably to that? Before I became a Christian I would have immediately closed my mind off to anyone who approached me in that manner. It would have had little to no impact on me. But when people loved me and told me about the love of Christ, and when they demonstrated by how they lived that they were walking the walk as well as talking the talk, that had a very big impact on me. So that's why I only feel called to tell others about the Savior who loves them and thought they were worth dying for. Jesus will do whatever needs doing in each person's life; therefore I feel safe leaving these things in His capable hands.
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