Romans 1:24 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Romans 1:24

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This is the outcome of refusing to acknowledge him and obey him: the abandonment of belief in God and the adoption of atheism or idolatry leads to immorality. He gives us over for the time being to be ruled by our sin. Three times Paul will say this in the following verses: he gave them up to uncleanness (verse 24), to vile affections (verse 26), and to a reprobate mind (verse 28). It may be that there is so much to say about it, that it needs to be unfolded in three stages. On the other hand, it may be that these are three stages of abandonment. You are abandoned by God to this degree first and you go on, and then you are abandoned to this more serious degree, and finally you are abandoned to the most serious degree of all. That is present-day society; that was Roman society; that was Corinthian society, and yet Paul went to those places and preached and people were converted and the church of Christ built up mightily. Gentile society at that time was highly homosexual and involved in every kind of iniquity and sin. And yet here is Paul saying, I am not ashamed to preach the Gospel among you. There is still mercy among you; there is still a reaping and a gathering out of people. ‘Wherefore God also [for his part] gave them up to uncleanness.’ It is actually a legal phrase. It refers to the prisoner who has now been convicted, and he is to be handed over to the officer of the jail. What does that mean? That God calls me to go further downhill? That God eggs me on in my sin? No, God gives me up in this sense: he does not prevent me from launching into deep sin. He stops restraining me to the same extent. If I had acknowledged him and I had sought him, he would not have let me do that. I might have been weak enough and foolish enough, but he would have put an obstacle in the way. He would have held me; he would have helped me. But because I repudiated him, he let me go, and gave me up to it. ‘If that is what you want, I will not prevent you.’ Man expects God to judge him by confronting him head on, but here Paul says that there is another terrible form of judgment that man does not recognise. As far as man is concerned, when God withdraws his restraint and let him sin, he is getting exactly what he wants. But truly this is a most fearful judgment, for the brakes are off and he will build up speed in his sin, until there is the most ghastly crash when he does finally meet the judgment of God. Loss of feeling in a limb leads inevitably to self-inflicted damage. We need the warning of conscience, and we should welcome its reproof. Men like to give themselves credit for the restraining influence of conscience, but one effect of this form of judgment is to show that no credit is due to them, for all of the restraining influence is the work of God. Although idolatry is a sin of a religious nature, God has the right to punish us in any way he sees fit. The lusts of the flesh are already operating before this judgment comes, but notice that Paul treats men and women as wholly responsible in spite the fact that they possess a fallen human nature.‘Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness’ – deep shamefulness – ‘through the lusts [the physical longings for gratification] of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves’ – immoral conduct, fornication. Idolatry goes straight into immorality. The body is dishonoured when it is put to use for which it is not intended and was not made, particularly when that use is shameful. What would we say of someone who bought a luxury car and parked it in a field and used it as somewhere to house chickens? God has said that the body is not designed for sexual impurity but for sexual purity. All They exchanged God for earthly things, and God gave them up to the sins that they wanted to commit. Obviously, man in the course of sin tries to dispense with shame, and to work hard to tell himself that what he does is not shameful. He tries to organise society to reinforce this message so that he hears nothing to contrary, but God only has to speak and all the suppressed standards rise up again. This is why he so much resents having his conscience woken up. He has worked hard to silence it.

Application

Has he given you up? Has he given you over to sin? Has he given you over in your temper, given you over to your lusts and desires, given you over to greed, or to selfishness? When God gives over, he hasn't given up in the sense that you are permanently lost. We see this right through the Bible. He warns the Israelites of old: ‘If you go on with your idolatry you will be judged’, but it took him three centuries to do it, and then again after the exile another four centuries to do it. Always he is so patient. Even in the giving over there is time to repent, time to return. That is the mercy of God.

Today we have gone back to all the sins of the Romans and the Greeks, and we vaunt them and we bring up a new generation to think it doesn't matter, and we legislate in favour of them. There's hardly a parliamentarian left who cares a fig about divine morality. And yet the power of the gospel of Christ is the same. That's the message that we see in these verses. We have to keep in mind, ‘I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth.’ If you don't have Christ, you must be concerned about your everlasting soul. You need him and you must be concerned enough to come. Not like the rich young ruler of the New Testament who had riches to fill every possible earthly satisfaction. But he was very concerned about his soul, so concerned that when Christ came to his territory, he ran, very undignified for a ruler. He ran to meet him and fell on his knees. Good master, what must I do to inherit eternal life? He was deeply concerned about his soul, and Christ gave him a test. This young man lived a fairly righteous life, it appears, but he overestimated himself. He wasn't anything like as good as he thought he was, so he was given a test. ‘Sell everything’ – this was for him – ‘and give it to the poor, and come, follow me.’ His mouth must have dropped open, and he gazed at Christ, the Saviour of the world, God himself incarnate. What a privilege to be called by Christ, come, follow me. He would receive everything, salvation, forgiveness, heaven. There is the Saviour, if only he realized. And he thought to himself, ‘Sell everything: the things I love, the things I've acquired, my liberty to do what I want? Sell everything: my influence, my power, my estates?’ One of the great tragedies of the Bible, there is Christ, the eternal God, the man of love, and yet he turned away. He was concerned about his soul, but he wasn't concerned enough. Are you concerned enough to repent of your sin, to ask for new life, to leave the old life behind, and to yield to Christ? May God make you concerned enough so that you cannot turn away from Christ.

Questions

Does this mean that if someone has utmost disrespect for God, and lives as a sinner, and opts for idolatry or some alternative for God, or evolution and humanism and atheism, that God will hand them over at some stage to lust? Well, he is clearly talking about a society, not just about individuals. In other words, homosexuality is the ultimate sensual sin that will be particularly prevalent and bad in a society which has gone as far as it can in disrespect to God, sinfulness, and the choosing of atheism or idolatry over the existence and the being of God. It is a sequence of events in society.

In the nineteenth century and much of the twentieth century, there were sinners, there was homosexuality, there was child abuse; there was pride and lying and every kind of sin: all these things were going on, – but not on the same scale as today. In the past there was still a fear of God and respect for God, and the vast majority of people believed in God, even if they did not follow him. But then belief thins out, and the number of believers is greatly reduced. People who before nominally believed in God now say, ‘I am atheist, and I do not believe in God. I do not believe in the Ten Commandments, and I do not believe in absolute standards, and I can do what I like. I am an idolater; I have chosen the idols. I have chosen evolution, the modern idol, an alternative explanation for the existence of everything. I do not believe that the created order tells me about God at all.’ You will then get a tremendous upsurge in the ultimate sensual sins.

At what point are people handed over in the sense that they can never be saved? We note that this is something that happens during a lifetime, even before the day of judgement. This is being handed over to the jailor of lust and sin, leaving people free to do that. It is not the Judgement Day itself that Paul is speaking of, because after that day nobody will be free to sin. So this is during lifetime. We cannot say how bad you have to be to be given over. Our task as Christians is to preach the gospel and to bring people to mercy and forgiveness and salvation. So that God delivers them even from the very worst sins, and they can find Christ, and all their sin can be washed away, and they can be eternally saved. That is our task. But it happens that there are people who are so bad and so determined that God gives them over.

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Introduction

Romans 1:24 Commentary and Bible Study

The meaning of Romans 1:24 explained