Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Romans · About this commentary
God Gave Them Up
Romans 1:24-27
24 Therefore God also gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to uncleanness, that their bodies should be dishonored among themselves; · WEB
The judgment in this chapter is not a thunderbolt but a release, and the exchange of worship is answered by exchanges in the body.
Therefore God also gave them up.
The verb appears three times in nine verses Romans 1:24 Romans 1:26 Romans 1:28, and it is the chapter's whole account of wrath. No fire falls. The judgment described is a handing over — God granting people the direction they have chosen and removing the restraint that kept them from arriving at it. The most severe thing in the passage is that God lets go.
The structure is exchange answered by exchange. They traded the glory of God for images Romans 1:23; they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator Romans 1:25 — and the sentence cannot even say it without breaking into doxology, who is blessed forever. Amen, as if the writer must repair the insult in passing. And the exchanges in worship are answered by exchanges in the body: 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 Romans 1:26–27.
The logic the passage asserts is correspondence: creature-worship above and the body's reordering below are one movement, the second the visible form of the first. What is done with God gets done, eventually, with everything else — the therefore of verse 24 is the hinge, and the phrase receiving in themselves the due penalty of their error closes the loop: the consequence is housed in the conduct itself.
Two cautions belong to reading this passage as the letter intends. First, its target is the whole Gentile world's trajectory, not a special class of sinner — the vice list that follows will name envy, gossip and disobedience to parents in the same breath Romans 1:29–30, and chapter 2 will turn on the reader who has been nodding along Romans 2:1. Second, the argument is not finished here: everyone this chapter describes is someone the letter's gospel addresses — the power of God for salvation for everyone who believes Romans 1:16, and the first-person plural of chapter 3 will include the writer among the indicted Romans 3:9.
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