This is the only New Testament passage to talk about homosexual acts at any length. It also has been used to bolster the idea that homosexuality is unnatural and that AIDS, or venereal disease, are God’s punishment. In addition, this is the only passage to deal with lesbian sex.

This is not a passing comment. It’s important, significant, and needs to be properly understood. Many people want to dismiss the author, the apostle Paul, as an out-of-touch homophobe who has nothing good to say, but that’s not true at all. To dismiss Paul and his writings would be to lose the greatest treasure we have next to the Gospels. Instead, we must do the hard work and understand this complex man and the profound, life transforming things he has to say.

To understand this passage, first we must look at the whole chapter it comes from, and then we must put this chapter into the context of the whole book. When we look at the whole chapter, we clearly see a logical argument is being carefully laid down. The argument begins in Romans 1:19-21:

For what can be known about God is plain to them [those who suppress the truth], because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse;

What Paul is saying here is that no one can say, “I don’t know anything about God.” All a person has to do is look at the things God has made — in other words, the created world — and he or she can know God’s power and God’s nature; we can know who God is and what God is like. In Paul’s mind everyone is in the same boat, so-to-speak.

In verse 23, Paul points out that some people began to worship human-made images of created things and not God the Creator.

and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.

Paul is talking about the worship of idols. Just as an aside, we may not worship little statues today, but we certainly still worship human-made things such as money, power, possessions, etc. Our idols today take on many different forms. From here people became more interested in earthly pursuits, turning their back on God and ignoring the Spiritual altogether. Consequently, God gave up on them.

Then, in verses 26 and 27 Paul says they gave up their natural (i.e. innate) passion for the opposite gender and instead sought only unbridled, unrestrained pleasure.

For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.

To put this in our words today, straight people had sex with their own gender in a hedonistic, self-centered, idolatrous search for sex and pleasure. These kinds of people lived lives of covetousness, malice, envy, strife, slander, disrespect, pride and hatred of God (verse 29).

The homosexual activity Paul is talking about here was associated with the worship of idols, which probably meant temple prostitutes. The people in question left behind their natural sexual orientation so they could have sex with anyone available. So really, this isn’t about gay men and lesbian women having sex in a way that is natural to them. It is about heterosexual men and women leaving behind their natural inclinations to have sex with their own gender in such a way that was idolatrous and did not honor God.

From here we now have to put this chapter into the context of the larger book. Again, Paul is laying out a logical progression, and chapter one is just the beginning. Before we get into that, let’s back up for just a moment and look at who Paul was writing to. The church in Rome was made up of Jews and non-Jews. Paul himself was a Roman citizen and he had hopes of one day going to the farthest part of the world with the Gospel message (at this time in history this would have been Spain). To undertake this kind of a journey, Paul needed a strong base of operations, and he hoped the Christian church in Rome would be that base.

Because this activity was so rampant, the Romans reading this first chapter would have said, “Yeah, so?” On the other hand, the Jews reading this would say, “Yeah, you’re right. Look at what those disgusting Romans do!” Remember, for a Jew, male-on-male penetration was a taboo. So in the first chapter of his book, Paul succeeds in getting his Jewish audience on his side without really offending his non-Jewish Roman audience.

But in the second chapter, Paul lets his fellow Jews have it. He starts out by talking about judging others, and then goes into a lengthy discussion about the Jewish law. In essence, he is saying that simply being a Jew doesn’t make you any better than anyone else. Following the Law doesn’t make you righteous. To the Romans reading this, now he would have their attention because the Law was a constant point of contention between Jews and non-Jews. So now he has both groups involved with what he is saying. All of this leads up to the point made in Romans 3:23 where Paul says, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

In summary, two things are going on in this book. First, Paul uses the example of heterosexuals engaging in promiscuous sex with anyone and everyone to make a rhetorical point. Second, the sexual activity he is talking about is not a natural expression of God’s creation, but part of idolatrous sexual rituals.

This is not a blanket condemnation of people who have a natural sexual orientation toward a particular gender, or genders. Instead, it is an indictment against everyone of us saying we all turn our backs on God. We all behave in ways that go against the original design and desire of God. We all are in need of a Savior.

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