Romans 1:24

Wherefore God also--in righteous retribution.

gave them up--This divine abandonment of men is here strikingly traced in three successive stages, at each of which the same word is used (Rom 1:24, Rom 1:26; and Rom 1:28, where the word is rendered "gave over"). "As they deserted God, God in turn deserted them; not giving them divine (that is, supernatural) laws, and suffering them to corrupt those which were human; not sending them prophets, and allowing the philosophers to run into absurdities. He let them do what they pleased, even what was in the last degree vile, that those who had not honored God, might dishonor themselves" [GROTIUS].

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

(24-32) Hence they fell into a still lower depth; for, in anger at their perversion of the truth, God refrained from checking their downward course. He left them to follow their own evil bent. Their idolatry developed into shameless immorality and unnatural crimes. At last the extreme limit was reached. As they voluntarily forsook God, so He forsook them. They ran through the whole catalogue of sins, and the cup of their iniquity was full.

In the passage taken as a whole, three steps or stages are indicated: (1) Rom_1:18-23, idolatry; (2) Rom_1:24-27, unnatural sins allowed by God as the punishment for this idolatry; (3) Rom_1:28-32, a still more complete and radical depravity also regarded as penally inflicted. The first step is taken by the free choice of man, but as the breach gradually widens, the wrath of God is more and more revealed. He interferes less and less to save a sinful world from its fate. It is to be noted that the Apostle speaks in general terms, and the precise proportions of human depravity and of divine judicial impulse are not to be clearly determined.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Wherefore; their impiety was the cause of what followed: this is repeated again, that it may be the better observed. The contempt of God and of religion is the cause of all wickedness.

God also gave them up; this phrase is thrice used in this context, viz. Rom 1:24,26,28; it seems to be taken out of Psa 81:12. Some think his giving them up, is only’ his withdrawing his grace from them, and permitting them to sin; but there seems to be more in it than a bare subtraction or permission. He did not only leave them to themselves, but, in a judicial way, he put then, into the hands of Satan, and of their own lusts; as it is said, Psa 69:27, he added iniquity to their iniquity, making the latter iniquity a punishment of the former.

Between themselves; some read it, in themselves, and some read it, one among another; so the same word is rendered, Eph 4:32; Col 3:13. The apostle here speaks more generally of all kinds of pollution and uncleanness that was committed by them, whether natural or unnatural.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Rom_1:24-25

Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness.

The consequences of the Divine abandonment

You have merely to loose the connection, and the trucks by their own weight rush down the incline, and dash themselves to a thousand pieces. A physician has merely to retire when his orders have been repeatedly disregarded, to deliver his refractory patient over in his disease to protracted suffering and possibly to a premature grave. In like manner, if God judicially delivers over men who wilfully reject Him to their lusts, they will sink into the lowest depths of degradation, and come to everlasting destruction. (C. Neil, M. A.)

The Divine penalty attached to sin

Here Paul expresses the feeling of indignation raised in his heart by the thought and view of the treatment of God by the creation to whom He had revealed Himself so magnificently. There is something here of that exasperation of heart (Act_17:16), felt at Athens. This feeling is expressed forcibly by the conjunctions, διὸ, on account of which, i.e., of the sin just described, referring to the justice of the punishment in general. Καί, also, brings out more especially the relation of congruity between the nature of the punishment and that of the offence. They sinned, wherefore God punished them; they sinned by degrading God, wherefore also God degraded them. The word gave over does not signify that God impelled them to evil, to punish the evil committed. The holiness of God is opposed to such a sense, and to give over is not to impel. On the other hand it is impossible to stop short at the idea of a simple permission. God was not purely passive in the terrible development of Gentile corruption. Wherein did His action consist? He positively withdrew His hand; He ceased to hold the boat as it was dragged by the current of the river. This is the meaning of the apostle in Act_14:16. It is not a simple abstention, but the positive withdrawal of a force. Such is the meaning of Gen_6:3. As Meyer says, The law of history, in virtue of which the forsaking of God is followed by a parallel growth of immorality, is not a purely natural order of things; the power of God is active in the execution of this law. If it is asked how such a mode of action harmonises with the moral perfection of God, the answer undoubtedly is that when man has reached a certain degree of corruption he can only be cured by the excess of his own corruption; it is the only means left of producing what all preceding appeals and punishments failed to effect, the salutary action of repentance. So it is that at a given moment the father of the prodigal lets him go, even giving him his share of goods. The monstrous character of the excesses about to be described confirms this view. The two prepositions ἐν, through, and εἰς, to, differ from one another as the current which bears the bark along, once it has been detached from the shore, differs from the abyss into which it is about to be plunged. Lusts exist in the heart; God abandons it to their power, and the legions that fall which must end in the most degrading impurities. You have dishonoured Me; I give you up that you may dishonour your own selves. (Prof. Godet.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Rom 1:24-25. Wherefore God gave them up — As a punishment of this most unreasonable and scandalous idolatry, God withdrew his restraining grace from them as he did from the antediluvians, Gen 6:3; the consequence of which was, that their lusts excited them to commit every sort of uncleanness. The truth is, a contempt of religion is the source of all wickedness. And ungodliness and uncleanness particularly are frequently united, 1Th 4:5, as are the knowledge of God and purity. Observe, reader, one punishment of sin is from the very nature of it, as Rom 1:27; another, as here, is from vindictive justice. Who changed the truth of God — Those true conceptions which they had of him by nature; into a lie — False opinions of him, and the worship of idols. And they represented his true essence, his incorruptible and immortal nature, by images of men and brute creatures, which are fitly called a lie, as being most false representations of the Deity, who does not resemble them in any respect whatever. Hence idols are called lying vanities, Psa 31:6. And every image of an idol is termed a teacher of lies, Hab 2:18. And worshipped and served the creature — And not only God’s creatures, but their own creatures, the images which their own hands had made. The former expression, εσεβασθησαν, signifies inward veneration, reverence, esteem, and such like qualities felt in the mind. The latter word, εγατρευσαν, denotes the paying outward worship and service to beings thought to be gods. The heathen gave both to their idols, reverencing and respecting them inwardly, and performing various acts of outward worship to them, in token thereof. More than the Creator, who is blessed for ever — Who is eternally glorious, and to whom alone all honour and praise everlastingly belong. Amen — It is an undoubted truth, and to him let it be ascribed accordingly.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Chapter 5

MAN GIVEN UP TO HIS OWN WAY: THE HEATHEN

Rom_1:24-32

WHEREFORE God gave them up, in the desires of their hearts, to uncleanness, so as to dishonour their bodies among themselves.

There is a dark sequence in the logic of facts, between unworthy thoughts of God and the development of the basest forms of human wrong. "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God:-they are corrupt and have done abominable works". {Psa_14:1} And the folly which does not indeed deny God, but degrades His Idea, always gives its sure contribution to such corruption. It is so in the nature of the case. The individual atheist, or polytheist, may conceivably be a virtuous person, on the human standard; but if he is so it is not because of his creed. Let his creed become a real formative power in human society, and it will tend inevitably to moral disease and death. Is man indeed a moral personality, made in the image of a holy and almighty Maker? Then the vital air of his moral life must be fidelity, correspondence, to his God. Let man think of Him as less than All, and he will think of himself less worthily; not less proudly perhaps, but less worthily, because not in his true and wonderful relation to the Eternal Good. Wrong in himself will tend surely to seem less awful, and right less necessary and great. And nothing, literally nothing, from any region higher than himself-himself already lowered in his own thought from his true idea-can ever come in to supply the blank where God should be, but is not. Man may worship himself, or may despise himself, when he has ceased to "glorify God and thank Him"; but he cannot for one hour be what he was made to be, the son of God in the universe of God. To know God indeed is to be secured from self-worship, and to be taught self-reverence; and it is the only way to those two secrets in their pure fulness.

"God gave them up." So the Scripture says elsewhere. "So I gave them up unto their own hearts lusts"; {Psa_81:12} "God turned, and gave them up to worship the host of heaven"; {Act_7:42} "God gave them up to passions of degradation"; "God gave them over to an abandoned mind"; (Rom_1:26; Rom_1:28). It is a dire thought; but the inmost conscience, once awake, affirms the righteousness of the thing. From one point of view it is just the working out of a natural process, in which sin is at once exposed and punished by its proper results, without the slightest injection, so to speak, of any force beyond its own terrible gravitation towards the sinners misery. But from another point it is the personally allotted, and personally inflicted, retribution of Him who hates iniquity with the antagonism of infinite Personality. He has so constituted natural process that wrong gravitates to wretchedness; and He is in that process, and above it, always and forever.

So He "gave them up, in their desires of their hearts"; He left them there where they had placed themselves," in "the fatal region of self-will, self-indulgence; "unto uncleanness," described now with terrible explicitness in its full outcome, "to dishonour their bodies," the intended temples of the Creators presence, "among themselves," or "in themselves"; for the possible dishonour might be done either in a foul solitude, or in a fouler society and mutuality: Seeing that they perverted the truth of God, the eternal fact of His glory and claim, in their lie, so that it was travestied, misrepresented, lost, "in" the falsehood of polytheism and idols; and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. He casts this strong Doxology into the thick air of false worship and foul life, as if to clear it with its holy reverberation. For he is writing no mere discussion, no lecture on the genesis and evolution of paganism. It is the story of a vast rebellion, told by one who, once himself a rebel, is now altogether and forever the absolute vassal of the King whom he has "seen in His beauty" and whom it is his joy to bless, and to claim blessing for Him from His whole world forever.

As if animated by the word of benediction, he returns to denounce "the abominable thing which God hateth" with still more terrible explicitness. For this reason, because of their preference of the worse to the infinite Good, God gave them up to passions of degradation; He handed them over, self-bound, to the helpless slavery of lust; to "passions," eloquent word, which indicates how the man who will have his own way is all the while a "sufferer," though by his own fault: the victim of a mastery which he has conjured from the deep of sin.

Shall we shun to read, to render, the words which follow? We will not comment and expound. May the presence of God in our hearts, hearts otherwise as vulnerable as those of the old pagan sinners, sweep from the springs of thought and will all horrible curiosity. But if it does so it will leave us the more able, in humility, in tears, in fear, to hear the facts of this stern indictment. It will bid us listen as those who are not sitting in judgment on paganism, but standing beside the accused and sentenced, to confess that we too share the fall, and stand, if we stand, by grace alone. Aye, and we shall remember that if an Apostle thus tore the rags from the spots of the Black Death of ancient morals, he would have been even less merciful, if possible, over the like symptoms lurking still in modern Christendom, and found sometimes upon its surface.

Terrible, indeed, is the prosaic coolness with which vices now called unnameable are named and narrated in classical literature; and we ask in vain for one of even the noblest of the pagan moralists who has spoken of such sins with anything like adequate horror. Such speech, and such silence, have been almost impossible since the Gospel was felt in civilisation. "Paganism," says Dr. F.W. Farrar, in a powerful passage, with this paragraph of Romans in his view, "is protected from complete exposure by the enormity of its own vices. To show the divine reformation wrought by Christianity it must suffice that once for all the Apostle of the Gentiles seized heathenism by the hair, and branded indelibly on her forehead the stigma of her shame." Yet the vices of the old time are not altogether an antiquarians wonder. Now as truly as then man is awfully accessible to the worst solicitations the moment he trusts himself away from God. And this needs indeed to be remembered in a stage of thought and of society whose cynicism, and whose materialism, show gloomy signs of likeness to those last days of the old degenerate world in which St. Paul looked round him, and spoke out the things he saw.

For their females perverted the natural use to the unnatural. So too the males, leaving the natural use of the female, burst out aflame in their craving towards one another, males in males working out their unseemliness-and duly getting in themselves that recompense of their error which was owed them.

And as they did not approve of keeping God in their moral knowledge, God gave them up to an abandoned mind, "a reprobate, God-rejected mind"; meeting their disapprobation with His just and fatal reprobation. That mind, taking the false premisses of the Tempter, and reasoning from them to establish the autocracy of self, led with terrible certainty and success through evil thinking to evil doing; to do the deeds which are not becoming, to expose the being made for God, in a naked and foul unseemliness, to its friends and its foes; filled full of all unrighteousness, wickedness, viciousness, greed; brimming with envy, murder, guile, illnature; whisperers, defamers, repulsive to God, outragers, prideful, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, senseless, faithless, loveless, truceless, pitiless; people who morally aware of Gods ordinance, that they who practise such things are worthy of death, not only do them, but assent and consent with those who practise them.

Here is a terrible accusation of human life, and of the human heart; the more terrible because it is plainly meant to be, in a certain sense, inclusive, universal. We are not indeed compelled to think that the Apostle charges every human being with sins against nature, as if the whole earth were actually one vast City of the Plain. We need not take him to mean that every descendant of Adam is actually an undutiful child, or actually untrustworthy in a compact, or even actually a boaster, an άλαζν, a pretentious claimant of praise or credit which he knows he does not deserve. We may be sure that on the whole, in this lurid passage, charged less with condemnation than with "lamentation, and mourning, and woe," he is thinking mainly of the then state of heathen society in its worst developments. Yet we shall see, as the Epistle goes on, that all the while he is thinking not only of the sins of some men, but of the sin of man. He describes with this tremendous particularity the variegated symptoms of one disease-the corruption of mans heart; a disease everywhere present, everywhere deadly; limited in its manifestations by many circumstances and conditions, outward or within the man, but in itself quite unlimited in its dreadful possibilities. What man is, as fallen, corrupted, gone from God, is shown, in the teaching of St. Paul, by what bad men are.

Do we rebel against the inference? Quite possibly we do. Almost for certain, at one time or another, we have done so. We look round us on one estimable life and another, which we cannot reasonably think of as regenerate, if we take the strict Scriptural tests of regeneration into account, yet which asks and wins our respect, our confidence, it may be even our admiration; and we say, openly and tacitly, consciously or unconsciously, that that life stands clear outside this first chapter of Romans. Well, be it so in our thoughts; and let nothing-no, nothing-make us otherwise than ready to recognise and honour right doing wherever we see it, alike in the saints of God and in those who deny His very Being. But just now let us withdraw from all such looks outward, and calmly and in a silent hour look in. Do we, do you, do I, stand outside this chapter? Are we definitely prepared to say that the heart which we carry in our breast, whatever our friends heart may be, is such that under no change of circumstances could it, being what it is, conceivably develop the forms of evil branded in this passage? Ah, who, that knows himself, does not know that there lies in him indefinitely more than he can know of possible evil? "Who can understand his errors?" Who has so encountered temptation in all its typical forms that he can say, with even approximate truth, that he knows his own strength, and his own weakness, exactly as they are?

It was not for nothing that the question was discussed of old, whether there was any man who would always be virtuous if he were given the ring of Gyges, and the power to be invisible to all eyes. Nor was it lightly, or as a piece of pious rhetoric, that the saintliest of the chiefs of our Reformation, seeing a murderer carried off to die, exclaimed that there went John Bradford but for the grace of God. It is just when a man is nearest God for himself that he sees what, but for God, he would be; what, taken apart from God, he is, potentially, if not in act. And it is in just such a mood that, reading this paragraph of the great Epistle, he will smite upon his breast, and say, "God, be merciful to me the sinner". {Luk_18:13}

So doing he will be meeting the very purpose of the Writer of this passage. St. Paul is full of the message of peace, holiness, and the Spirit. He is intent and eager to bring his reader into sight and possession of the fulness of the eternal mercy, revealed and secured in the Lord Jesus Christ, our Sacrifice and Life. But for this very purpose he labours first to expose man to himself; to awaken him to the fact that he is before everything else a sinner; to reverse the Tempters spell, and to let him see the fact of his guilt with open eyes.

"The Gospel," someone has said, "can never be proved except to a bad conscience." If "bad" means "awakened," the saying is profoundly true. With a conscience sound asleep we may discuss Christianity, whether to condemn it, or to applaud. We may see in it an elevating programme for the race. We may affirm, a thousand times, that from the creed that God became flesh there result boundless possibilities for Humanity. But the Gospel. "the power of God unto salvation," will hardly be seen in its own prevailing self-evidence, as it is presented in this wonderful Epistle, till the student is first and with all else a penitent. The man must know for himself something of sin as condemnable guilt, and something of self as a thing in helpless yet responsible bondage, before he can so see Christ given for us, and risen for us, and seated at the right hand of God for us, as to say, "There is now no condemnation; Who shall separate us from the love of God? I know whom I have believed."

To the full sight of Christ there needs a true sight of self, that is to say, of sin.

William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.

1:24 When human beings exchanged the living God for idols, God abandoned them, a point Paul makes twice more in this paragraph (1:26, 28). The word abandon includes a sense of “handing over,” suggesting that God actively consigns people to the consequences of their sin.

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Rom 1:24. Διό, wherefore) One punishment of sin arises from its physical consequences, Rom 1:27, note, [that recompense of their error, which] was meet; another, moreover, from retributive justice, as in this passage.—ἐν ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις, in the lusts) ἐν, not ἐις. Ἁι ἐπιθυμίαι, the lusts, were already present there. The men themselves were such as were the gods that they framed.—ἀκαθαρσίαν, uncleanness) Impiety and impurity are frequently joined together, 1Th 4:5; as are also the knowledge of God and purity of mind, Mat 5:8; 1Jn 3:2, etc.—ἀτιμάζεσθαι, to dishonour) Honour is its opposite, 1Th 4:4. Man ought not to debase himself, 1Co 6:13, etc.—ἐν ἑαυτοῖς,[15] among their ownselves), by fornication, effeminacy, and other vices. They themselves furnish the materials of their own punishment, and are at the cost of it. How justly! they, who dishonour God, inflict punishment on their ownselves. Joh. Cluverus.

[15] So, late corrections in D; G Orig. 1, 260, e.—Vulg. and Rec. Text. But ABCΛ and Memph. Version read ἀντοῖς.—ED.

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Rom_1:24. Wherefore (as a penal retribution for their apostasy) God also gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity. καὶ, also, indicates the giving up as a thing corresponding to the guilt. Comp on Php_2:9.

ἐν ταῖς ἐπιθ. τ. κ. αὐτ.] contains that, in which they were involved, i.e. the moral condition in which they were found when they were given up by God to impurity. Comp Rom_1:27; Eph_2:3; Bernhardy, p. 209. The instrumental rendering (Erasmus, Er. Schmid, Glöckler and Krehl) is unnecessary, because the immediate literal sense of ἐν is quite sufficient, and the former is less suitable as to sense, since it conveys something which is obvious of itself.

παρέδωκεν] expresses the real active giving up on the part of God. The favourite explanation of it by εἴασε, so often resorted to since Origen and Chrysostom, is nothing but a rationalising gloss at variance with the literal meaning. To the Apostle God is the living God, who does not passively permit the retributive consequences of fidelity or of apostasythus, as it were, letting them run their course, as an artificer does with his wheel workbut Himself, everywhere active, pervades and effectively develops the arrangements which He has made. If then God has so arranged that man by apostasy from Him should fall into moral impurity, and that thus sin shall be punished by sin (and this connection of sin with sin is in accordance both with experience and Scripture, Isa_6:10; Job_8:4; Psa_69:28; Psa_81:13; Mar_4:12), this arrangement can only be carried out in reality through the effective action of its originator; and God Himself must give up the apostates unto impurity, inasmuch as it is by His doing that that moral connection is in point of fact accomplished. Comp Act_7:42; Rom_9:19; also 2Th_2:11 f.; and the rabbinical passages quoted by Schoettgen, especially from Pirke Aboth, c. 4 : Festina ad praeceptum leve tanquam ad grave, et fuge transgressionem; praeceptum enim trahit praeceptum, et transgressio transgressionem: quia merces praecepti praeceptum est, et transgressionis transgressio. Consequently, if the understanding of παρέδωκεν in its strictly proper and positive meaning is quite in keeping with the universal agency of God, in His physical and moral government of the world, without, however, making God appear as the author of sin, which, on the contrary, has its root in the ἐπιθυμίαι τ. καρδ., we must reject as insufficient the privative interpretation[487], that became current after Augustine and Oecumenius, which Calovius has adopted in part, and Rückert entirely. Comp Philippi, who thinks of the withdrawal of the Divine Spirit and its results, though in the sense of a positive divine infliction of punishment. This withdrawal, through which man is left in the lurch by God, is the immediate negative precursor of the παρέδωκεν (Sir_4:19). Reiche thinks that Paul here avails himself, with more or less consciousness of its being erroneous, of the general view of the Jews regarding the origin of the peculiar wickedness of the Gentiles (Psa_81:13; Pro_21:8; Sir_4:19; Wis_10:12; Wis_13:1; Act_7:42); and that this representation of moral depravity as a divine punishment is to be distinguished from the Christian doctrinal system of the Apostle. But how very inconsistent it is with the character of Paul thus consciously to bring forward what is erroneous, and that too with so solemn a repetition (Rom_1:26; Rom_1:28)! And is it not an arrangement accordant with experience, that apostasy from God is punished by an ever deeper fall into immorality? Can this arrangement, made as it is by God justo judicio (Calvin), be carried out otherwise than by God? Analogous are even heathen sayings, such as Aesch. Agam. 764 ff., and the heathen idea of the θεοβλάβεια; comp also Ruhnken, a[490] Vellej. ii. 57, 3. But just as man, while his fidelity is rewarded by God through growth in virtue, remains withal free and does not become a virtuous machine; so also he retains his freedom, while God accomplishes the development of His arrangement, in accordance with which sin is born of sin. He gives himself up (Eph_4:19), while he is given up by God to that tragic nexus of moral destiny; and he becomes no machine of sin, but possesses at every moment the capacity of μετάνοια, which the very reaction resulting from the feeling of the most terrible misery of sinpunished through sinis designed to produce. Therefore, on the one hand, man always remains responsible for his deterioration (Rom_1:32; Rom_2:6; Rom_3:5; Rom_7:14); and, on the other, that punishment of sin, in which the teleological law of the development of evil fulfils itself, includes no contradiction of the holiness of God. For this reason the view of Köllnerthat the Apostles idea is to be separated from its Jewish and temporal form, and that we must assume as the Christian truth in it, that the apostasy of men from God has brought them into deepest misery, as certainly as the latter is self-inflictedis a superfluous unexegetical evasion, to which Fritzsche also has recourse.

ἀκαθαρσίαν] spurcitia, impurity, and that lustful (comp Gal_5:19; Eph_4:19; Col_3:5), as is plain from the following context; not generally: all action and conduct dishonouring the creaturely glory of man (Hofmann). The τοῦ ἀτιμάζεσθαι may be taken either as the genitive of the purpose: that they might be dishonoured (Rückert, Philippi, van Hengel), or as the genitive of more precise definition depending on ἀκαθαρσ. (impurity of the becoming dishonoured, i.e. which consisted therein; so Fritzsche, Winer, Tholuck and de Wette). The latter (see Buttmann, neut. Gr. p. 230 f.) is the more probable, partly because the ἀτιμάζεσθαι κ.τ.λ[492] already constitutes the impurity itself, and does not merely attend it as a result; and partly on account of the parallel in Rom_1:28, where ΠΟΙΕῖΝ Κ.Τ.Λ[493] is likewise epexegetical. ἀτιμάζεσθαι is not however the middle, whereby the αὐτοπαθές would be expressed, for which there is no empirical usage, but the passive: that their bodies were dishonoured among themselves, mutually. This ἐν ἑαυτοῖς refers to the persons (αὐτῶν, not to be written αὑτῶν), not asserting that the ἀτιμάζασθαι takes place on themselves, which is in fact already conveyed by τὰ σώματα αὐτῶν,[494] but rather based on the nature of participation in unchastity, according to which they bring one on the other reciprocally the dishonouring of the body. In this personal reciprocity of those who practise unchastity with each other lies the characteristic abominableness of the dishonouring of the body; and this point is designated by ἐν ἑαυτοῖς more expressly, because in contrast to non-participating third persons, than it would have been by ἐν ἀλλήλοις (Kühner, a[495] Xen. Mem. ii. 6, 20).

The vices of unchastity, which moreover are still here referred to quite generally (it is otherwise in Rom_1:26 f.), and not specially as unnatural, according to their disgraceful nature, in whatever forms they may have been practised, are specifically heathen (in fact, even partially belonging to the heathen cultus), as a consequence of apostasy from the true God (comp 1Th_4:5). As they again prevail even among Christians, wherever this apostasy spreads through unbelief, they must verify even in Christendom their heathen nature, and, along with the likewise essentially heathen πλεονεξία, pre-eminently exclude from the salvation of the Messiah (Eph_5:5 f.; Col_3:5; 1Co_6:9 f.).

With ἀτιμάζ. τ. σώμ. compare the opposite, 1Th_4:4, where τὸ ἑαυτοῦ σκεῦος must be explained of the body as the vessel of the Ego proper.

[487] It is at bottom identical with the permissive rendering. Therefore Chrysostom not only explains it by εἴασεν, but illustrates the matter by the instance of a general who leaves his soldiers in the battle, and thus deprives them of his aid, and abandons them to the enemy. Theodoret explains it: τῆς οἰκείας προμηθείας ἐγύμνωσε, and employs the comparison of an abandoned vessel. Theophylact illustrates the παρέδωκεν by the example of a physician who gives up a refractory patient (παραδίδωσιν αὐτὸν τῷ ἐπὶ πλέον νοσεῖν).

[490] d refers to the note of the commentator or editor named on the particular passage.

[492] .τ.λ. καὶ τὰ λοιπά.

[493] .τ.λ. καὶ τὰ λοιπά.

[494] Hofmann refers the reading which he follows, ἐν αὐτοῖς, to the σώματα, but explains this: the body of each person in himself; consequently, as if the expression were ἐν αὐτοῖς, and that in the sense in semet ipsis. With the reading ἐν αὐτοῖς we should rather render it simply: in order that among them (i.e. in their common intercourse) their bodies should be dishonoured. Such was to be the course of things among them.

[495] d refers to the note of the commentator or editor named on the particular passage.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Rom_1:24

Wherefore also he gave them, in their lusts, unto uncleanness. The most natural construction of this passage is to connect εἰς ἀκαθαρσίαν with παρέδωκεν, he gave up unto uncleanness. We have the same construction in Rom_1:26, Rom_1:28, and infrequently elsewhere. To construct παρέδωκεν with ἐν ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις, as Beza and others do, gives indeed a good sense, He gave them up to their desires unto uncleanness, i.e., so that they became unclean, but is opposed to the constant usage of the New Testament, in as much as παραδίδωμι never occurs in construction with ἐν. If the former construction be adopted, ἐν ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις may be rendered as in our version, through their lusts; or better in their lusts; ἐν expressing their condition, or circumstances; them in their lusts, i.e., being in them, immersed in them. To dishonor, τοῦ ἀτιμάζεσθαι. This infinitive with τοῦ may depend on the preceding noun; the uncleanness of dishonoring, etc., quae cernebatur in, etc. Winer, §45:4. b. But as the infinitive with the genitive article is so frequently used to express design, or simple sequence, it is better to make it depend on the whole preceding clause, He gave them up to uncleanness, to dishonor, i.e., either in order that they might dishonor, or so that they dishonored, etc. ἀτιμὰζεσθαι may be taken either as middle, so that they dishonored their bodies; or as passive, so that their bodies were dishonored. The former best suits the context. Ἐν ἑαυτοῖς is either equivalent to ἐν ἀλλήλοις, reciprocally, they dishonored one another, as to their bodies; or in themselves, dishonoring their bodies in themselves; significantius exprimit, says Calvin, quàm profundas et ineluibiles ignominiae notas corporibus suis inusserint.

This abandonment of the heathen to the dominion of sin is represented as a punitive infliction. They forsook God, διὸ καί, wherefore also he gave them up to uncleanness. This is explained as a simple permission on the part of God. But it removes no real difficulty. If God permits those who forsake him to sink into vice, he does it intelligently and intentionally. The language of the apostle, as well as the analogy of Scripture, demands more than this. It is at least a judicial abandonment. It is as a punishment for their apostasy that God gives men up to the power of sin. Tradidit Deus ut justus judex. He withdraws from the wicked the restraints of his providence and grace, and gives them over to the dominion of sin. God is presented in the Bible as the absolute moral and physical ruler of the world. He governs all things according, to the counsel of his own will and the nature of his creatures. What happens as consequences does not come by chance, but as designed; and the sequence is secured by his control. It is beyond question, says Tholuck, that, according to the doctrine of the Old and New Testaments, sin is the punishment of sin. So the Rabbins teach, The reward of a good deed is a good deed, and of an evil deed, an evil deed. This is also the teaching of all experience. We see that sin follows sin as an avenger. De Wette truly says, Diese Ansicht ist nicht bloss jüdisch, sondern allgemein wahr vom absoluten Standpunkte der Religion aus. This is no mere Jewish doctrine, but it is universally true from the absolute standpoint of religion. God is not a mere idle spectator of the order of events; he is at once the moral governor and efficient controller of all things. Man is not a virtue-machine, says Meyer, when God rewards virtue with virtue; neither is he a sin machine, when God punishes sin with sin. Men are as free in sinning as they are in obeying; and what in one passage and from one point of view, is properly presented as the work of God, in another passage and from another point of view, is no less properly presented as the work of man. What is here said to be Gods work, in Eph_4:19 is declared to be the sinners own work.

Charles Hodge — Commentary on Romans (1835), First Corinthians (1857), and Ephesians (1856) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

As a just judge.

The unrighteousness of men he setteth forth first, in this, that even against nature following their lusts, they defiled themselves one with another, by the just judgment of God.

The contempt of religion, is the fountain of all mischief.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

Verse 24. God-gave them up, c.] They had filled up the measure of their iniquities, and God, by permitting them to plunge into all manner of irregularities, thus, by one species of sin, inflicted punishment on another.

Dishonour their own bodies] Probably alluding here to what is more openly expressed, Ro 1:26-27.

Between themselves] ενεαυτοις, Of themselves, of their own free accord none inciting, none impelling.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

24. God therefore gave them up, etc. As impiety is a hidden evil, lest they should still find an evasion, he shows, by a more palpable demonstration, that, they cannot escape, but must be held fast by a just condemnation, since such fruits have followed this impiety as cannot be viewed otherwise than manifest evidences of the Lord’s wrath. As the Lord’s wrath is always just, it follows, that what has exposed them to condemnation, must have preceded it. By these evidences then he now proves the apostasy and defection of men: for the Lord indeed does so punish those, who alienate themselves from his goodness, that he casts them headlong into various courses which lead to perdition and ruin. And by comparing the vices, of which they were guilty, with the impiety, of which he had before accused them, he shows that they suffered punishment through the just judgment of God: for since nothing is dearer to us than our own honor, it is extreme blindness, when we fear not to bring disgrace on ourselves; and it is the most suitable punishment for a reproach done to the Divine Majesty. This is the very thing which he treats of to the end of the chapter; but he handles it in various ways, for the subject required ample illustration.

What then, in short, he proves to us is this, — that the ingratitude of men to God is incapable of being excused; for it is manifest, by unequivocal evidences, that the wrath of God rages against them: they would have never rolled themselves in lusts so filthy, after the manner of beasts, had not the majesty of God been provoked and incensed against them. Since, then, the worst abominations abounded everywhere, he concludes that there existed among them evidences of divine vengeance. Now, as this never rages without reason, or unjustly, but ever keeps within the limits of what is right, he intimates that it hence appears that perdition, not less certain than just, impended over all.

As to the manner in which God gives up or delivers men to wickedness, it is by no means necessary in this place to discuss a question so intricate, (longam — tedious.) It is indeed certain, that he not only permits men to fall into sin, by allowing them to do so, and by conniving at them; but that he also, by his equitable judgment, so arranges things, that they are led and carried into such madness by their own lusts, as well as by the devil. He therefore adopts the word, give up, according to the constant usage of Scripture; which word they forcibly wrest, who think that we are led into sin only by the permission of God: for as Satan is the minister of God’s wrath, and as it were the executioner, so he is armed against us, not through the connivance, but by the command of his judge. God, however, is not on this account cruel, nor are we innocent, inasmuch as Paul plainly shows, that we are not delivered up into his power, except when we deserve such a punishment. Only we must make this exception, that the cause of sin is not from God, the roots of which ever abide in the sinner himself; for this must be true,

“Thine is perdition, O Israel; in me only is thy help.” (Hosea 13:9)

By connecting the desires or lusts of man’s heart with uncleanness, he indirectly intimates what sort of progeny our heart generates, when left to itself. The expression, among themselves, is not without its force; for it significantly expresses how deep and indelible are the marks of infamy imprinted on our bodies.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

24–32. The same subject: heathen sin judicially aggravated

24. Wherefore God also gave them up] The inevitable connexion of idolatry with debased morality is stated here. Nothing but the knowledge of the Holy One, Eternal and Almighty, can ever really teach and enforce human purity; even though conscience (up to its light) always takes the part of purity. Manifold experience shews that mere social civilization and mental culture can never really banish even the grossest lusts. Nothing but the knowledge of God as He is can reveal to man both his fall and his greatness, his sin and his sacred duty.

God also gave them up] So Psa_81:11-12; Act_7:42. On the other hand man “gives himself over;” Eph_4:19. Experience as well as Revelation says that the most terrible, and just, penalty of sin is the hardening of the sinning heart. It is a “law;” though in using that word we must here specially remember that, as with physical so with moral laws, “their ultimate reason is God.” The “law” of judicial hardening is His personal will, and takes place along with His personal displeasure.

through the lusts] Lit. in the lusts: a pregnant phrase; q. d. “He gave them up to live in vile desires.”

to dishonour] The dignity and sanctity of the body is a main and peculiar truth of Revelation.

between themselves] Another reading gives “among them;” but the evidence is not decisive, and general reasons support the E. V.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness,.... Not by putting any into them, but by leaving them to the pollution of their nature; by withdrawing his providential restraints from them, and by giving them up to judicial hardness:

through the lusts of their own hearts. The heart of man is the source of all wickedness; the lusts that dwell there are many, and these tend to uncleanness of one sort or another: by it here is meant particularly bodily uncleanness, since it is said they were given up

to dishonour their own bodies between themselves; either alone, or with others; so that as they changed the glory of God, and dishonoured him, he left them to dishonour themselves by doing these things which were reproachful and scandalous to human nature.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:

Ver. 24. Gave them up to uncleanness] Aristotle confesseth the disability of moral knowledge to rectify the intemperance of nature; and made it good in his practice; for he used a common strumpet to satisfy his lust. Socrates is said to have had his catamite {a} inter Socraticos, & c. (Juvenal.)

{a} A boy kept for unnatural purposes. ŒD

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Wherefore - That is, because they were unwilling to retain him in their knowledge, and chose to worship idols. Here is traced the practical tendency of paganism; not as an innocent and harmless system, but as resulting in the most gross and shameless acts of depravity.

God gave them up - He abandoned them, or he ceased to restrain them, and suffered them to act out their sentiments, and to manifest them in their life. This does not imply, that he exerted any positive influence in inducing them to sin, any more than it would if we should seek, by argument and entreaty, to restrain a headstrong youth, and when neither would prevail, should leave him to act out his propensities. and to go as he chose to ruin. It is implied in this,

That the tendency of man was to these sins; That the tendency of idolatry was to promote them; and, That all that was needful, in order that people should commit them, was for God to leave him to follow the devices and desires of his own heart; compare Psa 81:12; 2Th 2:10, 2Th 2:12.

To uncleanness - To impurity, or moral defilement; particularly to those impurities which he proceeds to specify, Rom 1:26, etc.

Through the lusts of their own hearts - Or, in consequence of their own evil and depraved passions and desires. He left them to act out, or manifest, their depraved affections and inclinations.

To dishonour - To disgrace; Rom 1:26-27.

Between themselves - Among themselves; or mutually. They did it by unlawful and impure connections with one another.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Wherefore God gave them [4] up, &c. That is, as St. John Chrysostom says, permitted them, in punishment of their wilful blindness, to fall into the foulest, most shameful, and unnatural sins of uncleanness here described. (Witham)

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[BIBLIOGRAPHY]

Greek: to de paredoken, entautha eiasen esti.

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

24. God also gave them up—The Divine Spirit, which loves to draw to itself the willing and susceptible human spirit, being thus abandoned, substituted, rejected, and repelled with insult, withdraws Himself and leaves the apostate to himself.

To uncleanness—The spiritual in the man, unrefreshed and uninvigorated by the Divine Spirit, becomes faint and inert, and the animal reigns alone in power.

Dishonour their own bodies—The animal grows in lust and exerts its utmost power in sensuality, ascertaining by shameful experiment the full extent to which debasement in man can go.

Dishonour their own bodies—By unnatural and beastly practices they not only subject their bodies to what all pure minds hold to be infamy, but by effeminacy and vile diseases, the result of their abuse, they contract a permanent debasement to their persons.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Wherefore God (kai , here in the Textus Receptus, is ill supported) gave them up in the lusts of their hearts unto uncleanness, to dishonour their own bodies between (rather, among) themselves. So tou atimazesyai , etc., is rendered in the Authorized Version. The verb, however, is probably passive, a middle use of it not being elsewhere found. In either ease the general meaning is the same. The genitive, tou atimazesyai , seems most naturally taken as denoting what the akayarsia consisted in, rather than either the purpose or the results of their being given over to it (cf. ver. 26, where paredwken eiv payh atimiav is followed by a description of what these were). Here is noticed a further stage of judicial degradation; the matiaothv of idolatry, itself judicial, had its further judicial consequence in the akayarsia of abominable sensuality. Similarly, in Ephesians 4, the ergasia akayarsiav pashv en pleonexia , prevalent among the nations, is traced to their mataiothv , in that they had become "alienated from the life of God." It is notorious that idolatrous worship was not uncommonly accompanied by debauchery; notably that of the Phoenician Astarte, and of Aphrodite and Dionysus (see Livy, 39:8, for an account of the Dionysus at one time in Rome; and Athen., 13. pp. 574, 579, and 14. p. 659, for the Aphrodisia at Athens and Corinth); cf. Numbers 25, etc., "The people joined themselves unto Baal-peor," and the allusion to it, 1Co_10:8. On that occasion no more is intimated than promiscuous intercourse between the two sexes, sinking men in that regard to the level of the brutes; but still worse "uncleanness" is in the apostle"s view, such as sinks them even below that level; and how common such unnatural vices had become, and how lightly thought of, no one conversant with classical literature needs to be reminded.

Vers. 24-27. Evil passion.

A more frightful exhibition of sin and its consequences than that given by the apostle in the latter part of this chapter could not have been presented; yet to have said less than this would have been to fall short of the facts of the case, which needed to be stated in order to prepare the way for the publication of a gospel of pardon and of purity.

I THE ROOT OF EVIL PASSION, OR LUST, IS IN THE WORSHIP OF THE CREATURE. The beginning of all evil is in departure from God. His works, and especially the most honourable and beautiful of all his material constructions the human body are intended to lead the thoughts and aspirations of men to the great Creator himself, whose attributes they in some measure display. The symmetry and grace and beauty of the human form and features are the crown of the physical creation. And to the Christian the body of man has this higher interest it was tenanted by the human mind, it was possessed by the Divine nature, of the Son of God himself. The attractiveness of the body is not only a fact indicative of the Divine delight in form; within lawful bounds it is intended to subserve the high purposes of social and especially of conjugal life. But when the interest centres upon what is corporeal, and does not pass beyond and above it, then the Divine intention is frustrated. Evidently the nobility, the enchanting loveliness characteristic of the human body in its grandest and fairest types, are designed to suggest the infinite and eternal spiritual excellence. "Thus beauty here points up to that above, And loveliness leads on to perfect love.

But when this great and precious lesson is missed, what follows? Inevitable degradation. The creature is worshipped, and the Creator is forgotten or despised. The mind and heart seek to rest in what can never satisfy them. The emblem is mistaken for the reality, the shadow for the substance.

II THE FRUIT OF EVIL PASSION, OR LUST, IS UNNATURAL AND DEBASING VICE. Readers of the ancient literature of Greece and Rome, students of anthropology, travellers and residents in heathen lands in our own time, are well aware of the lengths to which sinful passion can lead those whom it masters. There is no need to go into detail, and it is better for Christian people to remain ignorant of corruptions with which, happily, they are never brought into contact. But it remains true that, with idolatry, the filthiest rites and orgies have often been, and still are, associated. Those abandoned to "fleshly lusts" appear to exhaust their ingenuity in inventing forms of unlawful indulgence.

III THE PUNISHMENT OF EVIL PASSION, OR LUST, IS ASSURED BY THE RETRIBUTIVE ACTION OF GOD"S RIGHTEOUS GOVERNMENT. There is a natural belief in retribution. Nemesis is no mere invention of the human imagination; it springs from convictions and fears from which humanity can never free itself. Revelation confirms the natural utterances of human reason, assuring us that after death is the judgment, and that every man shall give account of himself to God, when evil deeds shall not go unpunished. The laws of nature to a large extent ensure some measure of retribution even here and now. Tribes and nations which have practised debasing and unnatural vices have paid the penalty in national deterioration, and individual sinners have reaped the bitter fruit proper to evil seed. And there is every reason to believe that the righteous judgment of God is not confined to this present earthly state.

IV THE REMEDY OF EVIL PASSION, OR LUST, IS PROVIDED IN THE GOSPEL OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST. It is the purpose of the apostle, in this Epistle to the Romans, to show that the mercy of God our Father has abounded to sinful men, in the provision of

(1) pardon for even heinous sin, upon the sinner"s repentance and faith; and

(2) purity of heart and life such as the Spirit of Christ alone can create.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Wherefore - One punishment of sin is from the very nature of it, as ver. 27; another, as here, is from vindictive justice. Uncleanness - Ungodliness and uncleanness are frequently joined, 1 Thess. iv, 5 as are the knowledge of God and purity. God gave them up - By withdrawing his restraining grace.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

Observe here, 1. Another infamous sin charged upon the Heathens; namely, the sin of uncleanness; yea, base, unnatural uncleanness, and pollutions of the most odious kinds.

Learn thence, That idolatry and uncleanness often go together. Solomon’s uncleanness led him to idolatry, and his idolatry increased his uncleanness. The city of Rome at this day, which is a grove of idols, the chief seat of idolatry, is next to Sodom for uncleanness; witness their allowing of stews by public authority.

Learn, 2. That all kinds and degrees of pollutions both natural and unnatural, are to be detested and abhorred, as dishonouring the body. Our bodies are Christ’s members, the Holy Ghost’s temples; let us therefore glorify God with our bodies on earth, which shall be subjects capable of glory with himself in heaven.

Observe, 2. God’s judiciary tradition of these idolatrous Heathens to the sin of uncleanness. Wherefore God gave them up to uncleanness. Almighty God often doth, and always righteously may, punish sin with sin: God punished the idolatry of the Heathens here, by delivering them up to vile affections, to uncleanness, and unnatural lusts.

But how is this consistent with God’s holiness and hatred of sin? Thus, God neither infuses sin into their hearts, nor excites to sin in their lives, but leaves sinners to themselves, to act without restraint, according to the inclination of their own lusts and corruptions: And also, gives them up to Satan, that unclean spirit, who will not fail to provoke them to such uncleanness as he knows their inclinations stand ready to comply with.

Lord, keep back thy servants from sinning against the light of nature, against the light of scripture, lest we be judicially darkened, and given up to a sottish and injudicious mind, to hardness of heart, and the vilest of affections.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

24. “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts unto impurity to dishonor their bodies among themselves,

William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Wherefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts unto uncleanness, that their bodies should be dishonored among themselves :

J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

24. Wherefore. Having chosen folly, God gave them up to the consequences of their folly, and there followed an awful moral degradation which is now described. Their false religion was no check upon their lusts. They engaged in the lowest and most disgusting lusts. Language cannot describe the pollution of the Gentile world, when Paul wrote, as revealed by the pagan writers of that period.

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

Therefore

"Because what I have just said is true"

God gave them over to

"God allowed them to indulge in"

them ... their ... themselves ... they

the "mankind" of Romans 1:18

the lusts of their hearts for uncleanness

Here "lusts of their hearts" is a synecdoche that represents the evil things they wanted to do. AT: "the morally impure things they desired greatly" (See: Synecdoche)

for their bodies to be dishonored among themselves

This is a euphemism that means they committed immoral sexual acts. You can translate this in an active form. AT: "and they committed sexually immoral and degrading acts" (See: Euphemism and Active or Passive)

who worshiped and served the creation

Here "creation" refers to what God created. AT: "They worshiped things that God created" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)

instead of

"rather than"

translationWords

lust

heart

clean

true

worship

servant

create

eternity

amen

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

24. The consequences seen in the moral condition, to which GOD handed man over. Man by ignoring the truth is led to neglect the worship of GOD for the worship of creatures, and thence (24) to failure in due respect to his own body and (26) consequent misuse of the body for unnatural ends, and (28) misapplication of the mind to devising conduct which ignores his own true end and all social claims.

παρέδωκεν ὁ θ. Cf. Rom 1:26; Rom 1:28; cf. Rom 4:25, and for the converse Php 2:12. This surrender of man to the consequences of his own choice is also the act of man himself, cf. Eph 4:19. But it is still an act of judgment on the part of GOD. See S. H., Giff., Moberly, Atonement and Personality, p. 15 f.

ἐν ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις τ. κ. α. The desires, uncontrolled by the choice of man’s true end, are the occasions of sin.

τοῦ ἀτιμάζεσθαι. The gen. expressing result, as generally in S. Paul, cf. Moulton, p. 217, = the use of the body for purposes not intended; cf. πάθη ἀτιμίας below, and n. esp. Col 2:23 (note in C.G.T.). ἐν αὐτοῖς requires us to take ἀτιμάζεσθαι as pass.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

24-32.] Immorality, and indeed bestiality, were the sequel of idolatry.

24.] The καί after διό may import, As they advanced in departure from God, so God also on His part gave them up, &c.;—His dealings with them had a progression likewise.

παρέδωκεν] not merely permissive, but judicial: God delivered them over. As sin begets sin, and darkness of mind deeper darkness, grace gives place to judgment, and the divine wrath hardens men, and hurries them on to more fearful degrees of depravity.

ἐν ταῖς ἐπιθ.] in the lusts—not by nor through the lusts (as Erasmus and E. V.);—the lusts of the heart were the field of action, the department of their being, in which this dishonour took place.

ἀκαθαρσίαν] more than mere profligacy in the satisfaction of natural lust (as Olsh.); for the Apostle uses cognate words ἀτιμάζεσθαι and ἀτιμία here and in ver. 26:—bestiality; impurity in the physical, not only in the social and religious sense.

τοῦ ἀτιμάζεσθαι] the genitive may imply either (1) the purpose of God’s delivering them over to impurity, ‘that their bodies should be dishonoured,’ or (2) the result of that delivering over, ‘so that their bodies were dishonoured,’ or (3) the nature of the ἀκαθαρσία, as πάθη ἀτιμίας below,—‘impurity, which consisted in their bodies being dishonoured.’ The second of these seems most accordant with the usage of the Apostle and with the argument.

ἀτιμάζεσθαι is most likely passive (Beza, al. De Wette), as the middle of ἀτιμάζω is not found in use. And this is confirmed by the old and probably genuine reading αὐτοῖς, which has been altered to ἑαυτοῖς from imagining that ‘they’ was the subject to ἀτιμάζεσθαι. So that their bodies were dishonoured among them.

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

24. παρέδωκεν: three times repeated, here, in ver. 26 and in ver. 28. These however do not mark so many distinct stages in the punishment of the heathen; it is all one stage. Idolatry leads to moral corruption which may take different forms, but in all is a proof of God’s displeasure. Gif. has proved that the force of παρέδωκεν is not merely permissive (Chrys. Theodrt; Euthym.-Zig.* ), through God permitting men to have their way; or privative, through His withdrawing His gracious aid; but judicial, the appropriate punishment of their defection: it works automatically, one evil leading to another by natural sequence.

This is a Jewish doctrine: Pirqê Aboth, 4:2 ‘Every fulfilment of duty is rewarded by another, and every transgression is punished by another’; Shabbath 104a ‘Whosoever strives to keep himself pure receives the power to do so, and whosoever will be impure to him is it [the door of vice] thrown open’; Jerus. Talmud, ‘He who erects a fence round himself is fenced, and he who gives himself over is given over’ (from Delitzsch, Notes on Heb. Version of Ep. to Rom.). The Jews held that the heathen because of their rejection of the Law were wholly abandoned by God: the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from them (Weber, Altsyn. Theol. p. 66).

ἐν αὐτοῖς א A B C D*, several cursives; ἐν ἑαυτοῖς Dc E F G K L P, &c., printed editions of Fathers, Orig. Chrys. Theodrt;, Vulg. (ut contumeliis adficiant corpora sua in ipsis). The balance is strongly in favour of αὐτοῖς. With this reading ἀτιμάζεσθαι is pass., and ἐν αὐτοῖς = ‘among them’: with ἐν ἑαυτοῖς, ἀτιμ. is mid. (as Vulg.).

On the forms, αὐτοῦ, αὑτοῦ and ἑαυτοῦ see Buttmann, Gr. of N. T. Gk. (tr. Thayer) p. 111; Hort, Introd., Notes on Orthography. p. 144.

In N. T. Greek there is a tendency to the disuse of strong reflexive forms. Simple possession is most commonly expressed by αὐτοῦ, αὐτῆς, &c.: only where the reflexive character is emphasized (not merely suum, but suum ipsius) is ἑαυτοῦ used (hence the importance of such phrases as τὸν ἑαυτοῦ υἱὸν πέμψας Rom 8:3). Some critics have denied the existence in the N. T. of the aspirated αὑτοῦ: and it is true that there is no certain proof of aspiration (such as the occurrence before it of οὐχ or an elided preposition; in early MSS. breathings are rare), but in a few strong cases, where the omission of the aspirate would be against all Greek usage, it is retained by WH. (e.g. in Joh 2:24; Luk 23:12).

24. διὸ παρέδωκεν κ. τ. λ. 14:12. ἀρχὴ γὰρ πορνείας‡ ἐπίνοια εἰδώλων, εὑρέσεις δὲ αὐτῶν φθορὰ ζωῆς.

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Vv. 24, 25. “Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves:who travestied the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature instead of the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.” — In these words there is expressed the feeling of indignation raised in the heart of the apostle by the thought and view of the treatment to which God has been subjected by the creature to whom He revealed Himself so magnificently. The verses have something of that παροξυσμός, that exasperation of heart, of which the author of the Acts speaks (Act 17:16) when describing Paul’s impressions during his stay at Athens. This feeling is expressed forcibly by the two conjunctions διὸ καί, wherefore also. Διό, literally, on account of which, that is to say, of the sin just described; this first conjunction refers to the justice of punishment in general; the second, καί, also, brings out more especially the relation of congruity between the nature of the punishment and that of the offence. They sinned, wherefore God punished them; they sinned by degrading God, wherefore also God degraded them. This καί has been omitted by the Alex.; a mistake, as is plain, for it expresses the profoundest idea of the whole piece. No one would have thought of adding it. The word gave over does not signify that God impelled them to evil, to punish the evil which they had already committed. The holiness of God is opposed to such a sense, and to give over is not to impel. On the other hand, it is impossible to stop short at the idea of a simple permission: “God let them give themselves over to evil.” God was not purely passive in the terrible development of Gentile corruption. Wherein did His action consist? He positively withdrew His hand; He ceased to hold the boat as it was dragged by the current of the river. This is the meaning of the term used by the apostle, Act 14:16 : “He suffered the Gentiles to walk in their own ways,” by not doing for them what He never ceased to do for His own people. It is not a case of simple abstention, it is the positive withdrawal of a force. Such also is the meaning of the saying, Gen 6:3 : “My Spirit shall not always strive with man.” As Meyer says: “The law of history, in virtue of which the forsaking of God is followed among men by a parallel growth of immorality, is not a purely natural order of things; the power of God is active in the execution of this law.” If it is asked how such a mode of action harmonizes with the moral perfection of God, the answer undoubtedly is, that when man has reached a certain degree of corruption, he can only be cured by the very excess of his own corruption; it is the only means left of producing what all preceding appeals and punishments failed to effect, the salutary action of repentance. So it is that at a given moment the father of the prodigal son lets him go, giving him even his share of goods. The monstrous and unnatural character of the excesses about to be described confirms this view.

The two prepositions, ἐν, through, and εἰς, to, differ from one another as the current which bears the bark along, once it has been detached from the shore, differs from the abyss into which it is about to be precipitated. Lusts exist in the heart; God abandons it to their power, and then begins that fall which must end in the most degrading impurities. The infinitive τοῦ ἀτιμάζεσθαι might be translated: to the impurity which consists in dishonoring. But as the whole passage is dominated by the idea of the “manifestation of divine wrath,” it is more natural to give this infinitive the notion of end or aim: in order to dishonor. It is a condemnation: “You have dishonored me; I give you up to impurity, that you may dishonor your own selves.” Observe the καί, also, at the beginning of the verse. The verb ατιμάζεσθαι is found in the classics only in the passive sense: to be dishonored. This meaning would not suit here, unless we translate, as Meyer does: “that their bodies might be dishonored among them” (the one by the other). But this meaning does not correspond with the force of the apostolic thought. The punishment consists not merely in being dishonored, but especially in dishonoring oneself. ᾿Ατιμάζεσθαι must therefore be taken as the middle, and in the active sense: “to dishonor their bodies in themselves. If this middle sense is not common in the classics, it is accidental, for it is perfectly regular. The clause in themselves looks superfluous at first sight; but Paul wishes to describe this blight as henceforth inherent in their very personality: it is a seal of infamy which they carry for the future on their forehead. The meaning of the two readings ἐν αὐτοῖς and ἐν ἑαυτοῖς does not differ; the first is written from the writer’s point of view, the second from the viewpoint of the authors of the deed.

The punishment is so severe that Paul interrupts himself, as if he felt the need of recalling how much it was deserved. With the οἵτινες, those who, Rom 1:25, he once more passes from the punishment to the sin which had provoked it. God has dealt so with them, as people who had dealt so with Him. Such is the meaning of the pronoun ὅστις, which does not only designate, but describe. The verb μετήλλαξαν, travestied, through the addition of the preposition μετά, enhances the force of the simple ἤλλαξαν, changed, of Rom 1:23: the sin appears ever more odious to the apostle, the more he thinks of it.

The truth of God certainly means here: the true notion of His being, the idea which alone corresponds to so sublime a reality, and which ought to be produced by the revelation of Himself which he had given; comp. 1Th 1:9, where the true God is opposed to idols. As the abstract term is used to denote the true God, so the abstract word lie here denotes idols, that ignoble mask in which the heathen expose the figure of the All-perfect. And here comes the height of insult. After travestying God by an image unworthy of him, they make this the object of their veneration (ἐσεβάσθησαν). To this term, which embraces all heathen life in general, Paul adds ἐλάτρευσαν, they served, which refers to positive acts of worship.—Παρά, by the side of, signifies with the accusative: passing beyond, leaving aside with contempt (to go and adore something else).

The doxology which closes this verse: who is blessed for ever, is a homage intended to wash off, as it were, the opprobrium inflicted on God by heathenism. On account of its termination, εὐλογητός may either signify: who ought to be blessed, or: who is blessed. The second meaning is simpler and more usual: just because He ought to be so, He is and will be so, whatever the heathen may do in the matter. The term εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας, for ever, contrasts God’s eternal glory with the ephemeral honor paid to idols, or the temporary affronts given to God.—᾿Αμήν, amen, comes from the Hebrew aman, to be firm. It is an exclamation intended to scatter by anticipation all the mists which still exist in the consciousness of man, and darken the truth proclaimed.

Frédéric Louis Godet — Commentaries on Luke, John, Romans, and 1 Corinthians — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1870s–1890s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.