1:19-20 These verses begin a discussion of "natural revelation."Natural revelation describes what everyone knows about God because of what God has revealed concerning Himself in nature. What He has revealed about Himself in Scripture is "special revelation."The creation bears testimony to its Maker, and every human being "hears"this witness (cf. Ps. 19).43
"Napoleon, on a warship in the Mediterranean on a star-lit night, passed a group of his officers who were mocking at the idea of a God. He stopped, and sweeping his hand toward the stars, said, Gentlemen, you must get rid of those first!'"44
Four things characterize this revelation. First, it is a clear testimony; everyone is aware of it ("it is evident [plain]"). Second, everyone can understand it. We can draw conclusions about the Creator from His creation.45Third, it has gone out since the creation of the world in every generation. Fourth, it is a limited revelation in that it does not reveal everything about God (e.g., His love and grace) but only some things (i.e., His power and deity). Natural revelation makes man responsible to respond to his Creator in worship and submission. However it does not give sufficient information for him to experience salvation. That is why everyone needs to hear the gospel.
"Utter uncompromising, abandonment of hope in manis the first preliminary to understanding or preaching the gospel."46
1:21-23 Honoring God as God and giving Him thanks (v. 21) are our primary duties to God in view of who He is. Mythology and idolatry have resulted from man's need to identify some power greater than himself and his refusal to acknowledge God as that power. Men and women have elevated themselves to God's position (cf. Dan. 2:38; 3:1; 5:23). In our day, humanism has replaced the worship of individual human leaders in most western countries. Man has descended to the worship of animals as well (cf. Ps. 106:20). This is perhaps more characteristic of third world countries.
"This tragic process of human god-making' continues apace in our own day, and Paul's words have as much relevance for people who have made money or sex or fame their gods as for those who carved idols out of wood and stone."47
Note the allusions to the creation story in the threefold division of the animal kingdom in verse 23.
1:24-25 The false religions that man has devised and to which Paul just referred constitute some of God's judgment on mankind for turning from Him. False religion is not in any sense good for mankind. It is a judgment from God, and it tends to keep people so distracted that they rarely deal with the true God.
"God's wrath mentioned in Romans 1 is not an active outpouring of divine displeasure but the removal of restraint that allows sinners to reap the just fruits of their rebellion."48
It is active in another sense, however. God gave man over (v. 24; cf. vv. 26, 28) by turning him over to the punishment his crime earned, as a judge does a prisoner. The third characteristic of man in rebellion against God that Paul identified after ignorance (v. 21) and idolatry (v. 23) is impurity (v. 24). Here Paul evidently had natural forms of moral uncleanness in view such as adultery and harlotry. He went on in verses 26-27 to describe even worse immorality, namely unnatural acts such as homosexuality.49
Mankind exchanged the truth of God (v. 25; cf. v. 18) for "the lie"(literally). The lie in view is the contention that we should venerate someone or something in place of the true God (cf. Gen. 3:1-5; Matt. 4:3-10). Paul's concluding doxology underlined this folly.
1:26-27 Because mankind "exchanged"the truth for the lie God allowed him to degrade himself through his passions. The result was that he "exchanged"natural human functions for what is unnatural. In the Greek text the words translated "women"(thelus; v. 26) and "men"(arsen, v. 27) mean "females"and "males."Ironically the homosexuality described in these verses does not characterize females and males of other animal species, only human beings. Homosexuality is a perversion because it uses sex for a purpose contrary to those for which God created and intended it (Gen. 1:28).
"This need not demand the conclusion that every homosexual follows the practice in deliberate rebellion against God's prescribed order. What is true historically and theologically is in measure true, however, experientially."50
AIDS, for example, is probably the consequence of man's rebellion against God rather than a special judgment from God. The "due penalty"is what man experiences as a result of God giving him over and letting him indulge his sinful desires (cf. 6:23).51
"Sin comes from the mind, which perverts the judgment. The effect of retribution is to abandon the mind to that depravity."52
"A contextual and exegetical examination of Romans 1:26-27 reveals that attempts by some contemporary writers to do away with Paul's prohibitions against present-day same-sex relations are false Paul did not impose Jewish customs and rules on his readers; instead he addressed same-sex relations from the trans-cultural perspective of God's created order. God's punishment for sin is rooted in a sinful reversal of the created order. Nor was homosexuality simply a sin practiced by idolaters in Paul's day; it was a distorting consequence of the fall of the human race in the Garden of Eden. Neither did Paul describe homosexual acts by heterosexuals. Instead he wrote that homosexual activity was an exchange of the created order (heterosexuality) for a talionic perversion (homosexuality), which is never presented in Scripture as an acceptable norm for sexuality. Also Hellenistic pederasty does not fully account for the terms and logic of Romans 1:26-27 which refers to adult-adult mutuality. Therefore it is clear that in Romans 1:26-27 Paul condemned homosexuality as a perversion of God's design for human sexual relations."53
