Effects of Suppressing the truth Immorality Romans 1: 24-26
Failed worship is our worst disorder. This is beneath all the maladies of the world. Repairing this, not first our disordered sexuality, is our main business in life. (Piper)
So, Why does Paul use homosexuality to illustrate the depraved sinful nature of pagan man?
Pervasiveness of Homosexuality
Homosexuality, at least among men, was rampant in the Greco-Roman empire. It was far more prominent and acceptable, at least in some forms in culture, than today. The Spirit used Paul to write to the people in Rome, who understood the widespread pervasiveness and acceptance of homosexuality in the empire and in the city of Rome. He used homosexuality to illustrate the depth of depravity that comes from suppressing the truth and exchanging the truth for a lie. Julius Caesar’s lover was King Nicomedes. Historians Gibbon and Toynbe write that one of the major contributions to the fall of the Roman Empire was homosexuality. Suetonius, the historian, says, 14 out of the first 15 Caesars were homosexuals. It was rampant in Paul’s time, everywhere. Nero was the emperor when Paul wrote Romans and later the one who commanded his death. He had taken a boy named Sporus, had him castrated, then married him in a full wedding and lived with him as a wife. (Mac Arthur). In ancient culture homosexuality was commonplace. The Roman conquest mentality and "cult of virility" shaped same-sex relations. Roman men were free to enjoy sex with other males without a perceived loss of masculinity or social status, as long as they took the dominant or penetrative role. The dynamic between two male lovers was simple. First of all, one was usually of upper class and the other was either a slave or of lower class. The older and richer man was never the receiving party with regards to penetration. This was an unspoken rule among these couples and was in place because if a man was on the receiving end of a sexual relationship he was no longer considered masculine by society’s standards. If a man was the dominant one in a male on male sexual relationship it was just another way for him to assert his place of power in society. Acceptable male partners were slaves, prostitutes, and entertainers, whose lifestyle placed them in the nebulous social realm. It was improper to have homosexual relations with “free men”. Pederasty or erotic relationship between an adult male and a younger male usually in his teens, was commonplace in culture. Roman men in general seemed to have preferred youths between the ages of 12 and 20 as sexual partners. Homosexuality in ancient Rome was a large part of society and of sexuality in general. Sex in the ancient world was considered a casual day-to-day practice with no emotional attachment . . . . Despite its commonality, sex was something that was kept under wraps in ancient Rome and seldom spoken of. . . . There was no real concept of homosexuality or of heterosexuality. Male with male relations were the most common and prevalent type of homosexuality in ancient Rome (this is why Paul later introduces that idea of lesbianism in the text as an illustration of the extent of their “dishonorable passions”). One well known example of older men taking a young male as a lover was that of the emperor Hadrian (48 years old), despite being married, taking a young lover named Antinous (13 years old). Upon Antinous’s untimely suspicious death, Hadrian deified him and had a large of amount of statues made of him and placed all over the Empire. Some suggest that there are more statues of him than any other Roman figure in history. Hadrian founded the city of Antinopolis close to Antinous's place of death, which became a cultic center for the worship of Osiris-Antinous. (wikipedia). Many today consider Antinious the God of Love or the Gay God.
Perverse Nature of Homosexuality
Paul is not trying to place homosexuality as a sin above all other sins. He is in fact using homosexuality to illustrate dramatically the effects exchanging the truth of God for a lie and worshipping and serving the creature rather than the creator (1:24). There are two important things to consider in the text as to why Paul uses homosexuality rather than another sin. First, Paul is describing the immorality of the pagan world, not the religious world (2:1-29), which emerges from idolatrous behavior when one suppresses the truth and exchanges that truth for a lie. Second, Paul describes homosexuality behavior as “unnatural” (v 26) or against the natural state of things. So first, Paul contextually is speaking about “them” (1:19,24, 26, 28) referring to pagans who do not have the law of God, but who only have natural revelation through “the things that have been made”. These things are sufficient to lead them to the truth and reveal to them the knowledge of the creator God. Although they do not have the Law, they are still responsible for the revelation that they have received. They could receive or reject the truth. They willfully chose to reject it. Their behavior followed with repulsion of God’s person expressed by idolatry and rebellion against his principles conveyed in immorality. Paul presents a connection between sexual sin and idolatry. If you will not conform your desires to the truth, you will conform the truth to your desires. And thus, there is always an inseparable connection between idolatry and immorality. Idolatry is simply immorality worked out. And immorality is simply idolatry worked out. Thus, the connection. We either conform desire to truth, or truth to desire. (Legion Duncan). Secondly, they do not have law, but they do have all that the Creator has revealed in the natural realm to direct their behavior. God’s created order, nature, speaks loudly to what is natural and what is unnatural. What is "Natural"? The point of all this is that, whatever the physical or social or personal origins of the homosexual disordering of our sexuality, none of that would define it as good or "natural" or "normal." In a world where God is the Creator and Designer of life, "natural" means in sync with God's purpose and design, (Piper). In the New Testament the "natural" pertains to the created world and its present general order as ordained by God, ranging from ordinary living things such as animals or branches and biological processes, to the fundamental, original condition of things without artificial intervention — either their innate character or inherited condition. God has ordained "the natural function" for sexual relations in His creation order: the normal, and normative, pattern of male and female becoming one flesh. God's creation ordinance, with the specific distinction between male and female, intended for heterosexual relations to be "natural." Man's inherited condition and ordinary biological process, the essential character of his sexuality when there is no artificial intervention and willful reorientation, is therefore heterosexual. (Gil Rugh). When choosing an illustration to describe the depraved sinful behavior of those who “exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator,” Paul could have chosen any of the 21 sins listed in verses 29-31. He could have even chosen sexual sins like fornication and adultery, but he chose homosexuality. Why? James Boice suggests an answer. Fornication and adultery are not “unnatural” sins, for they are not against nature. Of course they are true sins, for they break the moral law of God. They result in impurity and the degrading of our bodies. But they are not unnatural. On the contrary, they are in one sense quite natural. They are accomplished by using one’s body in a natural way. Not so with homosexuality. Homosexual is ‘unnatural” and it is accomplished by using one’s body in an unnatural way, that is against nature. (Boice). So Paul is using the revelation that they have, the created order, to emphasis that their indecent, unnatural and shameless behavior is a violation of the natural heterosexual sexual design of the Creator. In deifying the natural they sin against the God who created the nature of things. (James 4:17, Rom 2:14-16, Luke 12:47-48) Also, in the text, Paul never quotes Old Testament verses that address homosexual behavior as sinful (Judges 19:22-30, Lev 18:22, 20:13). This is not to diminish the sinfulness of “unnatural’ homosexual behavior, but to express their activity as “dishonoring” by what has been manifest to them. The natural design and order created by God classifies homosexual behavior as against his natural order. A volition of God’s natural order or his written law (1 Cor 6:10, 1 Tim 1: 10) is against him, thus sinful (Gen 39:9, Ps 51:4).
Purpose of God’s Design
We were created to bear the image of our creator (Ps 1:26-27). We were made in his image. We glorify him when we reflect his image. James De Young adequately express this in his book Homosexuality. God made his image-bearers in the form of male and female. Both share the divine image. The fact that Eve came from Adam and was not a distinct creation apart from him, speaks of complementarity, mutual dependence, and similarity of nature that reflect the divine image . It is not possible that male reflects the divine apart from the female. The sexual differences are especially prominent and complementary in the creation of man and women. Homosexuality must affirm that the male gender by itself, or the female gender by itself, is an inadequate representation of the divine image. (De Young). The distinction enunciated in Genesis is more than incidental historical detail. It is a declaration of the proper creation order, cited with authoritative approval and moral significance by Christ. (Matt 19:4-5) It was God's ordained design for sexual relations to be in the form of male-female union, man and wife becoming "one flesh,"(Gen 2:24) and God created the distinction between the sexes to that end. This creation of sexual differentiation by God from the beginning established heterosexuality as the normative direction for the sexual impulse and act. God the Creator gives created things their essential identity and function and defines man's proper relationships. Man's sexual function has been defined by God as male-female behavior. These two creatures were made for each other; their union and interdependence were grounded in the natural order that is, in their God-given identities and functions. Paul maintains that the heterosexual drive is the natural God-given orientation of male and female. There is no natural homosexuality, for homosexuality is precisely a perversion of nature (understood as God's design for human relations). Homosexuals are made, not born; their desire is developed contrary to their God-given identity, learned in opposition to the created order, pursued in defiance of the marriage ordinance. (Greg L. Bahnsen) The Creator clearly indicates that homosexuality violates the natural relationship between a man and woman that He established at creation (1:26-28). It is a sin. (Gil Rugh)
Picture of God’s Design
From the beginning, manhood and womanhood existed to represent or dramatize God’s relation to his people and then Christ’s relation to his bride, the church. (Eph 5:31–32). In this drama, the man represents God or Christ and is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. The woman represents God’s people or the church. And sexual union in the covenant of marriage represents pure, undefiled, intense heart-worship. That is, God means for the beauty of worship to be dramatized in the right ordering of our sexual lives. But instead, we have exchanged the glory of God for images, especially of ourselves. The beauty of heart-worship has been destroyed. Therefore, in judgment, God decrees that this disordering of our relation to him be dramatized in the disordering of our sexual relations with each other. And since the right ordering of our relationship to God in heart-worship was dramatized by heterosexual union in the covenant of marriage, the disordering of our relationship to God is dramatized by the breakdown of that heterosexual union. Homosexuality is the most vivid form of that breakdown. God and man in covenant worship are represented by male and female in covenant sexual union. Therefore, when man turns from God to images of himself, God hands us over to what we have chosen and dramatizes it by male and female turning to images of themselves for sexual union, namely their own sex. (Piper).
Provision of God’s Design
Now why has Paul picked this out? He’s picked it out because of the seriousness of sin. He singles this sin out precisely because it is an example of the human heart working against reason, working against Scripture, and working against nature. It is not unloving to condemn homosexuality. God does not accept any of us as we are. He does something better than that. He accepts us in spite of who we are. And then by His grace, He makes us into what we are not. (Legion Duncan) 1 Cor 6:9-11 gives a bad news/good news message. The bad news is that those who practice the sinful behavior listed in the text (including homosexuality-1 Tim 1:10) don’t inherit God’s kingdom. The good news is that everyone can experience a change in Christ. Those who have been washed, sanctified and justified through a relationship with Christ used to do those things but you aren’t anymore. They have transformed by his grace. That’s good news for everyone. .