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Return to Innocence
179
dictator—impatient, offended, and quick to punish. Instead, “God gave
them up in the lusts of their hearts” (v. 24,
e sv )
“to dishonorable pas
sions” (v. 26,
e sv )
and up “to a debased mind to do what ought not to be
done” (v. 28,
e sv ) .
He allowed them the freedom to have their own way,
abandoning them to their own devices and consequences.
Paul singles out homosexual intercourse for special attention be
cause he regards it as providing a particularly graphic image of the way
in which human fallenness distorts God’s created order. God the cre
ator made man and woman for each other, to cleave to each other, to
be fruitful and multiply. When human beings “exchange” these created
rules for homosexual intercourse, they
embody
the spiritual condition
of those who have “exchanged the truth about God for a lie.”10
But what makes these acts shameless? First, idolatry, which implies
rejection or disregard of the true God. So these people chose to set Him
aside willfully, and against the clear evidence of His works displayed
in the created world (see vv. 19-24). In exchanging God for created
images, they opted to give up truth for a lie, just so they could be au
tonomous (see v. 25). And when the plumb line is cast away, nothing is
askew or plumb, there are no absolutes, and a lie rules over the truth.
There is just one “little” thing missing: control over the consequences of
their actions. And that is eternally off-limits to fallible mortals. Aware
or not, autonomous human beings do not belong, before long, to any
thing or anyone—not to society, not in their own skin. They measure
the distance and depth of the rift between who they are meant to be
and who they have become in their new internalized-shame identity.
Second, homosexual behavior is shameless because it is “unnatural.”
“The reversal of created order in worship (Rom. 1:21-23, 25) is reflect
ed in a reversal of the created order in sexuality. Both are instances of
overturning God’s design and thus evil by nature.... Paul was simply
saying that the roots of homosexuality are in the turning of the face
from God. It
is
unnatural within God’s creation.”1 Here, man and man
and woman and woman arc not made for each other, and there is no
more “one flesh”
union, 12while in
the Creation design man and woman