With mankind having made its nearly irrevocable fall into idolatry, worshiping that which is not God, and thereby deciding for themselves that there is no god beyond himself and that to which he ascribes divinity, we find that “God gave them over in the desires of their hearts to impurity, to dishonor their bodies among themselves” (Romans 1:24). The Creator God was to be honored by mankind’s stewardship of His good creation, but man, as we can see from the fall, had an altogether different plan. It becomes patently clear that the serpent simply seized upon the desire of the human heart to honor only self, and Paul, because of his constant assertion that God is ultimately in control of all things, describes this as God giving them over to the desires of their heart. With this self-honor, in truth, the opposite transpired. With this self-honor, impurity imposed itself into the world. With this self-honor came dishonor. That dishonor, resulting from the rejection of God’s plan for them, manifested itself in death. The blame for this does not lie with the serpent, but with mankind alone, as this dishonor came at their own hands, dishonoring their bodies through their own decisions and actions---among themselves. What had been made in perfection and for life was now subject to the dishonor of death, far removed from the God-glorifying honor for which they had been created.
Amplifying the seriousness of the charge, the Apostle Paul repeats himself and says that this came about because “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creation rather than the Creator, Who is blessed forever!” (1:25) Of all of the things that can be said about the fall of man, it must be made abundantly clear that it occurred because they believed the lie. In believing the lie, not only did they point their faith towards the serpent, honoring that part of the creation more than the Creator, but above all things, it occurred because they knew themselves to be the pinnacle of God’s creation, and with that knowledge, they sought to worship themselves. The serpent merely provided the justification. This mindset continues unabated to this very day. It is the single darkest component of our fallen state, and that which keeps humanity entrenched in the state of falling short of the glory of God.
From here, we can see Paul moving on from Adam and Eve and surveying the scope of human history from the that day until his own, as he writes, “For this reason”---holding the lie as truth and in so doing worshiping the creation rather than the Creator---“God gave them over to dishonorable passions” (1:26a). Mankind’s passions were no longer directed towards honoring God by engaging in the purpose for which he was created, but rather, directed towards that which dishonored God by dishonoring the image of God in which he had been made. It could be said that this dishonor was a diminishing of what we might call “human-ness,” and stood in stark contrast to God’s very first command to those made in His image, which was to “Be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28). Bringing forth life is one of the primary ways in which mankind can participate in that image with which it has been endowed, and it will generally involve much sacrifice and care and concern on the part of the ones responsible (human parents) for the creation of that life. This necessary sacrifice, care, and concern towards a creation sounds very much like the attitude of the God that we discover in the Scriptures. It is possible that Paul sees the rejection of this as a core component of the self-idolatry that is rampant within humanity, and addresses it in writing words such as “For their women exchanged the natural sexual relations for unnatural ones, and likewise the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed in their passions for one another” (1:26b-27a). Here again, we simply find passion misdirected to that which dishonors, springing from self-idolatry, rather than to that which acknowledges and honors God; and in contrast to the shame that was experienced by Adam and Eve, when their eyes were opened, mankind’s course of dishonor and idolatry would quickly reach the point at which “Men committed shameless acts with men and received in themselves the due penalty for their error” (1:27b).
Indeed, because of the corruption that occurred at man’s fall, and the truth of God and of man’s purpose in this world to honor God rather than self began to be suppressed, death began its reign. A due penalty indeed. Paul goes on to describe the lot of all of humanity, writing “And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what should not be done” (1:28). From time immemorial, mankind has been “filled with every kind of unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, malice… rife with envy, murder, strife, deceit, hostility” (1:28a). More than that, as Paul goes on to write, “They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, contrivers of all sorts of evil, disobedient to parents, senseless, covenant-breakers, heartless, ruthless. Although they fully know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but also approve of those who practice them” (1:29b-32). Yes, because man was imprinted with the divine image, he retains, even in the midst of his self-worship and petulant refusal to acknowledge a God beyond himself, the knowledge that there is still a basic, residual understanding of God’s decree of death for violation of His covenant, though he impotently rages against and attempts to deny that decree and the just God that stands behind it. In spite of all of that, we eventually come to read that, because of the love of God, Christ died (5:8) for that same humanity just described, which is most definitely a truth that should not, cannot, and will not be suppressed.
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