Practicing homosexuals—of which I was once one—may not be conscious of the larger, biblical meaning of their sin as outlined in Romans 1, but it would be to their betterment if they were. While the LGBTQ world has become a machine, many individual people who practice homosexuality just want to be left alone to live in peace. But there is no lasting peace in sin, even for the unbeliever.

I was 35 years old, called myself a lesbian, and worked as an activist and English professor in New York when I first encountered these words from Romans 1:

God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

For this reason, God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting. (Romans 1:24–28)

Huh, I muttered. Seems like dangerous hate speech or some other devastation designed to ruin my life. God’s word brought me to a line in the sand and a hole in my heart.

What I Called Love

After many years and much struggling, God used the words of Romans 1 as he led me to repentance and faith. Through the crucible of conversion, I learned that the central thrust of this passage required eyes of faith. What I called love for my lesbian partner, God called defilement.

When God gives a people over to sin, we seem to go blind and deaf and dumb all at once, therefore Romans 1:24–28 is of indispensable importance to the doctrine of the gospel. And yet, of these very same verses, gay activist and progressive self-described “Christian” Matthew Vines writes, “This passage is not of central importance to Paul’s message in Romans” (God and the Gay Christian, 96).

So, which is it? Are these verses inconsequential? Are they God’s love and his offer of life? Should these verses have confronted my homosexuality (and presumably Vines’s)? Or are these verses just “meh”?

Romans 1 for Me Today

As I am typing these words today, having now walked with my Lord and Savior for 21 years, Romans 1 continues to impact my life.

The Bible first confronted me in the welcoming living room of Ken and Floy Smith, a pastor and pastor’s wife who befriended me as their neighbor. Floy has gone on to be with the Lord, but Ken continues as my father in the Lord, offering frequent counsel and encouragement. Ken Smith just wrote these words in an email to me this morning:

We had no idea what all would result from that enjoyable evening there in the Syracuse manse. And it’s still resulting.

Yes, it is still resulting. Because the word of God is living and active. Because God’s salvation fundamentally changes a person from the root. Because God changes the affections of our heart and the work of our hands.

Even though we are not delivered from all sin until glory, sanctification is a mighty thing, even when it is messy and painful and confusing. And all of this raises the question, What does Romans 1 look like today? What does it mean today?

Where Does Homosexuality Come From?

Romans 1 defines for us what homosexuality is and explains why some people give themselves over to it.

We live in a world awash in preferred pronouns and sensitivity training for “sexual minorities” whose “variance” is normalized and celebrated. While the numbers change (and grow), we are told with bold confidence that “science” proves that a certain percentage of people are born gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered. (Sometimes this leaves thinking people scratching our heads. When did sexual orientation become a fixed truth but sexual difference merely a psychological choice, changeable at the beckon of the surgeon’s knife? But I digress.)

In Romans 1, homosexuality is described as an ethical outworking of original sin. Adam’s fall into sin (Genesis 3) violated the terms of God’s covenant and plunged all of his progeny into total depravity (Romans 5:8). Thus, biblically-speaking, homosexual desire is not a benign human variance, but rather, a condemning consequence of Adam’s fall.

Romans 1:26 tells us that people give themselves over to homosexuality because they worship and serve the creation. Therefore, from God’s point of view, homosexual practice is the sexual display of false worship. Well-heeled Gay Pride marches, with big-money corporate sponsors smiling in solidarity with the LGBTQ machine, give us a modern-day picture of what worshiping the creature looks like.

Homosexuality as Judgment

In addition to worshiping the creature, homosexuality is also a manifestation of the judgment of God on a rebellious nation (Romans 1:26). There is nothing innocent or scientifically morally neutral about the growing number of people who call themselves gay or the children who are diagnosed with “ROGD” (Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria), and who believe that genital mutilation is their only hope.

ROGD is not an intersex medical condition; it is a social contagion, disproportionately affecting teenage girls. At a speaking event a year ago, the head psychologist of a large university health clinic asked me this question: “Why are 25% of the women who come into my health clinic with anxiety and depression walking out three months later telling me that they are really transgendered men?” Indeed. Because we, as a culture, have not heeded the clear teaching in Romans 1, young people do not know how to interpret the cavernous pain that they feel inside when they worship the creature and the creation.

Like a fatigued mountaineer plunging headfirst off of a snowy summit loses his grip on which way is up, so too, fallen man rails against the creation ordinance. In blindness and sin, he rejects one man and one woman coming together in a fruitful biblical marriage. Not diverse enough, he says in the face of God’s judgement.

How Does Hardening Work?

The three exchanges of Romans 1 reveal important things about the power of sin. Romans 1 not only tells us what homosexuality is from God’s point of view, but also the process by which a person and a society lose both ability and privilege to hear God’s voice speak into their lives. This happens in degrees, by a series of exchanges. Each exchange deadens the conscience and sears the soul.

Romans 1:23–28 reveals interrelated exchanges that we need to examine: exchanging glory for corruption (1:23), exchanging knowledge of God for falsehood (1:25); and exchanging the creation ordinance for a dysfunctional sexuality that is “contrary to nature” (Romans 1:26–28). Don’t miss the progression: the first exchange is glory for corruption; the second is truth for lies; and the third is natural relations (life-giving) for unnatural relations (death-producing).

Idolatry changes (your) glory into (global) corruption, regardless of your intention. Neither sin nor grace is private; each manifests world-changing meaning and consequence.

The person who changes his glory into corruption is called a fool. He had something irreplaceably precious. It was his glory, inherited from God through the supreme dignity of being made in God’s image. Like a heroin addict who craves what will kill him and disdains what will give him life, the fool cannot stop himself or help himself once he has changed his glory. Idolatry is voracious. And fools not only love company; they demand it (Romans 1:32).

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