Delivered Over

Read Romans 1:26-27

Three times, Paul tells us that God has "delivered over" everyone who has exchanged God's glory, God's truth, and God's worship for what is shameful, false, and idolatrous (Romans 1:24, 26, 28). His three examples include all sexual impurity, disgraceful passions, and a corrupt mind. God is a good and wise Creator. He designed us to live under his authority, not to oppress us, but so that we would thrive. In this section, Paul doesn't use the usual words for men and women, but "males" and "females." It's an intentional choice to reference Genesis 1:27, "he created them male and female." Paul is not anti-sex, but rather, he's reminding us what it is for. In Genesis, God makes us male and female, marries Adam and Eve, and encourages them to multiply. The creation account honors men and women as image bearers of God; there is no shame about nakedness or sex within the covenant of marriage (Genesis 2:25). A generation before Paul, the orator Quintus Haterius shared a widespread view: "Sexual servicing is a crime for the freeborn, a necessity for a slave, and a duty for the freeman." That is, the powerful could degrade the weak but were not to be degraded themselves. So, it's likely that Paul's brothers and sisters in Christ received his diagnosis with gratitude. They knew firsthand the cost when others were inflamed with lust. So, if we lift these verses out of their context to hurt people we look down on, we've missed the point. As Paul says a few verses later, "Therefore, every one of you who judges is without excuse. For when you judge another, you condemn yourself, since you, the judge, do the same things" (Romans 2:1). Both the self-indulgent and the self-righteous fall short of God's standards. One popular view is that sex is limited by consent and is good when it is loving. But we know that consent and love are not enough. In an affair, both participants can express love for one another, yet still harm their spouses and children. We can argue that what we do in private isn't anyone else's business but not see how our lives are always interconnected. Whenever we invent our own sexual ethics, we miss something important. Jesus also declared, "But I tell you, everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Matthew 5:28). By God's standards, I've failed to remain sexually pure, and failed to avoid judging people whose sins differ from mine. But the same God who delivers us over to sin also delivered Jesus over to rescue us from it (Romans 8:32).