Long ago, I was given false directions by a stranger—on purpose. It took me forever, in an unknown city, to figure out that the joke was on me. I was furious. I went looking for the guy who misled me. How rude and insensitive! How could he do such a thing? But what if I had misled myself? That’s the picture Paul paints in Romans one for idolaters.   

Rosaria Butterfield was misleading herself. Pursuing freedom on her own terms had landed her in an existential prison of her own making. At the time, she identified as a lesbian who despised Christians. She was a tenured professor of English at Syracuse University when God met her in the book of Romans. She writes:

I was 35 years old, called myself a lesbian, and worked as an activist and English professor in New York when I first encountered the words from 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. After many years and much struggling, one night, God used the words of Romans 1 as he led me to repentance and faith. 

One night, I prayed, and asked God if the gospel message was for someone like me, too. I viscerally felt the living presence of God as I prayed. Jesus seemed present and alive. I knew that I was not alone in my room. I prayed that if Jesus was truly a real and risen God, that he would change my heart. And if he was real and if I was his, I prayed that he would give me the strength of mind to follow him and the character to become a godly woman. I prayed for the strength of character to repent for a sin that at that time didn’t feel like sin at all—it felt like life, plain and simple. I prayed that if my life was actually his life, that he would take it back and make it what he wanted it to be. I asked him to take it all: my sexuality, my profession, my community, my tastes, my books, and my tomorrows. 

God answered her prayer. She’s been walking with Jesus for 20 years. She has encouraged many believers and counseled many unbelievers who were pursuing a homosexual lifestyle for freedom but who found only emptiness and guilt. The rest of Rosaria’s story can be read in her book: The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert.  

What struck me about Rosaria’s testimony is how she recognized the driving force underneath her lesbianism, the sin beneath her sin: pride. In another place she said: 

The Bible told me to repent, but I didn’t feel like repenting….How do you repent for a sin that doesn’t feel like a sin?.…I didn’t understand why homosexuality was a sin, why something in the particular manifestation of same-gender love was wrong in itself. But I did know that pride was a sin, and so I decided to start there. As I began to pray and repent, I wondered: could pride be the root of all my sins? I wondered.

That may be one of the most profound statements I’ve read from a person redeemed from a homosexual lifestyle. It’s incredibly insightful, and illustrates Romans one well.  

These verses describe what happens when a person or group of persons rejects God, when they suppress the truth they know about God and create life on their own terms. The consequences are…not good. God gives us what we want. According to this passage, deviant sexual lifestyles are not the cause of sin. The are the effect. Idolatry is at the root, a fire that burns hot on the fuel of pride and autonomy. A refusal to honor and worship God leads to false saviors who mislead and eventually destroy us.   

Rejecting God is like pulling the pin on a spiritual grenade. Freedom on our own fallen terms is actually a prison. C.S. Lewis wrote “Unbelievers enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded, and are therefore self-enslaved.” 

When God gives us over to our idolatries, three things shatter and we enter a tomb-like prison: Idolatry breaks our guidance, our boundaries, and our relationships.

Broken Guidance: Ever experience a misleading GPS route, or see the “recalibrating” signal? When the satellite signal grows weak, we lose our sense of direction. Our navigation system goes black and we’re operating in the dark. It’s like driving on a strange road, in pitch black, without headlights, surrounded by ditches. Death awaits.  

That’s Romans one. We reject God’s system of navigation, so He turns out the lights. Our minds go empty (vs. 28). That is, our reasoning powers, our means of understanding and evaluating, our instrument of precision God gave us to chart our course through life. Our hearts also go dark (vs. 21). That is, our mission control center, the seat of our affections. When we pursue idolatry, we have no compass. Our mind and heart break and we begin to operate upon emotions, feelings, instinct, and urges. 

Like the book of Judges, our guiding principle becomes “If it feels good, do it!” Leon Morris writes, “Their minds became quite unable to make trustworthy moral judgments.” 

My son and I sighted in an air-rifle scope not long ago. It amazed me how only a small click to the right or left on the scope calibration would send a pellet several feet to the wrong side of a bulls eye hundreds of feet away. That’s Paul’s point. Suppress the truth just one click and before you know it, you’ve deified something within creation, de-humanized yourself, and invited darkness into your heart. That’s idolatry. It gets worse.   

Broken Boundaries: This passage is not just about homosexuality (vv 26-27). It’s about idolatry. But homosexuality is a powerful expression of where idolatry can take us when we reject God’s design and push against the boundaries He set within creation. 

When Paul writes about God “giving over” idolators, he first mentions giving them over to “lusts” (vs. 24). The NIV translates it “sinful desires.” Literally, it means “over-desire,” an all-controlling drive and longing. When lust is driving the car, buckle up. You’re going downhill fast. Jen Wilkins writes, “Delight yourself in lawlessness, and your disordered desires will govern you. Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you new desires.”

Those lusts are followed (not surprisingly) by impurity and bodily dishonor. That is, filth, immorality, and defilement. Paul uses a word to describe actions that shame, degrade, abuse and mistreat our bodies. Broken barriers.  

Humans thrive on boundaries. We love our freedom, but we need boundaries to enjoy that freedom safely. Divine boundaries govern us. They’re part of the fabric of living life God’s way. Some boundaries we can’t change, like seasons, gravity, and tides. Others can be trespassed, but only at great peril. 

If we listen closely to the Bible’s sexual ethics, we’ll find clear, beautiful, wise, and exciting boundaries that create a safe space for sexual intimacy. God’s boundaries are clear and simple: Heterosexual marriage between one man and one woman. That boundary cuts off the possibility of sex with anyone else. Rebecca McLaughlin says:  

God’s sexual boundaries are highly restrictive and, in some respects, against our inclinations: few married people never have the desire for sexual intimacy with someone other than their spouse. Thus, every Christian is called at times to sacrifice his or her desires. But marriage also creates immense freedom and security for loving, sexual intimacy without fear of critique or abandonment.

Idolatry will always put us on a collision course with God. Verses 26-27 unmistakingly describe homosexuality as “consumed with passion” and “contrary to nature.” We’re given over to dishonorable passions. This is, shameful and disgraceful. It means we break the boundaries of what is true, honorable, and permissible, and instead, burn with intense desire. Paul describes what happens when we pursue idolatry. We dehumanize.

Both women and men having sexual relations with their own gender is denounced as sinful and breaking God’s boundaries. That’s the fruit of idolatry. Misguided Christians have tried—and failed—to reconcile a homosexual lifestyle with the Bible. Impossible. 

Broken Relationships: The rest of this passage lists behaviors contrary to the enjoyment of rich, full, flourishing human relationships. When God turns His face away, we wither into dishonor. We dishonor our bodies. We dishonor our passions. We dishonor our relationships. Consider the group of words in verses 29-31.

Paul highlights economic disorder (greed); social disorder (murder, strife, deceit and malice); family breakdown (disobedience to parents); relational breakdown (senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless). This is what theologians call the doctrine of total depravity. 

But there is hope for idolaters enslaved in sexual immorality and broken relationships. In another place, Paul gives a similar list of sinful behaviors. Topping that list are the sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, and those who practice homosexuality. He writes, “And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11). I love the power of past tense! Jesus is able and eager to deliver us!  

The pursuit of idolatry in all its sinful expressions will leave people outside of God’s kingdom—though never outside of God’s reach. The Good news about Jesus dying for sins—all sins—can lead us back to God if we open ourselves up to Him. That means faith, humility, confession, and repentance. That’s the Gospel’s promise of deliverance.