1:26-32 In the horrid depravity of the heathen, the truth of our Lord's words was shown: Light was come into the world, but men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil; for he that doeth evil hateth the light. The truth was not to their taste. And we all know how soon a man will contrive, against the strongest evidence, to reason himself out of the belief of what he dislikes. But a man cannot be brought to greater slavery than to be given up to his own lusts. As the Gentiles did not like to keep God in their knowledge, they committed crimes wholly against reason and their own welfare. The nature of man, whether pagan or Christian, is still the same; and the charges of the apostle apply more or less to the state and character of men at all times, till they are brought to full submission to the faith of Christ, and renewed by Divine power. There never yet was a man, who had not reason to lament his strong corruptions, and his secret dislike to the will of God. Therefore this chapter is a call to self-examination, the end of which should be, a deep conviction of sin, and of the necessity of deliverance from a state of condemnation.

For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections,.... Because of their idolatrous practices, God left them to very dishonourable actions, sodomitical ones, both among the men and women:

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Vile affections (πάθη ἀτιμίας)

Lit., passions of dishonor. Rev., passions. As distinguished from ἐπιθυμίαι lusts, in Romans 1:24, πάθη passions, is the narrower and intenser word. Ἐπιθυμία is the larger word, including the whole world of active lusts and desires, while the meaning of πάθος is passive, being the diseased condition out of which the lusts spring. Ἐπιθυμίαι are evil longings; πάθη ungovernable affections. Thus it appears that the divine punishment was the more severe, in that they were given over to a condition, and not merely to an evil desire. The two words occur together, 1 Thessalonians 4:5.

Women (θήλειαι)

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For this cause - On account of what had just been specified; to wit, that they did not glorify him as God, that they were unthankful, that they became polytheists and idolaters. In the previous verses he had stated their speculative belief. He now proceeds to show its practical influences on their conduct.

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For this cause God gave them up, etc. - Their system of idolatry necessarily produced all kinds of impurity. How could it be otherwise, when the highest objects of their worship were adulterers, fornicators, and prostitutes of the most infamous kind, such as Jupiter, Apollo, Mars, Venus, etc.? Of the abominable evils with which the apostle charges the Gentiles in this and the following verse I could produce a multitude of proofs from their own writings; but it is needless to make the subject plainer than the apostle has left it.

For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature:

1:26 For this cause. Because of the apostasy just described.

God gave them up. Abandoned them to their own course, and thus it was shown to what depths men will fall without God.

To vile affections. Vile, shameless, sensual indulgence, such as cannot now be named. The sodomy referred to here was common in the first century among the Romans, and is often spoken of without a sense of shame by their writers. It was prohibited neither by religion nor law, and was acknowledged without shame.

1:26 Therefore God gave them up to vile affections - To which the heathen Romans were then abandoned to the last degree; and none more than the emperors themselves.

26, 27. For this cause God gave them up-(See on [2181]Ro 1:24).

for even their women-that sex whose priceless jewel and fairest ornament is modesty, and which, when that is once lost, not only becomes more shameless than the other sex, but lives henceforth only to drag the other sex down to its level.

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