Page 509 … Re-membering Romans
Another passage commonly used to condemn homosexuals is found at the end of the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans. It reads like this: “For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.” (Romans 1:26-27) … Again, on its face (and when read out of context) this passage does seem to condemn homosexuality. And yet quite a different picture emerges when we look at the true context of these verses …
First of all, when we have the patience to read the entire first chapter of Romans, we realize that the last half doesn’t “fit” at all with the spirit of the first half, much less the tone of the rest of the letter as a whole. Yes, Paul was indeed a writer who often seemed more bipolar than brainy, and yet even so it remains remarkable that he would switch so rapidly from speaking of God’s loving “righteousness” in verses 16-17 to His “wrath” in verse 18.
Secondly, another oddity is the high concentration of third-person usage in this section of Romans – an intensity that is found nowhere else in the entire letter. In these few verses alone, the third-person pronoun (“they”, “their” or “them”) is used fourteen times, the third-person reflexive (“themselves”) is used once, and third-person plural verbs are used repeatedly. Indeed, after reading this passage, any sincere seeker of Truth is left wondering just who it is Paul is talking about here – just who is this “they” he keeps mentioning?
Well, as it turns out, in all likelihood Paul was paraphrasing the anti-Gentile vitriol commonly spewed by the Hellenistic Jews of his day, and in all likelihood he was doing so to set up his primary objective; an objective he clearly identified when he dramatically switched to the second-person in the early verses of the very next chapter. Let’s listen …
“THEREFORE you have no excuse, whoever you are, when you judge others; for in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself … You say, ‘We know that God’s judgment on those who do such things is in accordance with truth.’ And yet do you imagine, whoever you are, that when you judge those who do such things and yet do them yourself, you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you despise the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience? Do you not realize that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance? But by your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed. For he will repay according to each one’s deeds: to those who by patiently doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; while for those who are self-seeking and who obey not the truth but wickedness, there will be wrath and fury. There will be anguish and distress for everyone who does evil, the Jew first and also the Greek, but glory and honor and peace for everyone who does good, the Jew first and also the Greek. For God shows no partiality.” ~ Romans 2:1-11
So you see my Friend, in Romans 1:26-27 Paul is not condemning homosexuals at all, but is rather citing a common condemnation made by conservative Jews of his day against Gentiles – some of whom supposedly engaged in homosexual sex. And what Romans 2:1-11 then shows us immediately thereafter is that Paul actually condemns that condemnation! He does so openly in Romans 2, and does so consistently all the way to the end of this letter (see Romans 3:21-23, Romans 5:18, Romans 7:6, Romans 8:14, Romans 8:28-30, Romans 9:23-26, Romans 10:12-13, Romans 12:3, Romans 12:16-18, Romans 14:4, Romans14:10-14 & Romans 15:2).
In short then, Romans 1:26-27 is part of a rhetorical passage (that – had punctuation marks been used by the ancient writers – would actually have been placed in quotation marks), the condemnations contained therein that Paul then rejects in Romans 2:1-11; essentially saying thereby that we are all to a degree idolaters, and that we are all to a degree fornicators, and that we are all to a degree of “depraved mind” (and that a significant minority of us even engage in homosexual sex) – and therefore that we are to STOP JUDGING ONE ANOTHER!
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