Therefore God gave them up to vile impurity in the lusts of their hearts, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.
Parallel translations
- WEB Therefore God also gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to uncleanness, that their bodies should be dishonored among themselves,
- KJV Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:
- BSB Therefore God gave them over in the desires of their hearts to impurity for the dishonoring of their bodies with one another.
- NKJV Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves,
- NLT So God abandoned them to do whatever shameful things their hearts desired. As a result, they did vile and degrading things with each other’s bodies.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Because of their idolatry, God gave them over to the impurity their hearts craved. God's judgment can take the form of handing people over to their own sin.
Overview
This is the first of three solemn statements that 'God gave them up' (vv.24, 26, 28). As a judicial act, God removes restraint and lets sinners follow their corrupt desires to their dishonoring end. This is not God causing sin but giving people over to the consequences of their chosen rebellion, a form of present judgment that displays the seriousness of turning from Him.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 15
- Ps 81:11–12But my people didn’t listen to my voice. Israel desired none of me.
- Acts 7:42But God turned, and gave them up to serve the army of the sky, as it is written in the book of the prophets, ‘Did you offer to me slain animals and sacrifices forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel?
- Matt 15:14Leave them alone. They are blind guides of the blind. If the blind guide the blind, both will fall into a pit.”
- Acts 14:16who in the generations gone by allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways.
- 2 Th 2:10–12and with all deception of wickedness for those who are being lost, because they didn’t receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
- Eph 4:18–19being darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their hearts;
- Rom 1:26–28For this reason, God gave them up to vile passions. For their women changed the natural function into that which is against nature.
- Lev 18:22“‘You shall not lie with a man, as with a woman. That is detestable.
- 1 Cor 6:13“Foods for the belly, and the belly for foods,” but God will bring to nothing both it and them. But the body is not for sexual immorality, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body.
- 1 Cor 6:18Flee sexual immorality! “Every sin that a man does is outside the body,” but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body.
- 1 Th 4:4that each one of you know how to control his own body in sanctification and honor,
- Acts 17:29–30Being then the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold, or silver, or stone, engraved by art and design of man.
- Rom 6:12Therefore don’t let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts.
- Hos 4:17–18Ephraim is joined to idols. Leave him alone!
- 2 Tim 2:20–22Now in a large house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of clay. Some are for honor, and some for dishonor.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Christ at the center
Paul unfolds the gospel in full: Christ our righteousness received by faith, the second Adam in whom many are made righteous, in whose death and resurrection we are buried and raised.
How Romans 1:24 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Greek word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.