Romans 1:26 explanation

[ssammoh]

I'm not sure what this bible verse means. Can someone explain it to me? Thanks in advance.

 

[Radagast]

I'm not sure what this bible verse means. Can someone explain it to me? Thanks in advance.

You need to read it in context.

Paul is saying (verses 19 and 20) that everyone should know about God, "since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse."

That is, people aren't just ignorant of God, but have rejected Him. This rejection had consequences. For example (verses 22 and 23) people's ideas of what to worship became confused, and they worshipped statues of "mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles." Like this:



In verses 26 and 27, Paul is saying that "unnatural" sexual activities are also a form of confusion resulting from this rejection of God, which God allowed to happen. He particularly mentions "unnatural" sexual activities by women. He doesn't say exactly what that means, but he may be referring to the famous Greek poet Sappho, or to the legendary figure Pasiphaë, who had sex with a bull.

In verses 28 to 32, Paul gives the third stage of this downwards ripple effect of rejecting God, namely social problems: "envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice ... gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless."

There may be a reference here to the "Wisdom of Solomon," a Jewish book (not by Solomon) from a century or so before Jesus:

"Afterward it was not enough for them to err
about the knowledge of God,
but they live in great strife due to ignorance,
and they call such great evils peace.
For whether they kill children in their initiations,
or celebrate secret mysteries,
or hold frenzied revels with strange customs,
they no longer keep either their lives or their marriages pure,
but they either treacherously kill one another,
or grieve one another by adultery,
and all is a raging riot of blood and murder,
theft and deceit, corruption, faithlessness, tumult, perjury,
confusion over what is good, forgetfulness of favours,
pollution of souls, sex perversion,
disorder in marriage, adultery, and debauchery."

The basic idea here is that rejecting God has a downwards ripple effect, affecting worship, and male-female relationships, and every aspect of society. Everything bad and messed-up in society is ultimately the result of rejecting God. The Romans might have been proud of their civilisation, but underneath it was sinful, and evil, and cruel.

The flip side, of course, is that fixing all those social problems can only be done by having a right relationship with God, which is mostly what the book of Romans is about.