Averse to Avowed

For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions.
(Romans 1:26 – ESV)

The point of our text today is that God has given, is giving, and will give mankind over to unnatural desires. Paul mentions homosexuality as an example, but this is just the obvious manifestation of it. All sin is on the same road. God gives men over to rule themselves, and men do more than sexual perversion, they give themselves to all sorts of unnatural things.

When we don’t find our passion in the glory of God, we will be consumed with our own natural passions, and then, being jaded, we will turn ourselves over to unnatural passions. We become so bored with ourselves that we have to invent new forms of evil (1:30). A man cannot be delivered up to a greater slavery than to be given up to his own lusts.

Young man, young woman, all men, all women, make no mistake, there is a diminishing return on the evil you do and the evil you look at. Even the secular world knows of this, it is called the law of diminishing returns. This law says that we grow less sensitive to the same level of stimuli over time, and thus require ever-increasing stimuli to elicit the same response. An alcoholic may require twelve beers to match the effects that one beer has on someone who does not drink regularly. Just as we can build up a tolerance to alcohol with regular use over time, we can build up numbness to any sin with regular use over time. For that reason, when we continually give in to sin we will require more over time to arrive at the same level of satisfaction and fantasy.

You will become a slave to that thing you don’t want anyone else in authority to know about, you will become bored with it, and will need an ever increasing stimulus to feed your appetite. To everyone I say; if you are not getting better and better you are getting worse and worse. To those of you young ones, and everyone who is ensnared in their own self: You are not wiser than those before you, your friends aren’t going to be wise enough to help you, you will not be able to turn off the switch when you want to, you will not be able to stop yourself, you will go from one bad thing to another, or you will trade one bad thing for another, and think you have escaped yourself and your sin, but you will not escape the coming judgment, you are not escaping it now, you won’t be able to turn back then, you must turn back NOW!

Verse 27 in the KJV says they burned in their passions. You can think you’re smarter than me, that I am just a fool, that this is all a show. You can think in your heart that this isn’t you because you aren’t turning into a homosexual. Well let me tell you, Paul was telling them, and he is telling you, that you may not become a homosexual, but that isn’t the bigger point, the point is that you are going to get worse and worse, fall further and further away from God, if you do not give up the idolatry of yourself. You may not burn for another man, but you burn for your own plan. Now is the time to be saved, turn or burn!

This world shows you how it is, and where it is headed. Homosexuality, just like all sin eventually, has gone from being averse to being allowed, and now it is going from allowed to avowed. Isn’t this what we see in television and movies, they are becoming more promiscuous and more perverse every year. What has changed, are these things less evil, or are we more evil? What do we think this is, liberation? No, it is slavery. We are so bound we think we’re becoming free. Indeed we are, free to be ourselves, the morally depraved, sexually confused, socially chaotic children of disobedience that we are at heart, unless God gives us a new heart.

Think about it; is this you? Things you once said you would never do, now you do, you look for ways to do them, and you burn with passion for them. We think we can sin, and still be in our right minds, but we don’t see sin as sinful as it is. Every sin you commit affects your mindset towards sin itself; every little bit ruins a little bit of your mind. Look again at verses 21-22, when we sin willingly, we go against the knowledge of God, we don’t glorify Him, we are not thankful, we become a little more hard hearted, and we start down the road to being or remaining a fool. That’s why Paul says that we are to work out our salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12), because sin is exceedingly sinful. On your own you won’t win against sin.