Handed Over (Romans 1:24-32)

Big Idea: When we refuse to worship God, God gives us over to our sin, and that sin distorts us as individuals and as a society. The only solution is the gospel.

A couple of weeks ago, I heard about a friend who sensed something was wrong with his health. Facing long wait times, his son arranged for him to see a doctor in Buffalo. Once there, his suspicions were confirmed: he was diagnosed with a progressive neurodegenerative disorder affecting his central nervous system. It’s an incurable condition. Yet, despite the difficult news, he felt grateful. The diagnosis brought clarity, and he’s now on medication to help manage the condition and improve his quality of life.

Why would someone be grateful for such hard news? Because a correct diagnosis is essential. In fact, it’s the foundation for healing and restoration. Without it, we’re left guessing, addressing symptoms without ever tackling the root cause. It’s like trying to repair a car without knowing what’s broken. You can tinker endlessly, but the problem remains. The same principle applies to every area of life, whether it’s physical health, emotional struggles, or spiritual issues.

The process of diagnosis can be uncomfortable, even painful. It forces us to confront what’s wrong, and that’s rarely easy. But it’s also a gift. Imagine living with an undiagnosed illness. The day you finally receive clarity, even if the news is hard, is a step toward hope. It marks the beginning of a path forward, where healing—whether physical, emotional, or spiritual—can truly begin.

Romans 1:18-3:20 functions as a piercing and comprehensive diagnosis of the human condition, laying bare the universal problem of sin. Paul doesn’t pull any punches here. He challenges our illusions of righteousness, demonstrating that all humanity, regardless of background, morality, or religion, is guilty before God. It’s a sobering section, but it’s also foundational for understanding the gospel.

But it’s essential that we understand what this section of Romans says. Without it, we can’t grasp the depth of our need for God’s grace or the magnitude of what Christ has done for us. Romans 1-3 reveals that sin isn't just an external issue; it's present in every human heart.

It’s uncomfortable, even painful, to face the truth about our condition. But just as a medical diagnosis opens the door to treatment, this spiritual diagnosis prepares us to receive the cure: the righteousness of God given through faith in Jesus Christ. Only when we understand the weight of our sin can we fully appreciate the wonder of God’s grace. The bad news of Romans 1-3 is what makes the good news of the gospel so breathtakingly beautiful.

Our Biggest Problem

Here’s our problem according to the passage that we looked at last week. It’s actually our biggest problem. Humanity's ultimate problem is God's righteous wrath against our suppression of truth.

God has revealed himself to humanity. According to Romans 1:18-23, God’s revelation has three characteristics. It’s clear, sufficient, and universal.

• It’s clear. It’s not hidden or obscure. It’s plainly evident. Verse 19 says, “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.” God has made himself unmistakably clear through creation. The complexities of the universe, the beauty of nature, and the world's order all reflect his eternal power and divine nature. God has given us the ability to see his hand in everything he’s made.
• It’s sufficient. Verses 20 says, “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.” In other words, creation itself provides enough evidence for people to recognize God’s existence and his divine nature. General revelation doesn't provide all details about God, such as salvation, but is enough to make us accountable. Paul concludes, “So they are without excuse” (v. 20). No one can claim ignorance of God’s reality because his fingerprints are everywhere.
• It’s universal. God doesn’t limit this knowledge to a specific group or culture. From the beginning of creation, every person, in every place, has had access to this revelation through the natural world. It’s not confined to those with access to Scripture or special revelation. Instead, it’s a universal testimony that transcends time and geography.

But here’s our problem. Despite this, humanity has often chosen to reject this knowledge, exchanging the glory of God for idols (vv. 21-23). This rejection isn’t due to a lack of revelation but a willful suppression of the truth.

The problem isn’t with God’s revelation; it’s with our response to it. This rejection isn’t passive; it’s active. It’s a deliberate suppression of the truth, a refusal to acknowledge what is plain to see. Our main problem comes from trading the glory of God for idols that can't fulfill us, which has distanced us from our Creator and brought us under his wrath.

It’s an important diagnosis, but in today’s passage the news gets even worse for us.

God’s Response

Today’s passage answers an important question. What is God’s response to humanity’s suppression of the truth and our refusal to worship him? That is the question that verses 24 to 32 answer.

And the answer is clear and horrifying. It comes in a phrase that’s repeated three times in this passage.

Therefore God gave them up… (verse 24)
For this reason God gave them up… (verse 26)
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up… (verse 28)

How does God respond to human ungodliness? He responds with what one person calls “judicial abandonment.” Here’s what Paul says: Since people suppress the truth about God, God ceases to restrain them. He lets them go headlong into their sins with and experience all the catastrophic consequences. The fundamental sin is a failure to worship him, and once we commit to that sin, it leads to all kinds of other sins. The failure to worship God is the root sin; everything else is the outgrowth of that fundamental sin. As John Piper puts it, all the evils of the world are rivers that flow from this spring. This fundamental sin is the source of all our problems. This was the first sin in the garden, and it’s the source of all of our problems too.

Paul makes an important point in this passage. The refusal to worship God is the fundamental sin that leads to all other sins. The first commandment is this: “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). Later, Jesus gave us the greatest commandment in Scripture in Matthew 22:37-38: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.” Our fundamental task as creatures is to recognize God for who he is and worship him.

But if we refuse to do this, God will let us go our way. He “withdraws his common restraints on our rebellion and gives us over to sink in the swamp we have chosen” (John Piper). James Montgomery Boice puts it well:

Man has wanted to get rid of God, to push him out of his life. In contemporary terms he is saying, “God, I just want you to leave me alone. Take a seat on that chair over there. Shut up, and let me get on with my life as I want to live it.”
And so God does!…
We think that by running away from him we will be happy, wild, and free. But it doesn’t work that way. Instead of happiness we find misery. Instead of freedom we find the debilitating bondage of sin.

It’s like the story of the prodigal son in Luke 15. The prodigal son demanded his inheritance, essentially telling his father, “I wish you were dead.” He wanted freedom on his own terms, apart from the father’s authority. And for a while, it seemed to work. He squandered his wealth on wild living, indulging every desire. But soon, the consequences of his choices caught up with him. He found himself penniless, starving, and humiliated, feeding pigs, an unthinkable situation for a Jewish man. His pursuit of freedom led him into deeper bondage.

This is a vivid picture of what happens when we reject God. Like the prodigal, we think life apart from him will bring happiness and fulfillment. But instead, it leads to emptiness, misery, and the devastating consequences of sin. God gives us what we want, and it proves to be the worst thing for us.

Getting Specific

That’s the message of this passage. When we reject God, he gives us what we want, and what we want turns out to be very bad for us.

But Paul gets specific in this passage about the effects of rejecting him. It’s interesting, because what Paul describes is exactly what you would have seen on the streets of Rome on that day. It’s what we see on the streets of Toronto today.

Paul mentions three main categories of sins.

Sexual Sins

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. (Romans 1:24-27)

In verses 24-27, he points out that rejecting God’s design leads to distorted desires, citing both heterosexual immorality and same-sex relations as examples. These sins aren't isolated; they relate to a deeper problem of idolatry—worshiping created things instead of the Creator. They reflect our disordered hearts, the result of the disordering of our heart-worship. Paul emphasizes that these behaviors are a direct result of humanity’s exchange of God’s truth for a lie. In particular, Paul mentions same-sex sexual activity.

Why focus here? Ephesians 5:31–32 teaches that manhood and womanhood symbolize God's relationship with his people and Christ's relationship with the church. In this drama, the man represents God or Christ and is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. The woman represents God’s people or the church. And sexual union in the covenant of marriage represents pure, undefiled, intense heart-worship. That is, God means for the beauty of worship to be dramatized in the right ordering of our sexual lives.

As Ray Ortlund puts it:

Married sex, with its intimacy and desire and pleasure and intensity and adoration and satisfaction and rest, is a glorious metaphor of heaven. To betray our Lord’s sexual ethics, to drag his amazing gift into the gutter, is to deny the most sacred reality of all, the marriage of the Lamb, given his prophetic purpose invested in married sexuality… What is at stake in our sexuality is nothing less than the gospel itself.

Sexual sin, particularly same-sex sexual activity, distorts this gospel picture. It inverts God’s design. Human beings were created to experience sexual union with those of the opposite sex. Just as idolatry perverts the worship of God, sexual sin—including same-sex relations—violates God’s intended purpose for human sexuality. It's not just a rejection of God's commands but also a denial of the gospel message that marriage and sexuality represent.

Relational and Social Sins

In verses 28-31, Paul expands the list to include a wide range of sins that corrupt human relationships and society. These include:

• Evil and greed: A relentless pursuit of self-interest at the expense of others.
• Envy and murder: Resentment that escalates into hatred and even violence.
• Strife, deceit, and malice: A breakdown of trust and harmony in relationships.
• Gossip and slander: Using words to tear others down, whether in secret or openly.
• Arrogance and boastfulness: Prideful self-exaltation that disregards others.
• Disobedience to parents: A rejection of God-given authority, even in the home.
• Foolishness, faithlessness, heartlessness, and ruthlessness: A complete lack of wisdom, loyalty, compassion, and mercy.

No one escapes unscathed. Paul provides this list for two crucial reasons. First, he wants to make it unmistakably clear: sexual sin isn’t the only sin. All sins, like boasting, gossip, or arrogance, stem from disobedience to God and make us equally worthy of his judgment.

But there’s a deeper purpose behind this list. Paul highlights the harsh reality that the problems in all aspects of life arise from humanity's rejection of God. Our refusal to worship him is the root cause of all sin. Wherever we find ourselves entangled in sin, it all traces back to this fundamental rejection of God. It is the sin beneath every other sin.

One more category of sin:

Cultural Approval of Sin

Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. (Romans 1:32)

Perhaps most striking is Paul’s observation in verse 32: not only do people commit these sins, but they also approve of others who practice them. This shows how sin doesn’t just affect individuals; it creates a culture that celebrates rebellion against God.

Here’s what Paul is saying in a nutshell. When we refuse to worship God, God gives us over to our sin, and that sin distorts us as individuals and as a society.

The Good News After the Bad

The diagnosis in Romans 1:24-32 is sobering, but it’s not the end of the story. God doesn’t leave us in the devastation of our sin. The bad news prepares us for the breathtaking beauty of the good news: God has provided a cure.

Let me remind you of Romans 1:16: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”

There is a power that is greater than sin, and it’s able to save anyone who believes. There’s only one solution to our predicament, and it’s the gospel. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. He stepped into the mess of our rebellion, bore the weight of our sin, and took the judgment we deserved. Through his death and resurrection, he offers us forgiveness, freedom, and restoration. The same God who gives us over to our sin is the God who, in his mercy, calls us back to himself.

The root of our problem is a failure to worship God. But here’s the hope: when we turn to him, when we repent and place our faith in Jesus, He doesn’t just forgive us. He transforms us. He reorders our hearts, restores our relationships, and renews our lives. What sin distorts, God redeems.

Will we continue down the path of rebellion, or will we turn to the One who offers life? The diagnosis is clear, but so is the cure. Jesus invites us to come to him, to lay down our idols, and to worship the One who alone is worthy. And when we do, we find what our hearts have been longing for all along: the joy, peace, and freedom that only he can give.

The bad news of our sin is real, but the good news of the gospel is greater. Run to Jesus. Worship Him. And experience the life only he can give.