Romans 1:26

Romans 1:26, in plain English

Because they turned away from God, He withdrew His grace and allowed them to pursue desires that go against how He made human sexuality to function, even among women.

Why it's here

Paul is continuing the pattern of 'God gave them over.' He's naming specific examples of how people abandoned God's design. The phrase 'unnatural relations' refers to sexual behavior that contradicts the created order. Paul isn't singling this out as uniquely worse than other sins mentioned—he's listing it as one expression of what happens when people reject God's authority over their lives.

Who's speaking

Paul

Where it sits in the story

This reflects the creation account in Genesis, where God made sexuality as a reflection of His own nature and designed it for covenant faithfulness between man and woman. When humans reject God's design, they reject the wisdom built into creation itself.

The scholarly reading

Because of this fundamental spiritual disorientation, God permits humanity to descend into shameful sexual passions that violate the created design—specifically, women abandoning natural sexual relations for unnatural alternatives.

Language and setting

The 'dishonorable passions' (pathē atimias) represent a pathological trajectory: the appetite systems designed to reflect divine order become vehicles of degradation. The reference to women exchanging natural relations (physikēn chresin) for unnatural ones (para physin) invokes natural law theory—the conviction that creation itself reveals God's design. Physis (nature) carries both physical and moral significance; it is the created order as ethically instructive. Paul's audience, whether Jewish or gentile, would have recognized this language. The LXX uses para physin to describe violations of the created order (Leviticus 18:23). This is not prudish moralizing but theological diagnosis: disordered worship produces disordered embodiment. Chrysostom emphasized that Paul presents women first—a striking rhetorical move that undercuts any suggestion of special male license and establishes the universality of the condition.

Voice

Paul

Significance

This extends the trajectory of Romans 1:18-32: rejection of God's revealed character (verses 19-20) leads to idolatry (verses 21-23), which produces passional disorder (verses 24-27). The body itself becomes the site where theological rebellion manifests; embodied existence cannot be compartmentalized from spiritual orientation.

24Therefore God gave them over in the desires of their hearts to impurity for the dishonoring of their bodies with one another.

25They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is forever worthy of praise! Amen.

26For this reason God gave them over to dishonorable passions. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones.

27Likewise, the men abandoned natural relations with women and burned with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

28Furthermore, since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, He gave them up to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.

Read all of Romans 1 — Paul's masterpiece — the most systematic explanation of the Christian faith ever written. Dense, brilliant, and life-changing from first verse to last.