THEREFORE GOD GAVE THEM OVER: Dio paredoken (3SAAI) autous o theos: (Judges 10:13; 2Chr 15:2; 24:20; Ps 81:11,12; Ho 4:17,18; Mt 15:14; Acts 7:42; 14:16; 17:29,30; Eph 4:18; 2Th 2:10, 11, 12)

Therefore (1352) (dio) means  for which, wherefore, therefore and is a term of conclusion, which in the present context explains that because they gave God up and exchanged His glory for a dumb idol, God gave them up. Note the close connection between idolatry (verse 23) and immorality (verse 24).  In fact is the association of idolatry with immorality is commonly highlighted in Scripture - eg, see Nu 25:1,2,3, 1Co 10:7,8, Ga 5:19-note; Gal 5:20-note, Ep 5:5-note, Col 3:5-note, 1Pe 4:3-note; Re 2:14-note; Re 2:20-note.; Re 21:8-note.

Johnson writes that...

The dio (AV, "wherefore") of verse 24 makes the connection with the preceding. In the light of the rebellion just described in Ro 1:18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 the inference of vindicatory judgment is drawn. Sin justly brings judgment, a judgment expressed most clearly in the following verses of this final section of chapter one. (Sermon)

Barnhouse introduces this somber section with these words...

The first stroke in the fearful melody of doom is now heard. The great burden of vengeance sounds the knell and the leit motif of retribution is heard in the majestic symphony of divine judgment. "God gave them up... God gave them up... God gave them over...." Three times in the paragraph there is the sweeping announcement that the human race was abandoned by the Creator God. And as He took His hands off humanity, the race descended more and more into the mire, sucked down into that quagmire which was the spew of its own doings.

This picture is not that of a segment of the most awful paganism. This is the human heart as it is without Christ It is the heart of America as well as the heart of India. The restraining powers of the mass influence of many Christians is greater here than in the pagan world, but every once in a while a corner is raised which permits us to see the formidable filth of even our own land, which puts it on a par with the vilest that the lands of Hell can produce. And the judgment of individuals in our land will be, perhaps, greater, because sin here is a sin against light while in the3 other lands it is frequently a sin within the midsts of gross darkness. (Man's Ruin)

God gave them over - This has to be one of the most frightening verses in the entire Bible. They refused light and instead loved darkness and consequently God gave them over to the power of darkness. Some see this (and I think rightly so) in part as an explanation of Ro 1:18  where "the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven". In this case God revealed His wrath, not by sending fire from heaven, but by abandoning sinful men to their lustful ways.

Newell offers an interesting comment...

This is deeper than the mere lusts of the flesh. Flesh has natural desires, which may or may not be yielded to. The lusts of the heart continue after the flesh is dissolved; and even when, in the tormented bodies of the damned, the lusts of the flesh cannot be conscious or controlling, “the lusts of the heart” will forever exist.— Romans Verse-by-Verse

Listen to a similar refrain from Psalm 81

10 I, the LORD, am your God, Who brought you up from the land of Egypt; Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.
11 But My people did not listen to My voice; And Israel did not obey Me.
12 "So I gave them (Israel) over to the stubbornness of their heart, to walk in their own devices.
13 "Oh that My people would listen to Me, That Israel would walk in My ways!
14 "I would quickly subdue their enemies, And turn My hand against their adversaries.

Elsewhere in the Old Testament, we see God turn people over to their own hardness of heart  Is 6:9, 10, 11; Is 29:9, 10, 11, 12; Je 44:25, 26, 27. Some writers have referred to this as “penal blindness”.

Psalm 115 records the folly of idolatry. Observe the dramatic contrasts between the living God and those things that are no gods at all...

1 Not to us, O LORD, not to us,
   But to Your name give glory
   Because of Your lovingkindness,
   because of Your truth.
2 Why should the nations say,
   "Where, now, is their God?"
3 But our God is in the heavens;
   He does whatever He pleases.

4 Their idols are silver and gold,
   The work of man's hands.
5 They have mouths, but they cannot speak;
   They have eyes, but they cannot see;
6 They have ears, but they cannot hear;
   They have noses, but they cannot smell;
7 They have hands, but they cannot feel;
   They have feet, but they cannot walk;
   They cannot make a sound with their throat.
8 Those who make them will become like them,
   Everyone who trusts in them.

Luke records a similar pattern...

"God turned away and delivered (paradidomi) them (Israel) up to serve the host of heaven" (Acts 7:42)

"And in the generations gone by He permitted all the nations to go their own ways" (Acts 14:16)

God delivered us over to the power of our own lusts to impurity so that we might became "prisoners" that had to obey our own lusts. God's "abandoning" of men on one hand reflects His righteous wrath (cp Ro 1:18) in allowing them to follow their own desires, but on the other hand His giving men over allows them to see what life is like without God! In that sense, there is a redemptive purpose that stands behind the wrath of God. By letting men and women go their own way, God is not just punishing them but is also allowing them to see the emptiness of life without Him. What an awful picture this section of Scripture presents.

Moule writes that...

It is a dire thought; but the inmost conscience, once awake, affirms the righteousness of the thing. From one point of view it is just the working out of a natural process, in which sin is at once exposed and punished by its proper results, without the slightest injection, so to speak, of any force beyond its own terrible gravitation towards the sinner’s misery. But from another point it is the personally allotted, and personally inflicted, retribution of Him who hates iniquity with the antagonism of infinite Personality. He has so constituted natural process that wrong gravitates to wretchedness; and He is in that process, and above it, always and forever.  (Moule, C. G. Handley: The Epistle of St Paul to the Romans)

Explaining the idea of "God gave them over" Godet writes that...

The word...does not signify that God impelled them to evil, to punish the evil which they had already committed. The holiness of God is opposed to such a sense, and to give over is not to impel. On the other hand, it is impossible to stop short at the idea of a simple permission: “God let them give themselves over to evil.” God was not purely passive in the terrible development of Gentile corruption. Wherein did His action consist? He positively withdrew His hand; He ceased to hold the boat as it was dragged by the current of the river. This is the meaning of the term used by the apostle, Acts 14:16: “He suffered the Gentiles to walk in their own ways,” by not doing for them what He never ceased to do for His own people. It is not a case of simple abstention, it is the positive withdrawal of a force. Such also is the meaning of the saying, Ge 6:3: “My Spirit shall not always strive with man.” As Meyer says: “The law of history, in virtue of which the forsaking of God is followed among men by a parallel growth of immorality, is not a purely natural order of things; the power of God is active in the execution of this law.” If it is asked how such a mode of action harmonizes with the moral perfection of God, the answer undoubtedly is, that when man has reached a certain degree of corruption, he can only be cured by the very excess of his own corruption; it is the only means left of producing what all preceding appeals and punishments failed to effect, the salutary action of repentance. So it is that at a given moment the father of the prodigal son lets him go, giving him even his share of goods. The monstrous and unnatural character of the excesses about to be described confirms this view.  (Godet, F: The Epistle of St Paul to the Romans)

S Lewis Johnson writes that  the threefold repetition of the verb given over has...

three major viewpoints in the interpretation of God's giving over of men.

First, perhaps the favorite interpretation of the term is that which has prevailed since the time of Origen and Chrysostom, in which the paredoken is taken in the permissive sense. According to this view God passively permitted men to fall into the retributive consequences of their infidelity and apostasy. The active voice of the verb is surely contrary to this view. It is not said that God permitted rebellious men to fall into uncleanness and bodily dishonor. It is said that He actively, although justly in view of their sin, consigned them to the consequences of their acts. It is His divine arrangement that men by their apostasy should fall into moral impurity, sin being punished by further sin, and He himself maintains the moral connection between apostasy and impurity by carrying out the judgment Himself.

Second, another popular view, which became current after the time of Augustine, takes the word, "gave up," in a privative sense. According to this interpretation God deprived man of an aspect of His work of common grace. He withdrew His hand that had restrained men from evil. Godet has expressed and illustrated this interpretation about as well as it can be set forth. "Wherein did His action consist?" he asks. And the answer follows, "He positively withdrew His hand; He ceased to hold the boat as it was dragged by the current of the river. This is the meaning of the term used by the apostle, Acts 14:16: 'He suffered the Gentiles to walk in their own ways,' by not doing for them what He never ceased to do for His own people. It is not a case of simple abstention, it is the positive withdrawal of a force."

At bottom this view is the practical equivalent of the permissive view. This is evident from the fact that Godet uses Acts 14:16 as illustrative of the sense. However, in that passage the verb used is eiasen (AV, "suffered"), which normally means simply to permit. The Pauline language seems stronger than this. The expression, "God gave them up to uncleanness," describes a judicial act, a "judicial abandonment." The active force of the verb must not be glossed over.

Therefore, finally, it becomes clear that the term must be given a judicial sense. The meaning is not simply that God withdrew from the wicked the restraining force of His providence and common grace, although that privative sense is included in the judicial sense, but that He positively gave men over to the judgment of "more intensified and aggravated cultivation of the lusts of their own hearts with the result that they reap for themselves a correspondingly greater toll of retributive vengeance." The usage of the word in both this epistle (cf. Ro 4:25; 6:17; 8:32) and in the other Pauline epistles (cf. 1Co 5:5; 1Ti 1:20) supports this force.

There is another striking occurrence of the identical form of the verb in Ephesians 4:19, and that passage serves to remind the interpreter that the infliction of punitive justice does not compromise the free agency and responsibility of man. In that passage Paul, speaking of the sin of the Gentiles, writes, "Who being past feeling have given themselves over (Gr., paredoken) unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness." In the midst of the retributive action of God there is no coercion of man. God does not entice or compel to evil. Man remains responsible and can even be said to be giving himself over to uncleanness while God gives him up to the judgment of his sin.

There is a popular saying to the effect that God made man in His own image, but now man is returning the compliment by making his gods in his own image. That saying receives some support from Paul's words here, and one can see that the consequences of that action are deadly. (Sermon)

Pritchard adds

It is only when a man comes to the end of himself that he is ready to think about Jesus Christ. But when that moment of emptiness comes, when he finally faces the "God-shaped vacuum" inside, when he discovers that disobedience only leads to pain, when he reaps the bitter harvest of his own sin, then and only then has he become a candidate for the grace of God! Unfortunately, some people never figure it out in time. They die without realizing the folly of their own behavior. But others come to the end and finally, after many mistakes, they begin to look up. When they do, they find that God is there waiting for them.

Interestingly paradidomi was a judicial term used for handing over a prisoner to his sentence! When men forsake the one true God, He will abandon them (Judges 10:13; 2Chr 15:2; 24:20; Ps 81:11, 12). He accomplishes this by removing His restraint and allowing their innate totally depraved sin nature to run its inevitable course of degradation & destruction. The result is that man so abandoned the truth that he became like a beast in his thinking and in his living.

When men lose God, they always lose themselves.

It’s as if God has said,

All right. If you want to turn away from me, I’ll let you go. I won’t try to stop you. But you’ll have to face the consequences of your own actions.

Hosea 4:17 expresses the judgmental aspects of God "giving us up," leaving us to our own sin:

"Ephraim is joined to idols; Let him alone"  

We err when we think that it is God’s mercy or kindness that allows man to continue in sin; it is actually His wrath which allows us to go on destroying ourselves with sin.

ILLUSTRATION: Dress up a pig, clean him up for the county fair, but the moment you "give him up" and let him go, he will go right back to the mud hole. As to its nature the pig loves uncleanness. Men love their sin as Jesus explained in John 3 declaring that...

"This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil (their deeds speak of what they love). For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed (shown to be wrong, rebuked, corrected - they don't want to be corrected)." (John 3:19-20)

When men choose an evil manner of life, they also choose the consequences such a manner of life brings.

As A T Robertson says

"These people had already willfully deserted God Who merely left them to their own self-determination & self-destruction, part of the price of man’s moral freedom. Paul refers to this stage and state of man in Acts 17:30 by “overlooked” (huperidon). The withdrawal of God’s restraint sent men deeper down. Three times Paul uses paredoken (the parsed form of paradidomi) here (Ro 1:24, 26, 28), not three stages in the giving over, but a repetition of the same withdrawal. The words sound to us like clods on the coffin as God leaves men to work their own wicked will."

Notice the progression: First men reject the truth about God, then they turn away from God, then they turn to immorality. And the shocking truth is that this goes on all the time. Every baby born into this world comes in with a disposition (Sin nature) that turns him away from the truth. All mankind by nature (Adam's "nature" - Ro 5:12-note) actively continually suppresses the truth about God. Left to our own devices, the fallen flesh will naturally gravitate to wickedness and godlessness.

Barclay adds that...

It is one of the grim facts of life that the more a man sins the easier it is to sin. He may begin with a kind of shuddering awareness of what he is doing, and end by sinning without a second thought...The most terrible thing about sin is just this power to beget sin. It is the awful responsibility of free-will that it can be used in such a way that in the end it is obliterated and a man becomes the slave of sin, self-abandoned to the wrong way. And sin is always a lie, because the sinner thinks that it will make him happy, whereas in the end it ruins life, both for himself and for others, in this world and in the world to come.

Vine makes a sad but true observation regarding so called "civilized men" (in contrast to the "heathen") --

Civilization provides no remedy for, or safeguard against, the evil. The more civilized men became, the more vicious became their idolatry. (Parenthetically, the civilized Greeks & Romans had a veritable plethora of "gods") The knowledge of God is the ONLY means of leading man to purity of heart. The sanctity of the body is implied in the teaching of this verse.

Warren Wiersbe explains that...

From idolatry to immorality is just one short step. If man is his own god, then he can do whatever he pleases and fulfill his desires without fear of judgment. We reach the climax of man's battle with God's truth when man exchanges the truth of God for "the lie" and abandons truth completely. "The lie" is that man is his own god, and he should worship and serve himself and not the Creator. It was "the lie" Satan used in the Garden to lead Eve into sin: "Ye shall be as God!" Satan has always wanted the worship that belongs only to God (Is 14:12, 13, 14, 15; Mt 4:8, 9, 10); and in idolatry, he receives that worship (1 Cor. 10:19, 20, 21).

The result of this self-deification was self-indulgence; and here Paul mentions a vile sin that was rampant in that day and has become increasingly prevalent in our own day; homosexuality. This sin is repeatedly condemned in Scripture (Ge 18:20ff; 1Co 6:9, 10; Jude 1:7). Paul characterizes it as "vile" and "unnatural," as well as "against nature." Not only were the men guilty, but "even the women." (Wiersbe, W: Bible Exposition Commentary. 1989. Victor or Logos)

Wuest nicely explains that....

Since men chose to give up God (cp Jn 3:20, Pr 1:29, 5:12) and worship the creature, God could do nothing but give men into the control of the sinful things they preferred to God. In other words, God would not violate man’s will and force him to do something he did not want to do. When men persisted in following their totally depraved natures, God allowed them free rein. The natural result was immorality of the vilest kind. Alford, says of God’s act of delivering mankind over into the control of utter human depravity, “not merely permissive, but judicial, God delivered them over (See Retribution). As sin begets sin, and darkness of mind, deeper darkness, grace gives place to judgment, and the divine wrath hardens men, and hurries them on to more fearful degrees of depravity. ”God delivered man to uncleanness."   (Wuest, K. S. Wuest's Word Studies from the Greek New Testament: Eerdmans or Logos)

Vine notes that

The same word (paradidomi) is used in reference to the death of Christ at Ro 4:25-note and at Romans 8:32-note (see Romans 6:17-note). In this passage the reference is to the divine retribution following upon the sin of exchanging God for an idol. To abandon God is to open a way for complete moral degradation. This retributive dealing is not the outcome of mere despotism on the part of God; for the acknowledgment and worship of the Creator are the means of human happiness.

Atheism and polytheism tend inevitably to moral disease. Our moral nature is governed by laws which God has Himself put therein as part of our very constitution. God works in and by these laws in human experience. In acting against them man sins against God as his Creator and sins against himself as the creature. He therefore lays himself open to the divine retribution expressed in this verse. The process described is not that of mere natural law, it is designed by God and the issue is reached under His control. It must be remembered that in the solemn description given in this passage, of the consequences of idolatry, the apostle is not presenting what is necessarily an irretrievable condition, for the gospel proves to be the power of God unto salvation even from such degradation. Indeed the whole description is a dark background to the revelation of the grace of God in and through the gospel." (Vine, W. Collected writings of W. E. Vine. Nashville: Thomas Nelson or Logos)

Ray Pritchard

There are some messages that pastors would rather not preach. This sermon definitely falls into that category....This passage has for its theme the judgment of God upon a world gone mad with sin. When we read it, we come face to face with "our true condition." Many of us would rather not think about that. I cannot blame those who would prefer to be somewhere else this morning. Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse called this the most terrible passage in all the Bible.

Barclay wrote that...

Before man there stands an open choice; and it has to be so. Without choice there can be no goodness and without choice there can be no love. A coerced goodness is not real goodness; and a coerced love is not love at all. If men deliberately choose to turn their backs on God after he has sent his Son Jesus Christ into the world, not even he can do anything about it.

IN THE LUSTS OF THEIR HEARTS TO IMPURITY: en tais epithumiais ton kardion auton eis akatharsian:

In (en) - Note "in" gives the picture of their being literally entrapped IN their lusts, virtually immersed IN them. The idea of in is in the sphere of influence or in the atmosphere of these wicked insatiable desires. Even as a fish lives in the "atmosphere" of a fish tank, these men and women are allowed to live in the atmosphere of their sinful desires!

Godet comparing the preposition "in" (en) and the subsequent preposition (eis) writes that...

The two prepositions, en and eis differ from one another as the current which bears the bark along, once it has been detached from the shore, differs from the abyss into which it is about to be precipitated. Lusts exist in the heart; God abandons (the heart) to their power, and then begins that fall which must end in the most degrading impurities.  (Godet, F: The Epistle of St Paul to the Romans)

Lusts (1939) (epithumia from the verb epithumeo = to set one's heart upon in turn from epi = upon, toward or used to intensify meaning of following word + thumos = passion) (Click word study) describes an internal drive or passion directed at or toward an object (preposition epi = toward). Epithumia describes that inner passion which greatly desires or longs to do or have something. Although epithumia can occasionally describe a good drive, this usage in Romans (as with most NT uses) describes depraved cravings and inner vile unrestrained desires emanating from our fallen Sin nature (see Sin) inherited from Adam (Ro 5:12-note). Epithumia describes to a degree an out-of-control craving.  The result of these inner cravings is to drive men to open excesses. Compare epithumia to the even more intense craving described in the word orexis (lust) in Romans 1:27 (note).

William Barclay wrote that...

The word translated desires (lusts) (epithumia) is the key to this passage. Aristotle defined epithumia as a reaching out after pleasure. The Stoics defined it as a reaching after pleasure which defies all reason. Clement of Alexandria called it an unreasonable reaching for that which will gratify itself. Epithumia is the passionate desire for forbidden pleasure. It is the desire which makes men do nameless and shameless things. It is the way of life of a man who has become so completely immersed in the world that he has ceased to be aware of God at all.  It is a terrible thing to talk of God abandoning anyone.

Hearts (2588) (kardia) (Click word study) does not refer to the physical organ but is always used figuratively in Scripture to refer to the seat and center of human life. The heart is the center of the personality, and it controls the intellect, emotions, and will.  No outward obedience is of the slightest value unless the heart turns to God. While kardia does represent the inner person, the seat of motives and attitudes, the center of personality, in Scripture it represents much more than emotion, feelings. It also includes the thinking process and particularly the will.

Jeremiah said "The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick" (Jeremiah 17:9, 10) And thus the heart of man's problem is our unregenerate heart. The "lusts of their hearts" are those wicked desires that originate from their evil hearts or which their hearts produced.

They had filled up the measure of their iniquities, and God, by permitting them to plunge into all manner of irregularities, thus, by one species of sin, inflicted punishment on another.

Impurity (