Sin doesn’t lie dormant. Ever. Whether in an individual or a society, sin is always fighting to grow like an aggressive, matastasizing cancer. Given the right environment it will grow to overtake the thinking and actions of people, completely consuming their individual and collective lives until there is nothing left. Paul describes this process in Romans 1.
The process begins with worshiping the creature over the eternally blessed Creator. Man rebels against the word of God, refusing to have God define who he is, what he is to believe about God, and how he is to relate to the world around him. Instead, he believes a lie. In man’s stubborn resistance to God’s word, God gives them over to “dishonor their bodies among themselves.” Generally, the dishonoring of the body is not treating the body with the dignity and respect that God bestowed upon it in his creation of us in his image. Whenever our bodies are used for that for which God did not create them, we are dishonoring our bodies. Paul is, most likely, speaking here about sexual immorality. He relates honoring the body and sexual purity speaking to the Thessalonians (1Thess 4.3-4). At this point, the sin is a distortion of the male + female relationship. (more…)