Chapter 1

MSB Book Introduction:

Book is written to the members of the church in Rome. 

Paul was born about the same time as Jesus, in Tarsus, in the Roman province of Cilicia.  He was himself both a Jew and a Roman citizen.  He studied in Jerusalem under Gamaliel, and was a Pharisee. 

Paul wrote Romans from Corinth.  It was written near the close of his third missionary journey, around 56 AD as he was about to leave Corinth with the offering for the church in Jerusalem.  Phoebe was given the responsibility for delivering the letter to Rome (16:1,2).  2024 - Maybe.  This is implied, perhaps.  Maybe this is the wording on other letters of Paul as to those delivering his letters.  But these two verses do not say outright that she delivered the letter.  And frankly, it seems unlikely.  She would not have been traveling alone in those days.  There would have been many men with her.  Was there no man in Cenchrea worthy of being a postman? This city is mentioned in Acts 18:18 as the place where Paul cut his hair as part of a vow.  That's all it says.  That's all we know about it.

"Paul's primary purpose in writing Romans was to teach the great truths of the gospel of grace to believers who had never received apostolic instruction." 

Unlike 1, 2 Corinthians and Galatians, Romans was not written to correct errant theology or rebuke ungodly living.  Doctrinally, the Roman church was sound.  However, it was in need of the rich doctrine and instruction the letter provides.

2021 - Written from Corinth...when, exactly, in reference to 1,2 Corinthians?  Paul wrote the two letters to Corinth from some other place, not while he was there.  Intro says the second time Paul was there.  But...weren't things pretty tough that time?  Wouldn't that be after his first letter - like between the first and second letter?  MSB chapter intro says he wrote it as he was  about to leave for Jerusalem with an offering.  Perhaps this is the offering he talks about at the end of 2 Cor, that he wanted them to have ready when/if he got there.  Here is what Paul says about that trip - I think....MSB is saying this was on Paul's third missionary journey...but here is the end of 2 Cor:  1 This is the third time I am coming to you. Every charge must be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. 2 I warned those who sinned before and all the others, and I warn them now while absent, as I did when present on my second visit, that if I come again I will not spare them-- 3 since you seek proof that Christ is speaking in me. He is not weak in dealing with you, but is powerful among you. [2Co 13:1-3 ESV]  This looks like a troublesome visit that is forecast  here.  Is this the forecast of the third journey, or of some other that we don't know about.  I guess my question is, how could Paul write a book like Romans while bogged down in the mud of the visit to Corinth that he is talking about here?  How could you rise above the day to day and face to face contentions, discussions, excommunications in all probability, and just the constant tension of whether this church was going to make it or not, to write a letter like Romans?

"The overarching theme of Romans is the righteousness that comes from God ; the glorious truth that God justifies the guilty, condemned sinners by grace alone through faith in Christ alone."  Calvinism again in the MSB???

Under "Interpretive Challenges", MSB says that Paul's discussion of the perpetuation of Adam's sin (5:12-21) is one of the deepest, most profound theological passages in all of Scripture.

2021-2, Maybe Paul was anticipating his journey to Rome as he prepared to leave Corinth for the last time.  He knew he was heading for Jerusalem - a very long journey indeed, even today.  He likely knew that he was destined to go to Rome, but that was even further away, and he was aching to speak with them and pass on the deeper things of the gospel to them.  So to "get that out of his system", and perhaps to lay the foundation for the teaching he would do when he got there, he writes them this deeply doctrinal letter - a text they could begin to study until he could arrive and elucidate further.  Maybe that is how he was able to produce such a letter even from the constant controversy and heresy that was Corinth.

(The MSB notes on these first three chapters average between 1/3 and 3/4's of each page).

First 7 verses are the salutation of the letter.  There is a concise summary of what Paul is all about in here.  It opens with "Called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel - and then a summary of what the gospel of Jesus Christ is about.  Gospel is better read good news I think. 

2021-2, These first verses establish the foundation of the gospel by telling us quickly and concisely who Jesus is.  He is first, the one promised by prophets in scripture.  Second, the son of David by heritage, and third, the Son of God since the Spirit raised him from the dead.  What makes you think Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah?  These three things right here.  From there you can launch into all the prophetic scriptures about his coming, and show that Jesus fulfilled those prophecies.  Then show through the genealogies that he was indeed descended from David, on BOTH sides of his lineage.  And then show by the testimony of many witnesses who were alive at the time that he rose from the dead - not by some prophet standing outside and calling to him or laying on him.  There was no human to call or touch him and bring him back.  He was raised not by man but by the Spirit.  They found the grave ALREADY EMPTY.  This had never happened before, this was unique, this was the Messiah.  Seeing that this year, I wonder now if the book will be organized along those three lines?  Probably not since Rome was already doctrinally sound.  But what a foundation for a study of Christology is in these first verses.

Paul tells them that he hears news of them, and is thankful for them, and regularly prays for them.  He tells them that he has a goal to come and see them, but so far has been "prevented".  This gets us through vs 15.

2024 - It occurs to me that Paul is writing this letter to no one he has ever met before.  They surely know him by reputation, but may not have had any particular reverence for him or his teaching.  So some of the things he tells them in vvs 8-15 might well be aimed at introducing himself to them from afar.

Then these verses:

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. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, "The righteous shall live by faith." [Rom 1:16-17 ESV]

He says this right after he says he wants to preach the gospel to those in the Roman church.  So he is using gospel in a much broader sense than "the plan of salvation".  He wants to tell them all the good news he has about Jesus, his life, his ministry, his work, his sacrifice and resurrection and ascension.  All these things are part of the good news of Jesus Christ.  We so often think of the gospel as stopping at salvation.  But there is lots more to learn after that.

2022 - Came back to this when reading Chapter 2.  Look at vs 17 above.  ESV translates it "from faith for faith".  What does that even mean?  The word they translate "for" is our old friend eis, which almost always gets translated "into".  But in Acts, they translated it "for", giving us the confusion surrounding baptism "for" remission of sin.  Now here it is again in Romans.  From faith for faith instead of from faith (one place) into faith (another place).  When we are given the ability to believe what we cannot see - when we have faith that Christ is Lord, this faith translates us INTO a new state, where our faith is permanent as saved people.  It is faith INTO faith.

2023 - This from BLB as to eis  (which they pronounce ICE):  KJV Translation Count — Total: 1,774x.   The KJV translates Strong's G1519 in the following manner: into (573x), to (281x), unto (207x), for (140x), in (138x), on (58x), toward (29x), against (26x), miscellaneous (322x).

2023 - KJV, NKJV, CSB, NASB95 all translate it "faith to faith".  NLT and NIV translate it "start to finish" and "first to last" respectively, disregarding the words that are there and instead giving us an interpretation.  ESV and RSV are "faith for faith", and ASV is "faith unto faith" - so this last one at least uses the MOST COMMON translation of the word eis since they have no reason to do otherwise.  My paraphrase in an attempt to find the right word...I think "it" in vs 17 refers back to the subject of 16, which was "the gospel".  So in 17, For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed from faith.....faith.  It is pisteous eis pistin.  Genitive to accusative.  From Z, the genitive case is used primarily to indicate possession although it has several other functions.  Example of possessive use:  My mother's sister, when mother's is genitive instead of saying the sister OF my mother.  The accusative is not even mentioned in Z.  There is no entry for it nor explanation of it.  BLB says accusative is a noun that is the direct object, as in His disciples showed him the buildings.  In this same sentence, "His" is genitive, showing possession.  Let's make it more fun...FROM faith....faith.  FROM is the two letter work ek, and is much more commonly translated of than from.  About twice as often really.  So....revealed OF faith.....faith.   OF faith UNTO faith?  FROM faith UNTO faith?  But these ignore the genitive as possessive.  FROM faith's faith?  Revealed from the faith of faith?  But does that use all the words?  Or add extras and ignore what's there.  Here is a definition of pistis - belief with the predominate idea of trust (or confidence) whether in God or in Christ, springing from faith in the same.  The belief that comes from faith.  Faith's belief...Revealed OF faith's belief.  We have a belief, born of faith, in the righteousness of God.  Why is that important?  Because the just LIVE BY FAITH - they BELIEVE as a result of faith.  Yes.  I think I'm going with that!!!  Uses the genitive and the accusative.  Belief is what faith owns.  That belief - saving belief - is what he is really talking about - so accusative.  So both of those work, and there is no need to get down in "trivial" words like unto, to, for, and so on.

2024 - To summarize the conclusion of the whole long paragraph above, read from faith to faith as "the righteousness of God is revealed by the faith that is born of belief."  It is not a merely intellectual faith, akin to believing say that E=mc squared.  We believe this only because someone else has told us this formula is correct.  We believe the gospel because we believe in the one who proclaimed it.  Our faith which starts in trusting that Jesus IS the Son of God leads to faith in all the rest.  I like that too, very much.  IF you believe that Jesus was the one foretold by the prophets, that he was a descendant of David, and that he rose from the grave, then BASED ON THAT FAITH, you also believe - have faith in - all the rest of the things that Jesus said, and as passed on by his apostles.  Faith based on faith.  We go from faith in Christ to faith in all the gospel.

2023 - This verse:  18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. [Rom 1:18 ESV].  A lot in this little verse.  Suppression of the truth God reveals.  That does seem a high crime.  They do so in unrighteousness.  Even if they don't "know" it consciously, it would still be sin to do it.  I don't know that we're clear as to whether they know, except as inferred from what God reveals from heaven.  And we are told what is meant by that in vss 19-20. 

God's wrath is against all ungodliness and all unrighteousness - against violations of the first five commandments about our relationship with God, and about violations of the last five commandments about our relationship with man.  Why does God do this:

19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. [Rom 1:19 ESV]

Does this mean each individual man or does it mean through Scripture, preachers, missionaries, and teachers?  MSB says it means God has sovereignly planted evidence of His existence in the very nature of man by reason and moral law.  Hmm...these are universal traits that only man possesses.  So, we all know not to kill or steal.  This is the implanted moral law that all of us have.  This is conscience - a result of creation and not of hunter/gatherers deciding it is only right to feed the hungry and share the bounty with the rest of the tribe.  Morality did not evolve.

2025 - This is about imago dei.  Paul seems to be assuming that his audience will understand what  he means.  Man is created by God in his image, so certain things that God has declared to be moral and right or immoral and wrong are built right into our DNA.  If that is so, then to choose the immoral cannot be excused by a claim that no one ever told you murder was wrong.  You knew, you did it anyway, so your being condemned is justice, not a death sentence for a violation you did know was wrong.  This goes with "all have sinned".  The moral sense imparted to us by the imago dei is the basis for universal condemnation.

2025 - Maybe not..."being understood through what has been made" indicates that we individually come to recognize that God exists as we observe creation all around us.  Maybe Paul is not really speaking here of the moral sense derived from the imago dei that we also have.  Maybe there are two arguments in play here...

2023 - I think it means every single man ever born.  If God shows it to you -reveals, explains, ingrains, removes all doubt - then you KNOW.  After that it is about acceptance or suppression of the truth.  It has been plain since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.  It says "They are without excuse".  Now we could take the position that the people around when Paul wrote this were living an age without science to inform them, and so he could have "persuaded" the ignorant of his own day, but this will never fly in 2023.  We know, from science, about everything that has been made, right?  Except we don't.  Watch some videos on what the James Webb telescope has done to astrophysics.  It's on its ear!  The Big Bang is now doubted by astrophysicists, not just by Christians!  Newtons Laws were ok....but they were incomplete.  Einstein made them better...but why would you think Einstein will have the last word?  Newtonian physics was "magic" to what came before, and now Einstein is magic compared to Newton...There'll be someone else.

There's a good FB post here, or two, but there is a lot of material needed to make it all tie. 

2022 - Reason and moral law.  No animal can reason.  Animals are "cunning but not intelligent".  The "total learning" of animals is not increasing.  They cannot pass knowledge on.  And whoever heard of an animal behaving according to a moral code?  Or an animal sacrificing itself for others.  So what you have here, in the Bible, is a contrast between those created in God's image, and all the rest.  Reason and moral code are the attributes of God found only in man.  So, then, we might also think of these two things as the "safety net" that keeps our existence on a higher plane - a higher plane of morality and thought - than the animals.  God built this into us.

Additionally, this functionality built into man inherently recognizes that there is a watchmaker.  The recognition of something greater than ourselves arises from our built in reasoning and morality.  Our freedom of choice, originally, was freedom to IGNORE reason and morality and strike out on our own.  And this is indeed what Adam chose.  Even so, the image was still there.  The programs remained.  The foundations were still in place.  Adam still knew, as a sinner, that God was there, and that God was superior and creator, and that he (Adam) had a responsibility to his creator.

2021-2, The point is definitely that deep down, men always know that God created all there is.  We know that chance can never have brought about the observable universe.  No theory of the universe can go back to the other side of the big  bang.  Somewhere, things had to start.  The Bible says something was created from nothing by God who had always existed.  Nothing created God.  Why is it easier to accept that there was nothing before the big bang than to accept that there was nothing before God?  God's existence explains so much that is unexplainable, not just in the physical characteristics of the universe, but in the human psyche.  Evolution cannot explain why "righteousness" is better than "evil".  There is no value system possible in a completely animal evolution of mankind.

2024 - So then, how do atheists say these things evolved.  Why does man have compassion for the poor?  Find some book on ethics, or the history of ethics that approaches this question from the atheistic POV.  I should not be saying they "cannot" explain unless and until I see what they claim explains it.  I suspect there are a number of theories.  This is a really good research project.  Why does only man reason, and why is it that only man has a code?

2025 - From the Corey book I'm reading..."Because we killed off everything with a different code."  It is the only answer available.  Perhaps even that "humanity" survived as the fittest BECAUSE this is the code we adopted.  Hard to prove...but how do we refute it?

MSB note says that in 1:18-3:20, Paul will present an overwhelming case for the sinfulness of man in its various aspects, leading to a conclusion of man's great need for salvation.

In the MSB notes on 1:18, it talks about 5 kinds of wrath that God exercises.  The 5th is the wrath of abandonment, and it is that one that is in view beginning in vs. 24.  I always thought it was a progression, and this stage was always last, just before destruction.  But perhaps instead it is one way God deals, in His own wisdom and sovereignty, with a particular group.

20 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. So they are without excuse. [Rom 1:20 ESV]

In vs 20, creation itself is sufficient evidence that God exists such that refusing to believe that evidence is alone enough to condemn individuals.  Nothing else needs to be added to the guilt of not seeing God in creation.  One guilty of only this is condemned to hell by God.  2021 - This doesn't say that we need to ignore science and the details it uncovers.  It says we should realize that the advancing scientific knowledge of man should at every turn point to the creativity of God.  We should see, any honest observer does see, that there is design here, and connection, and purpose in how things are made and how things work.  There are no evolutionary coincidences.  Science, so far, has always been incomplete.  Every theory gets overturned by a better theory.  Because the mind of God is infinite, and we can never learn it all.  We shouldn't celebrate science as the advancement - as the evolution - of the human mind, but as the continuing revelation of the mind of God.

Possible FB post. You're a good person?  Great!  But if you refuse to see God in everything around you, that is sin, and by that sin alone you are condemned.  It only takes one.  The observable universe is the greatest sermon of all time on the subject of the existence of God.  Ignoring the message of that sermon is enough to send us to hell.

2025 - So...might be better to see vs 20 as the SECOND reason that many deserves condemnation by God.  First, we have this common morality that cannot be explained except by the imago dei.  A second or a minute or an hour is the same no matter the watch.  We all work the same.  Second, creation itself requires God.  Creation cannot be explained without a creator. 

No...look at the wording:

20 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. So they are without excuse. [Rom 1:20 ESV].  This is not a new point, but a summary of THE point.  Since the earliest memories of mankind as a species - since the day of creation - we have had indisputable evidence of God.  That's what he's saying.

Next verse:

21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. [Rom 1:21 ESV]

2020 - Shunning God - knowingly and with that purpose in mind - people turned instead to idols of all kinds.  Rather than being humble to the true God, they invented their own gods, who's rules and regulations were more palatable to them.  Thinking themselves very smart about this, they were in fact foolish, overlooking that the real God still made the real rules.

2021 - Not sure this is about idols so much as about resistance to submission.  We want to be the top of the hierarchy.  We want to make the rules.  We strenuously resist service.  And we resist giving gratitude just as strenuously.  We want to rule.  Is this too part of the created, built-in code that we all have, or did this part come only after sin?  "You will become like God...", in the garden temptation, implies that this too was built in.  This resistance leads immediately to futile thinking.  Any line of thought that leads away from God, instead of toward him, is an exercise in futility.  And the further we go in that direction, the more we obscure the truth from ourselves.  Then it talks about darkened hearts...this is not a reference to knowledge and understanding.  Hearts are about personal contentment, peace, happiness, love.  These sorts of things.  And obstinately denying the visible evidence - saying that what we see means "not God" when it obviously means the opposite - condemns us to the misery of human existence without God.

2024 - Man created his own "gods" because then he could manipulate those gods and control his own fate.  Men could offer ever more outrageous offerings - children, slaves, captives - to these gods until they  had "earned" the favor of that god by their own hand.  Man has a built-in independence that makes him resist total submission to anyone or anything.  Independence is also an attribute of God.  We got some of that attribute when we were created in his image.  Satan has seized on that one and used it - no amplified it - to make us resistant to the God who requires that we disdain our independence and instead "donate" it all to him, and submit completely to his will instead of our own. In our country, this drive for personal independence has reached deadly, plague-like proportions.  We keep digging and digging, trying to uncover any aspect of our being that hints at submission to an authority outside ourselves, and higher than ourselves.  We won't be condemned for doing what is against nature itself - everyone knows that male and female is the right way - it is totally obvious.  So man rebels against that.  And now, we are even rebelling against God's choice in making us either male or female.  We rebel against even the restriction of gender to only two possibilities.  This is ALL tied to our unquenchable desire for independence from God.

This has to go on Facebook!!!

2025 - When we make our own gods, WE get to decide what the code is going to be, and claim that it is not our own selfish desires from which the code is derived, but from this "god" that made the rules.  So idolatry is a deliberate choosing of a code we know has a lower bar than the real code, so that our actions meet the standard.

We invent the god of "my body my choice", because that makes it okay to ignore personal responsibility for our actions.  We invent the god of "same sex marriage" because we want to indulge attractions that we know very well are condemned by God.

Idolatry has always been about this.

This is what Rom 1:20-23 are about.

2024 - And I know I have it right, because look where Paul goes beginning in the VERY NEXT VERSE!!!

This verse:

24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, [Rom 1:24 ESV]  Therefore.  We need to understand this as the conclusion to the case just built.  As I'm reading it in 2021, I think the case that was built is that man's resistance to God leads to personal misery and darkness and a "flailing about" in life.  Nothing works, nothing satisfies, nothing calms those who go down the path of denying their own eyes.  But...This verse says that God also withdraws when we do this.  As long as God does not withdraw, there is only so far down that we would go.  (Feels like shaky ground.  Not sure I'm on the right track here...)  That built in code that we have would, should always act as our safety net, to stop us from going too far in the wrong direction.  That code is there for our protection.  But...when God is abandoned completely and deliberately and knowingly, and we embrace the created as having primacy in place of God, to the extent that we "worship" science, we REPLACE God with SCIENCE, then God reciprocates, and removes the safety net.  Our moral code no longer breaks our fall and there is no standard below which we will not go - perhaps we fall below the "standard" that classifies us as even being human.  (2022 - We become just like animals, serving our own desires and wants and ambitions, with no thought whatever of consequences.)  Think of the atrocity and the horror of which man is capable.  Not just in recent history but all the way back to the beginning and the things done in war and conquest, jealousy and greed.  Things we just cannot contemplate.  These things are committed by men abandoned by God.  They are total darkness, without a vestige of the image of God in them.  By their own choice, and by His.

So when God abandons, he no longer restrains the decay of the mind of man as it spirals down into depravity.  Instead of pricking our consciences, instead of increasing our awareness of sin, and our abhorrence of it, or even our recognition of it as sin, we go the wrong way, headlong away from God instead of humbly towards him.  And we don't even feel bad about it, because he has abandoned us to it.  I see where God did this over and over in the OT.  He would condemn someone or some nation or some action, and pronounce his wrath on that thing.  And then a hundred years would go by and nothing would happen except that things would keep getting worse.  The wrath pronounced in Manasseh's time is the most prominent example.  God said that was the end for Israel.  But it was 150 years before Babylon took them out.  First came the wrath of abandonment, and later the consequential wrath.  Here is where that leads:

26 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27 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. [Rom 1:26-27 ESV]

It does not say that God gave them up to "Jack the Ripper style murder", or to "stealing food from starving children".  It is perverted sexual relationships that man sinks down to.  Again, I go back to the darkening of hearts in vs. 21.  There cannot be contentment in a perverted relationship.  It will always be a grasping, a reaching for, and a counterfeit, but will never be an acquisition.  If we refuse a right relationship with God, then the most extreme opposite of that is a perversion of our natural attraction to each other.  A rejection of the perfection of that first created relationship.

2022 - Is this about nations or individuals?  Maybe the prevalence of individuals behaving in this way is our visible, demonstrable, measurable health of a nation.  When those abandoned by God, and sunk to a sub-human level, even a sub-animal level because even animals do not so pervert the natural order of things, begin to demand recognition, acceptance, and even honor for being beyond the pale of moral behavior, then truly a nation is in its final throws.

The abandonment takes the form of sexual impurity, the withering and reduction of moral restraint in that area.  Spiritual degradation leading to the degradation of our own bodies.  Then it goes directly to homosexuality.  Not just a degradation of the sexual relationship, but a perversion of it into something it was never intended to be. 

2024 - At the risk of being too graphic...I wonder if vss 26-27 are less about homosexuality and more about sodomy?  I don't think sodomy EVER happens in nature.  If this is what it is about, then it is not about sexual attraction to the same sex at all, but about perverting procreation in a way that there is still sexual gratification but without the responsibility of raising the children that result from sex according to God's plan?  Jonathan loved David, man loving man, but there was no perversion of that love by having sex against nature.  Ruth and Naomi loved each other, we can all love others that are the same sex as we are.  But when sex is introduced to such relationships, against nature itself, or to avoid procreation and make sex just about gratification of the flesh...well just think about how "independent" that is, how rebellious, how "You ain't telling me what to do" that is. 

2025 - Vss 26, 27.  Shouldn't we ask to whom Paul is referring when he makes these graphic statements about homosexuality on the part of both men and women?  He might know that Rome at this time - the city of Rome where that church was located - was being consumed by an acceptance of homosexuality as a "better" way or at least a totally and completely acceptable way, in that city at the top of the world.  If he is not talking specifically about a trend in Rome, then he must be talking about all men, all nations, and all times. 

2025 - Perhaps the Roman church was in the middle of this homosexual revolution taking place in Rome, and Paul shows that it can only come about if God's own creation is rejected.  Even the natural order mitigates against this behavior, and yet it was embraced - no it was endorsed - in Rome.  And Paul makes that endorsement of what even nature clearly shows to be perversion as the basis for the acceleration deterioration of all ethics and all morality in that place.  Because pointless sexual gratification that abandons the original purpose of reproduction, and this is called normal, God let's the harness of the imago dei slip off, leading to an avalanche of crime, sin, greed, and the worst of what mankind is capable of.  Paul is telling the Roman church why and on what basis their city is so fundamentally corrupt.

2025 - Not just that homosexuality is wrong, but that when mankind reaches this depth of self worship and self indulgence, then the whole castle comes tumbling down.

2025 - This is not just homosexuality as another sin, but as a sin so low that God abandons those who endorse it to a sort of animal mentality, unhindered by conscience, with no ethic but self-indulgence.  Narcissism on steroids.  Selfishness as the measure of meaning and purpose.

2025 -But if we say that Paul is starting here - with an unusual description of the sinful environment of the Roman church, do we have to revise our understanding of the rest of the book?  I do not know...

Beginning in 28, we see the consequences over time of this perversion.  A breakdown of all kinds of "moral" and ethical values - yes, values is the word - follows the perversion of sexuality.  (2021-2, At this reading, I don't think these other things "follow" homosexuality so much as they accompany it.  When God "gives them up" to impurity" all these other moral failures are in there.  It almost looks, in vs. 24, like there are two "giving ups".  The first is to impurity - of mind perhaps? - and the second is to dishonoring their own bodies.  They sink into the depravity of mind listed in vvs 29-31, and into the depravity of body spoken about in vss 26, 27.  Body and soul.)  Acceptance of the perversion perverts everything else.  Note that these things in the list are recognized universally as the products of a debased mind.  We know where these come from.  But once God abandons, we not only do what we know we ought not, we do what we know is to our own harm, we know what we do leads to death - but we STILL DO IT, and we approve the same actions on the part of others.  It reminds me of that parable of the unfaithful servant who went around releasing his master's debtors of their debts.  And his master admired him for being so clever.  The master was so corrupt that he admired corruption in others.  That's what this he. 

2024 - Then in vss 28-32, we see that such a massive rejection of the sovereignty of God leads inevitably to a rejection of everthing else that he commands.  Once man goes so far as to pervert what is obviously the "right" way to do things, it is easier to reject absolutely every thing else that he commands.  If we reject that God created us to fill the earth, and instead adopt sex as a means of personal gratification only, with NO HIGHER PURPOSE, then we have rejected item 1, and no other items matter anymore.