William Burkitt Notes and Observations - Romans 1:25 - 1:25

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William Burkitt Notes and Observations - Romans 1:25 - 1:25


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

Here our apostle proceeds to give a particular and distinct account of the abominable idolatry and unnatural filthiness, which he had charged the Heathens with in the foregoing verses.

As to their idolatry, he had told us at the 23rd verse, that they had made false and unworthy representations of the ever-blessed God: worshipping God in and by the creatures. In the 25th verse, they are charged with a false object of their worship, giving divine honour to a creature: They changed the truth of God into a lie; that is, the true God into an idol, called a lie, because it deceives men as a lie doth by seeming to be that which indeed it is not; it seems in the idolater's fancy, to have something of divinity in it, when, in reality, it is but wood or stone. Every image of God is a false and lying representation of God.

Secondly, As to their uncleanness, he shews that they were so given up to the ravings of lust for sinning against the light of nature, that they forsook the order of nature, and were more brutish than the very brutes.

Learn hence, That when men provoke God finally to forsake them, and judicially to give them up to their own heart's lusts, they will not stick to commit such monstrous and unnatural uncleanness, as the very brute beasts abhor. Here men and women burnt in worse than beastly lusts towards those of their own sex.

Lord, if we are not more vile than the vilest of thy creatures, we owe it all to thy sanctifying, or, a least, to thy restraining grace. As by the grace of God we are what we are; so by his grace it is that we are not what we are not.