4. In v27 men are "leaving" (ERV), "giving up" (NRSV), "having left" (YLT), "forsaking" (Literal translation by Jay P. Green). You cannot leave, give up and forsake that which you did not possess in the first place, and a male of same-sex orientation has not had the relationship to/for a woman from which to leave.
Your argument here is foolish sophistry. The passage is about 'men', and this is stuff that happened over time. Think of Canaanite society. At first, there was some residual knowledge of the true God. Eventually that was corrupted by idolatry. Eventually, men gave up natural desires for women. Men desiring men sexually is not natural or normal. It is an abomination/repulsive/disgusted and God commanded that it be deemed such. It's unnatural-- again Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. And babies come out of women's wombs not the upper or lower end of a man's digestive system, hands, thighs, or what have you.
If it seems normal to you, that is because you have some twisted desires that are against nature. God can save and redeem people who have twisted desires.
This has been observed in the church as early as St. John Chrysostom (349-407AD) when he wrote in his homily on Romans:
"...he deprives them of excuse, by saying of the women, that 'they changed the natural use.' For no one, he means, can say that it was by being hindered of legitimate intercourse that they came to this pass, or that it was from having no means to fulfil their desire that they were driven into this monstrous insaneness. For the changing implies possession. Which also when discoursing upon the doctrines he said, 'They changed the truth of God for a lie.' And with regard to the men again, he shows the same thing by saying, 'Leaving the natural use of the woman.' And in a like way with those, these he also puts out of all means of defending themselves by charging them not only that they had the means of gratification, and left that which they had, and went after another, but that having dishonored that which was natural, they ran after that which was contrary to nature."
Not sure how this is supposed to prove your point. If one generation of Canaanites, Greeks, Romans, etc. had started off worshipping idols and had men lose interest in their wives for other men, and the next generation of men had some guys who never cared for women at all and just wanted to indulge in 'gay' sex, it's all sinful. Sexual relations between men are sinful. They were sinful for Gentiles in the BIble.
The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Fully Revised 1988, Vol. 4 page, 437 we read this comment on Rom. 1:27:
"...how did Paul understand the homosexual behavior he condemned? Evidently he understood it as freely chosen (cf. 'exchanged,' 'gave up') by people for whom heterosexual relations were 'natural,' and as chosen (by heterosexual people) because of their insatiable lust ('consumed with passion')."
This is 'men'-- a group. It's a group of people doing this. If you desire something wicked from your youth or you turn to something wicked as an old man, it is still wicked. Leviticus 18 sexual sins were things for which __Gentiles__ were also driven out of the land.
Your trying to reinterpret scripture through the false paradigm of 'sexual orientation' that did not exist back then is reading your perverted philosophy back into the text, and clearly not what Paul was saying.
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To quote this encyclopedia, I had to include the adjective use of the banned words as it was so written.
6. The KJV word "lust" here is also an instance where this is the only occurrence in the entire NT Greek, "G3715 ὄρεξις orexis". The "burned in their lust" KJV, or "consumed with passion" NRSV; indicates something extreme, not to be compared with normal love, affection or even a close M-M friendship which may include some sexual desire considering that sexual orientation is a continuum,
No! no! This is perversion. It is abnormal for two men, even close friends, to have any kind of sexual desire for each other at all. Those who experience that have something wrong with them. This kind of desire
is something extreme, not something normal. God can save people who have all kinds of backgrounds and problems, drug addicts, evil sexual desires. I Corinthians 6 tells us of such people who have been washed, sanctified, and justified-- not left in that state.
not neat categories. The word "lust" here is totally unrelated to the Greek lust in Matt. 5:27.
English has lots of different words to express related concepts, too.
7. The KJV words "working that which is unseemly" in the literal Greek reads "working the unseemliness", from Rev. Alford Marshall in the NIV/Grk-Eng Interlinear. The Greek scholar, Boice, I referenced above writes: "the (well-known, notorious) indecency". The sexual perversions of Nero, who lived at the time Paul wrote, come to mind.
Maybe you should not think about such things. Lots of 'gay' people do some of the same sins as Nero, maybe not with the same threat of punishment. But they say he did wicked stuff like engage in sexual stuff with men, get 'gay married', very wicked stuff, in addition to the adultery attributed to him.
8. What is the "error" meant in "receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet"? From the flow of the entire passage from v18, it would seem to refer to the rejection of the One True God and worshipping idols. The moral degradation described is the horrible descent into the depths of depravity which was sin compounding upon sin, as punishment. Again, Boice in the 19th century writes: "of their error, of their departure (from the true God)". The respected 19th century theologian, Presbyterian Charles Hodge states in his commentary on Romans: "The apostle for the third time repeats the idea that the moral degradation of the heathen was a punishment of their apostasy from God. Receiving, he says, in themselves the meet recompense of their error. It is obvious from the whole context that πλάνη here refers to the sin of forsaking the true God; and it is no less obvious that the recompense or punishment of this apostasy was the moral degradation which he had just described."
https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/hdg/romans-1.html
Our society is not overtly idolatrous in the literal stone or gold statue-worshipping sense. But it has abandoned God in many ways and rebelled against many of His precepts. This slowly rising tide of homosexual perversion-- until recently about 30% of millineals stated they considered themselves LGBT in a survey--has been growing since the sexual revolution. American society and government rebelled against God by embracing sex before marriage, legalized murder of babies in the womb, and more recently same-sex sexual activity and transgendered operations. Gay men have higher suicide rates than sexually normal males. Trans men ('mtf') have much higher suicide rates than normal men. Yet those who suffer from the insane evil left-wing perspective on this issue promote LGBT among the youth. Public high schools have clubs promoting this evil. There are also people going onto Christian forums trying to persuade Chrsitians this sort of thing is okay.
Then the BDAG reads: "Of an erroneous view of God, as exhibited in polytheism, resulting in moral degradation (Wsd 12:24; Ar. 2, 1 al.; Just., D. 47, 1; Tat. 29, 1; Iren., 1, 1, 3 [Harv. I 11, 10]; Did., Gen. 217, 30) Ro 1:27" Yet in this day it is common to dogmatically insist the "error" is male to male sex and the "recompense" is something like AIDS.
The passage is not all that clear what the recompense is, and it isn't written in such a way to point to one specific thing. Being a sexual pervert who doesn't know God may be the recompense for the error, but there are a lot of other sins in the passage, too, listed toward the end. .
The foundational sin, the error, of this passage is exchanging the One True God for idols and self-worship which brings about degradation upon degradation to where their outrageous and extreme lust consumes them. The sexual sin is that of males for whom relations with females was their nature, but by being eaten up with lust, consumed by it; they become perverts like Nero.
No, the natural desire of men is for women, rightly expressed between a man and his wife. God allowed wicked homosexual desires to enter mankind because of idolatry. But that does not mean if a homosexual never desired women, that his desires are okay.
Your interpretation is just sophistry, and it does not line up with Leviticus or the overall teaching of scripture on sexuality. You are reading the LGBT ideology about orientation back into the text and interpreting it by an ideology that developed over 1900 years later. Stop justifying sin.
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