And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly. The practices here referred to, though too abundantly attested by classic authors, cannot be described and illustrated from them without trenching on things 'which ought not to be even named among us as becometh saints.' 'At the period when the apostle wrote, unnatural lusts broke out (says Tholuck) to the most revolting extent, not at Rome only, but over the whole empire. He who is unacquainted with the historical monuments of that age-especially Petronius, Suetonius, Martial, and Juvenal-can scarcely figure to himself the frightfulness of these excesses.' (See also Grotius, Wetstein, Fritzsche.) Reiche, indeed; throws doubt upon the apostle's accuracy, alleging that the Christian world has been at various times no better in these respects than the pagan.
No doubt passages can be produced from ecclesiastical writers, at different periods, in which charges quite as strong as anything in this chapter are, with too much justice, laid at the door of the Christian Church. (See, for example, one from Salvian, in the fifth century, which Tholuck quotes.) But besides that (as Tholucuk observes) the very pagan writers themselves (Seneca, for example, de brev. vit., 100: 16) expressly blame the vicious character of the pagan deities for much of the immorality which reigned among the people, whereas all vice is utterly alien to Christianity, the worst vices of humanity have since the glorious Reformation (which was but true Christianity restored, and raised to its legitimate ascendancy) almost disappeared from European society. To return, then, to the state of the pagan world, we may add (with Bloomfield) that the disclosures lately made by the disinterment of Herculaneum and Pompeii (Roman towns near Naples, overwhelmed by the terrible eruption of Mount Vesuvius, 79 AD-first discovered in 1713, and now gradually undergoing disentombment) are such as too fully bear out and illustrate all that the apostle says or hints on the tremendous abominations of even the most civilized nations of the ancient world.
Indeed, it was just the most civilized that were plunged the deepest in the mire of pollution, the barbarians being (as will appear from the 'Germania' of Tacitus) comparatively virtuous. Observe how, in the retributive judgment of God, vice is here seen consuming and exhausting itself. When the passions, scourged by violent and continued indulgence in natural vices, became impotent to yield the craved enjoyment, resort was had to artificial stimulants by the practice of unnatural and monstrous vices. How early these were in full career, in the history of the world, the case of Sodom affectingly shows; and because of such abominations, centuries after that, the land of Canaan 'spued out' its old inhabitants. Long before this chapter was penned, the Lesbians and others throughout refined Greece had been luxuriating in such debasements; and as for the Romans, Tacitus, speaking of the emperor Tiberius, tells us that new words had then to be coined to express the newly invented stimulants to jaded passions. No wonder that, thus sick and dying as was this poor Humanity of ours under the highest earthly culture, its many-voiced cry for the balm in Gilead and the Physician there - "Come over and help us" - pierced the hearts of the missionaries of the Cross, and made them "not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ!"
And receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet - alluding to the many physical and moral ways in which, under the righteous government of God, vice was made serf-avenging.
The Consummated Penal Debasement of the Pagan World