He did not wish to constrain the freedom given them at creation. Yet He did not leave Himself and His law without witness, in created things and in conscience.
All our interpreters understand the word "gave them up" in this way. Chrysostom says: "The word 'gave up' here means 'permitted.' When the leader of an army abandons command and withdraws while the battle is still continuing, he gives the soldiers over to the enemies, not by his own assistance, but by depriving them of his help.
"So God left those who did not wish to receive His admonitions and who had willfully fallen away from Him. He did this after He had used on His part everything that was possible.
"Consider this. God set the world before people as a lesson, gave them reason and judgment capable of grasping what is right. Yet they used none of this for their salvation. On the contrary, they perverted everything they had received.
"What then was to be done? Was He to drag them by force and against their will? That would not have meant making them virtuous. Thus they had to be left, and God did this, so that after experiencing everything toward which they rushed so strongly, they might at last flee their shame.
"If a king's son, to his father's dishonor, begins to live with thieves, murderers, and grave-robbers, and prefers the company of such people to his father's house, then the father will of course leave him. By his own experience he may be convinced of his immeasurable foolishness."
Blessed Theodoret writes: "'Gave them up' means 'permitted.' God saw that they did not wish creation to lead them up to the Creator, nor did they wish, through the distinction of thoughts in their deeds, to choose the better and avoid the worse. He deprived them of His providential care and permitted them to be carried along like an unrigged boat. He did not wish to steer those who had fallen into extreme ungodliness, which also gave birth to a lawless life."
"In the lusts of their hearts unto uncleanness." God gave them up to uncleanness, to shameful sins of the flesh, "in the lusts of their hearts." That is, He did not forcibly thrust them into this abyss. He permitted them to fall into it because they themselves lusted for it, desired it with all their heart, and gave themselves with all their soul to lustful pleasure.
Yet this also seems to be a punishment for ungodliness, as its inevitable consequence. There are natural laws of God's righteousness which punish the guilty by the natural course of things. For example, ruined health from drunkenness is punishment for drunkenness, naturally overtaking it.
Suppose someone were walking along a firm road surrounded by marsh. If he himself steps off the firm road, he will sink into the marsh by himself, without any outside person acting upon his sinking.
So it happened with the Gentiles' sinking into a lustful and shameful life.
According to man's purpose in creation, he must live by the spirit in God. Then the spirit, receiving its proper power through life in God, rules over the soul and the body and governs them.
The condition of such a normal state, or of such strength of spirit, is that man should live by the spirit in God. As soon as he falls away from God and begins to be ungodly, his spirit loses strength. It not only fails to rule over the soul and body, but falls into slavery to them, serving them in their lusts.
After our life loses the search for what is due, it is directed chiefly by the search for what is pleasant. Sensual pleasure acts more strongly upon the heart and draws it. Therefore, after the spirit falls away from God and is weakened, life in sensual pleasures naturally follows.
Since among these pleasures the pleasure of fleshly lust is the sweetest of all, a lustful life follows. The weakening of faith and piety has always been, and still is, followed by the overflow of fornication in various, and often most shameful, forms.
On this basis, the handing over of the Gentiles in the lusts of their hearts to uncleanness may be called a natural punishment. Since the laws of nature are from God, it may be called God's punishment.
Origen, explaining why a fleshly life followed ungodliness, says: "Often in the Scriptures we find that man consists of spirit, soul, and body. When it is said that the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh (cf. Gal 5:17), the soul is clearly placed in the middle. It either reaches toward the demands of the spirit or inclines toward the lusts of the flesh.
"When the soul binds itself to the flesh, it becomes one with it in lust and love of pleasure. When it enters into communion with the spirit, it becomes one spirit with it.
"Therefore the Lord says in Scripture concerning those whose souls have wholly bound themselves to the flesh: 'My Spirit shall not remain in these men, for they are flesh' (cf. Gen 6:3). Concerning those whose soul has been joined in fellowship with the spirit, the Apostle says: 'You are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit' (Rom 8:9).
"Both kinds of life have their patrons and helpers. When the flesh lusts against the spirit, the devil and his angels patronize it. So do all unclean spirits and all those against whom man must wage war: principalities, powers, and rulers of the darkness of this age.
"On the contrary, when the spirit strives to rule over the flesh and draws to itself the human soul that stands in the middle, all those Angels help and favor it of whom the Lord said: 'Their Angels always behold the face of My Father in heaven' (cf. Mt 18:10). The Apostle also says: 'Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to serve those who are to inherit salvation?' (cf. Heb 1:14).
"The Lord Himself also favors it, He who laid down His soul for His sheep (cf. Jn 10:15).
"This is how it happens. When the soul, having known God, does not glorify Him as God or give thanks, but becomes vain in its thoughts, and changes the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of corruptible man, birds, four-footed beasts. And creeping things, and in everything inclines toward the flesh and toward those who favor fleshly lusts, then it is abandoned by those who, through their influence, stirred and inspired it to be joined to the spirit.
"It is handed over to the lusts of its heart, in which it wholly clings to the flesh. For one should not drag it by force toward what it rejects and from what it flees.
"If this is still not clear, I will explain it with a comparison. Let us imagine a dwelling where the soul lives with the body and the spirit, as with advisers and companions. Outside this dwelling stand, on one side, the side of the spirit, piety and all the virtues with it. On the other side, the side of the body, stand ungodliness and all forms of fleshly lusts and sins.
"They stand and wait for a nod from the soul. Which of the two choirs observing its movements from outside will it wish to bring in to itself, and which will it drive away?
"If, following the better adviser, it submits to the spirit and calls to itself the choir of piety and purity, will not the other choir depart as despised and rejected?
"But if it inclines to the suggestions of the flesh and brings in to itself the crowd of ungodliness and lusts, then surely all that fellowship of holiness and piety, whose counsel it preferred the counsel of the evil, will depart from it with righteous indignation. It will leave it to the lusts of its heart, so that by dishonor and shameful acts its body may be defiled in itself."
"To dishonor their bodies among themselves." The body is defiled by lawless intercourse. Yet there a man and a woman are joined. The Apostle speaks of the defilement of bodies by satisfying lust without this union. He exposes it as unnatural and shameful.
This is the extreme fall into lusting, madness from it. Fleshly arousal in itself has nothing sinful. It was given as a conductor toward childbearing, for the propagation and preservation of the race. In the natural order it ceases together with the fulfillment of this purpose of the animal organism.
We see among animals that this matter is fulfilled once a year. Then they become calm and experience no disturbance from this side, as having fulfilled the debt of nature.
In people there is seen a disorderliness of fleshly arousal and an unceasing lusting, even apart from that arousal. From what does this come? Clearly the order of nature has been distorted here.
By what and how? By the fact that the soul has fallen into the flesh, has been joined with it into one, and has taken its needs into itself as though they were its own needs. It also took up the fleshly need, turning it into lusting.
A need cannot act unceasingly. It acts only when aroused, and when satisfied it ceases. Lusting, as a matter of the soul, which is always active, can return every minute and trouble the soul.
The soul that has appropriated this lusting seeks satisfaction for it in corresponding pleasures, as though this were its own natural desire. At this point the need of the body and its purpose fall out of attention. One has in view only lustful pleasure and its satisfaction, apart from the body's readiness for it.
If such lusting could be satisfied without the body, the soul would decide even on that. But since it cannot, it throws itself indiscriminately upon bodies of every sort, provided only that there be pleasure.
From this come all fleshly sins in their most shameful forms, the consequence of being stupefied by lust, or of lustful mania.
In the Apostle's words, that the Gentiles were given up in the lusts of their hearts to uncleanness, so that their bodies might be defiled among themselves, two things are first exposed. First is slavery to lusting, with complete sinking into it. Second is the satisfaction of lust in one's own body alone, whereby the body is properly defiled in itself.
This, it seems, is what blessed Theophylact had in view: "The Gentiles were given up to uncleanness by their own depravity, so that there was no need for others to insult them by shame. They inflicted insult, or shame, upon themselves. Such are those unclean passions."
From the connection of the discourse with what follows (see Rom 1:26-27), it is evident that he also points here to the satisfaction of lust by woman with woman, and by man with man.
THEOSIS