beasts or reptiles.
001:024 For this reason, in accordance with their own depraved cravings,
God gave them up to uncleanness, allowing them to dishonour
their bodies among themselves with impurity.
001:025 For they had bartered the reality of God for what is unreal,
and had offered divine honours and religious service
to created things, rather than to the Creator--He who is
for ever blessed. Amen.
001:026 This then is the reason why God gave them up to vile passions.
For not only did the women among them exchange the natural
use of their bodies for one which is contrary to nature,
but the men also,
001:027 in just the same way--neglecting that for which nature intends women--
burned with passion towards one another, men practising
shameful vice with men, and receiving in their own selves
the reward which necessarily followed their misconduct.
001:028 And just as they had refused to continue to have a full knowledge
of God, so it was to utterly worthless minds that God gave
them up, for them to do things which should not be done.
001:029 Their hearts overflowed with all sorts of dishonesty,
mischief, greed, malice. They were full of envy and murder,
and were quarrelsome, crafty, and spiteful.
001:030 They were secret backbiters, open slanderers; hateful to God,
insolent, haughty, boastful; inventors of new forms of sin,
disobedient to parents, destitute of common sense,
001:031 faithless to their promises, without natural affection,
without human pity.
001:032 In short, though knowing full well the sentence which God pronounces
against actions such as theirs, as things which deserve death,
they not only practise them, but even encourage and applaud