This is why God has released the human race to domination by their own impulses. Ruled now by passion rather than principle, they fall into shameful lusts for one another. They are so gripped by the irrational power of sin that their natural desires are twisted into unnatural. Women have sex with women. And men turn away from natural sexual relations with women and burn with lust for one another. Men with men, they do obscene things with each other, getting back for it the inevitable consequence—more of their own perversion.

Romans 1:26–27

PRAYER   O Lord, is there anything so low, so base, so disgusting, that our natural morality will refuse to condone it? Your gospel teaches me that there is not. Our corruption is so profound that we are prepared, if sufficiently motivated, to violate any and every boundary of nature, taste and common sense. But I can see why. If we deny that you are God and we are not God, what will keep us from denying that a man is a man and not a woman? When we deny you, any denial of obvious truth becomes thinkable.

But, Lord, even we who have never fallen into these particular sins of passion can see in them the same principle of perversity that all human nature, ourselves included, shares together in a universal fallenness. O God, we will never lift ourselves up out of what we are. How can we, when we ourselves are sinful in our very natures? We need a new nature within. Write your holy law on this perverse heart of mine, dear Lord. In the holy name of Christ. Amen.

It is indeed common for men to conceal their faults and gratify their passions in secret and especially, when they are first initiated in vice, to make use rather of artifice and dissimulation than audaciousness and effrontery. But the arts of hypocrisy are in time exhausted and some unhappy circumstance defeats those measures which they had laid for preventing a discovery. They are at length suspected, and by that curiosity which suspicion always excites, closely pursued and openly detected. It is then too late to think of deceiving mankind by false appearances, nor does anything remain but to avow boldly what can no longer be denied. Impudence is called in to the assistance of immorality, and the censures, which cannot be escaped, must be openly defied. Wickedness is in itself timorous and naturally skulks in coverts and in darkness, but grows furious by despair and, when it can fly no farther, turns upon the pursuer. Such is the state of a man abandoned to the indulgence of vicious inclinations. He justifies one crime with another, invents wicked principles to support wicked practices, endeavors rather to corrupt others than own himself corrupted and to avoid that shame which a confession of his crimes would bring upon him, calls evil good and good evil, puts darkness for light and light for darkness…. Wickedness in this state seems to have extended its power from the passions to the understanding. Not only the desire of doing well is extinguished, but the discernment of good and evil is obliterated and destroyed. Such is the infatuation produced by a long course of obstinate guilt. Not only our speculations influence our practice, but our practice reciprocally influences our speculations. We not only do what we approve, but there is danger lest in time we come to approve what we do, though for no other reason but that we do it. A man is always desirous of being at peace with himself, and when he cannot reconcile his passions to his conscience, he will attempt to reconcile his conscience to his passions.

Samuel Johnson, 1709–1784

Ortlund, R. C., Jr. (2002). A passion for God : Prayers and meditations on the book of Romans (1st trade pbk. ed.) (39–41). Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway Books.