From God’s Redemptive Work to Tragic Exchange
Romans 1:26b (NLT)
26b Even the women turned against the natural way to have sex and instead indulged in sex with each other.
Jesus spoke the truth through paradoxes such as the greatest must be a servant (Matthew 20:26-27)’ and the Good Samaritan, where the despised outsider becomes the true example of love (Luke 10:25-37).
Throughout Scripture, God often works in unexpected ways. In the Old Testament, women sometimes rose to positions of leadership and influence—like Deborah, who judged and led Israel (Judges 4–5), and Esther, who risked her life to save her people. Even Rahab, a prostitute in Jericho, protected Israel’s spies and became part of God’s salvation story (Joshua 2; Matthew 1:5). From the very beginning, God promised that the Savior would come as the seed of the woman (Genesis 3:15), overturning expectations and highlighting His sovereign plan through those society often overlooked.
Yet Paul also shows the opposite reality in Romans 1:26: how even women, who had played such key roles in God’s plan, traded His truth for a lie—exchanging natural relations for unnatural ones. Here he is not describing a different physical orientation, but showing how human behavior reflects the exchange of God’s truth for lies. This includes pride, greed, gossip, envy, sexual behavior, and more. We’re all in the same human story.
