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[Not A Pro]

Christian here. Curious to see how others interpret these verses as I recently had a discussion where a fellow Christian disagreed with my interpretation.

24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.
25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the creator - who is forever praised. Amen.
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones.
27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

[jimwalton]

With v. 24 the first of several "God gave them over" statements. It starts with "therefore," indicating a cause-and-effect relationship. What is the cause? It seems to me it's the rebellion (sin). What's the effect? It seems to me it's God's wrath, from v. 18. His "wrath" (righteous judgment) shows itself in "giving them over." He opened his hands—an act of love. Instead of holding them against their will, he opened his hands to allow them their own choice of a self-determined course. Their sinful desires were bubbling inside of them, and it looks like the first casualty was sexual purity. I guess we could say sexual purity got locked away with truth (18), so they could live the way they wanted, presumably in unrighteousness. It makes sense that when the spiritual is shut out, the flesh steps into the spotlight. It's "The Lord of the Flies" (withdrawal of moral authority), but instead of violence and power, Paul says the result was more like a college fraternity ("Animal House"): an orgy of sexual immorality. (Gn. 6.1-5 could easily be the narrative of what Paul is talking about on a global scale.)

V. 25: The second “exchange,” and basically a reiteration of v. 23, but sequentially it comes after v. 24. We’re on quaking interpretive ground here. What is “the truth about God”? In v. 18-20 it was his invisible attributes and divine nature. In 28 it’s the knowledge of God, so I’m going to go with that here also. The truth about God is who he really is and what he is really like, and the phrase is not to be loaded, as Hays suggests, with sexual imagery and reference. “Exchanging the truth of God for a lie” involves all the forms of sin delineated in vv. 23-32, so I say. As an act of intentional rebellion, they traded the truth about God (definite article) for THE lie (definite article). What is “the lie”? Hmm. Idolatry again. It’s a verse 23 redux. But why? It’s Paul’s point: they pushed God out of the picture, and that’s why God is missing from their lives. God didn't move; they did. In the first case, their exchange seems to be the right worship of God; in this case, their exchange seems to be a right relationship with God.

V. 26: The second "God gave them over." It starts with "because of this," indicating to me the same cause and effect we saw before. The cause is sin, the effect is God's righteous judgment. Here we have the mention of another self-determined course. This time it's "shameful lusts." Last time around it was behavior; this time around it's what's behind the behavior—the source out of which the behavior springs. Their hearts were dark. Then comes the third "exchange": natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. We see more "imprisoned" imagery (Greek: eis), consistent with what came before. IMPORTANT POINT: This is an EXCHANGE, not a GOD GAVE THEM OVER. The "exchanges" are deliberate acts of rebellion (dependence on God for dependence on other things, and the truth of God for a lie); the "God gave them over" items are the casualties: sexual impurity and depraved desires. So if Paul is consistent, his point here relates to some trading of truth for a lie, a misrepresentation of something sacred, and advancing other realities as an act of deliberate rebellion. But he has already talked about sexual impurities and depraved desires, both grand catch-all categories of all sorts of attitudes and behavior. What is his point in bringing this in here and now? Paul seems to key in on the words "natural" and "against nature"—the cultural systemic oppression of homosexual slavery and the moral degradation of society at large. This must have been what Paul would consider "rebellion against God". It's not so much that sexual distinctions were important to Paul (they were: 1 Cor. 7, 11, and others), nor that homoerotic behavior was perceived as particularly depraved (It was, according to Paul). Homosexual practice in the Greco-Roman world bore little resemblance to its practice in modern culture. There were no gay households, gay institutions, or gay culture at all. In the ancient world it was mostly an accepted and encouraged practice of child sexual abuse, and Paul considered it depravity, but that's not as much his point here.); it's that "they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God" (v. 28), which ties in with these thoughts. Paul's point is that in trading "natural" for "unnatural", they were trading the knowledge of God, if Paul is consistent, for a lie. What would this "knowledge of God" be? "What is natural." What would it be replaced with? "That which is against nature."