Uphold­ing What Scrip­ture Teach­es on Homo­sex­u­al­i­ty Is Lov­ing, Part 1

On Octo­ber 31, 2017, the 500th anniver­sary of what often is con­sid­ered to be the begin­ning of the Protes­tant Ref­or­ma­tion, I post­ed my own “95 The­ses for the Protes­tant Evan­gel­i­cal Church in the 21^st Cen­tu­ry.” Here is part of what I wrote for The­sis #4: “The church has failed to address the issue that rep­re­sents the front lines of spir­i­tu­al war­fare today—homosexuality. The Bible is clear about this issue, but the cul­ture sends a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent mes­sage.” Of course, if the church is silent on this issue, the cul­ture’s mes­sage will be the only one heard.

The church, which his­tor­i­cal­ly had been clear and unequiv­o­cal in its stance that homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is sin­ful, had start­ed to bend and crack on this issue. It was doing so first through silence (as indi­cat­ed above) — an unwill­ing­ness to address the mat­ter; but then through open efforts to embrace the idea that homo­sex­u­al­i­ty and Chris­tian­i­ty some­how are com­pat­i­ble. Not even a year after I pub­lished my “95 The­ses,” the first gay-affirm­ing Revoice Con­fer­ence was held at Memo­r­i­al Pres­by­ter­ian Church in St. Louis, Mis­souri — a church that was then affil­i­at­ed with the “con­ser­v­a­tive” Pres­by­ter­ian Church of Amer­i­ca (PCA). The church has since left the PCA, but the debate over homo­sex­u­al­i­ty in the denom­i­na­tion has con­tin­ued, with PCA pas­tor Tim Keller’s less-than-clear voice on the mat­ter still hav­ing an impact. Keller passed away in May, but his influ­ence remains strong in all of evan­gel­i­cal­ism.

Despite soci­ety’s depar­ture from a bib­li­cal under­stand­ing of sex­u­al­i­ty and the unde­ni­able fact the church itself also is drift­ing, these real­i­ties remain.

First, God has spo­ken to us in His Word and clear­ly revealed the truth about sex­u­al­i­ty, homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, mar­riage, and His design for the human fam­i­ly: “The Bible informs us that homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is con­trary to God’s design for human­i­ty and there­fore sin­ful, and it does so implic­it­ly, explic­it­ly, unam­bigu­ous­ly, and repeat­ed­ly — in both the Old and New Tes­ta­ments.” Here is a brief arti­cle that relies on Scrip­ture to answer the ques­tion, “Is Homo­sex­u­al­i­ty Like All Oth­er Sins?”

Sec­ond, in Romans 1:18–32, the apos­tle Paul, under the inspi­ra­tion of the Holy Spir­it, empha­sized God’s rev­e­la­tion of Him­self and His design for the human fam­i­ly. The divine rev­e­la­tion is so clear it leaves peo­ple “with­out excuse.”

Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, Paul explic­it­ly con­demned both male homo­sex­u­al­i­ty and les­bian­ism. In vers­es 26 and 27, the apos­tle unam­bigu­ous­ly declared both of these to be unnat­ur­al; they are con­trary to nature and God’s design for human­i­ty revealed in nature. Though not the unpar­don­able sin and not the only sin Paul list­ed in Romans 1:18–32, homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is very seri­ous and may even be the pri­ma­ry offense that caus­es God to give the offend­ers “up to unclean­ness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dis­hon­or their bod­ies among them­selves” and to give “them up to vile pas­sions.” In fact, homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is so bad that God’s giv­ing the offend­ers over to the very thing they have been insist­ing on doing in the first place is part of His divine judg­ment on them. Verse 28 makes this clear: “God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fit­ting.”

Third, homo­sex­u­al activ­i­ty is psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly harm­ful. It insists that cer­tain things be oth­er than what they inher­ent­ly and unde­ni­ably are — and here I am talk­ing about the nature of human rela­tion­ships as well as the phys­i­cal real­i­ties that make sex­u­al activ­i­ty between mem­bers of the same sex obvi­ous­ly wrong. For exam­ple, the typ­i­cal homo­sex­u­al male has not suc­cess­ful­ly made the tran­si­tion from boy­hood to man­hood. He does­n’t shoul­der his mas­culin­i­ty com­fort­ably or even awk­ward­ly; instead, he eyes it with curios­i­ty, for it is shroud­ed in mys­tery. Dr. Joseeph Nicoolosi was an expert on homo­sex­u­al­i­ty and on ther­a­py to over­come it. He wrote, “Repeat­ed­ly, researchers have found the clas­sic tri­adic (three-way) rela­tion­ship in the fam­i­ly back­grounds of homo­sex­u­al men.…[W]e have the detached father, the over­in­volved moth­er, and the tem­pera­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive, emo­tion­al­ly attuned boy.“¹ Make no mis­take. There is a pos­i­tive cor­re­la­tion between inci­dents of male-bash­ing in our soci­ety and the num­ber of peo­ple iden­ti­fy­ing as gay.

Fourth, homo­sex­u­al­i­ty involves sig­nif­i­cant health risks and in many cas­es even short­ens life expectan­cy. Go here for more infor­ma­tion. From that page, you’ll be giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn even more if you’re espe­cial­ly brave.

Fifth, same-sex unions, whether they’re called mar­riage, civ­il unions, or even “just a rela­tion­ship,” deny real­i­ty. This arti­cle lists ten spe­cif­ic ways. This series of arti­cles explores eigh­teen myths — false­hoods — that gave rise to the rede­f­i­n­i­tion of mar­riage in the Unit­ed States.

Sixth, redefin­ing mar­riage to include same-sex rela­tion­ships has been an assault, not only on the nat­ur­al order and on what the Bible teach­es about mar­riage itself, but also on mar­riage and the fam­i­ly as a pic­ture of God’s trini­tar­i­an nature and on mar­riage as a pic­ture of Christ’s rela­tion­ship with His church.

While Chris­tians can­not expect non-Chris­tians to see nat­ur­al mar­riage as sacred for these rea­sons, Chris­tians should have been bur­dened by them com­pelled to speak out with greater force against redefin­ing mar­riage. Con­sid­er: Because nat­ur­al mar­riage is a pic­ture of the rela­tion­ship of Christ and His church, redefin­ing mar­riage gives the world a false image of what Christ came to accom­plish through His birth, life, min­istry, death, and res­ur­rec­tion. Redefin­ing redefin­ing mar­riage has been an attack on the gospel itself and has hin­dered the church’s evan­ge­lis­tic efforts.

Even though the evan­gel­i­cal church should have under­stood all of these facts and at least some of their impli­ca­tions, it instead either soft­ened its objec­tions to same-sex mar­riage or remained silent. More­over, as we have indi­cat­ed, it remained large­ly silent on the issue of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty itself.

It is as I said in The­sis #2 of my con­tem­po­rary list of “95 The­ses”: “The church has equat­ed lov­ing peo­ple with not offend­ing them (see Mark 10:17–22; Eph. 4:11–16).” Yet authen­tic love nev­er ignores the truth.

Mak­ing a Com­mit­ment

Jesus com­mand­ed His fol­low­ers to be salt and light. We must lov­ing­ly warn peo­ple by uphold­ing the truth. We must show them the door­way to truth and free­dom. Dilut­ing the truth or with­hold­ing it is nei­ther com­pas­sion­ate nor lov­ing.

We must warn peo­ple but also show them the door­way to truth and free­dom.

We have dou­ble chal­lenge. First, we must stand against the false assump­tions embraced by the cul­ture — and sec­ond, we also must rec­og­nize and refute the manip­u­la­tive rhetoric of com­pro­mised church lead­ers claim­ing to present God’s truth.

It is this sec­ond part of our two-fold chal­lenge that we will address specif­i­cal­ly in part 2.

Find Part 2 Here

Find Part 3 Here

Notes:

¹Joseph Nicolosi, Ph.D., and Lin­da Ames Nicolosi, A Parent’s Guide to Pre­vent­ing Homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, (Down­ers Grove, IL: Inter­Var­si­ty Press, 2002), 71–72.