Desire: Tem­pa­tion or Sin? A Look at the Sin­ful­ness or Inno­cence of “Same-Sex Attrac­tion”

There is no small amount of dis­cus­sion over the top­ic of “same-sex attrac­tion” with­in Chris­tian­i­ty right now. The increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar stance is that hav­ing attraction—but not act­ing on it—to the same sex is not sin, and that it is unhelp­ful to call it such. Even Focus on the Fam­i­ly, his­tor­i­cal­ly con­sid­ered by many to be on the more fun­da­men­tal­ist¹ end of the spec­trum, says it is not sin. In a state­ment labeled “Same-sex attrac­tion is not a sin,” they assert that “To be human is to have a dis­or­dered sex­u­al­i­ty. You do. I do. Every­one does. We all have some man­ner of sex­u­al dri­ve that com­pels us to dis­obey God’s design for sex­u­al­i­ty.” I would agree with that state­ment, and it’s some­thing we are far too slow to admit. Hence the alarm­ing rates of adul­tery, pornog­ra­phy, etc. with­in the church.

They con­tin­ue, how­ev­er, “Sex­u­al sin is giv­ing in to that desire in either mind or body. Faith­ful Chris­t­ian dis­ci­ple­ship can­not avoid temp­ta­tion, but it strives to resist and mas­ter it with God’s help. Doing so is not sin, but obe­di­ence and depen­dence upon Christ.”

This rais­es the ques­tion, where is the line between sin and temp­ta­tion, espe­cial­ly when it relates to sex­u­al­i­ty? Is there an “inno­cent” attrac­tion that exists sole­ly as a temp­ta­tion?

I want us to take the time in this arti­cle to look at what the Bible says on the issue, as well as gain a basic under­stand­ing of what temp­ta­tion and sin are. I believe the Bib­li­cal posi­tion is that same-sex attrac­tion is sin. Not sim­ply the act­ing men­tal­ly or phys­i­cal­ly upon that desire felt for some­one of the same sex, but the desire itself is sin. I don’t want to sim­ply assert that, but rather I want you to have sol­id foot­ing for say­ing why sex­u­al desire for the same sex is a sin.

Is Same-Sex Attrac­tion a Sin? Part 1

Same-sex attrac­tion is a dis­or­dered desire, a false desire, a desire con­trary to God’s design, and thus must be cat­e­go­rized as sin. At least, that is the con­tention I will seek to prove.

God made [us] male and female. “for this rea­son a man shall leave his father and moth­er, and the two shall become one flesh.” (Mk 10:6–8) Hus­bands for wives, and wives for hus­bands. To desire the inti­ma­cy that God designed for mar­riage, but with some­one of the same sex, is a per­ver­sion of God’s design. It can­not be a “good” desire. If it then is a wrong, dis­or­dered, false desire, and the fruit of that desire can­not be any­thing oth­er than wrong, dis­or­dered, and false. What oth­er option is there?

As we saw in the intro­duc­tion, Focus on the Fam­i­ly and oth­ers will say “temp­ta­tion.” What, though, is temp­ta­tion? It would seem that we should answer that ques­tion, to see if my claims are fair or not.

What is Temp­ta­tion?

Here’s a prob­lem with words, and one that is a pain for trans­la­tors to man­age: Words that are com­mon­ly used have their mean­ings sim­pli­fied in com­mon speech, and their mean­ings shift, some­times sud­den­ly and rad­i­cal­ly. That’s why I can say “inter­course,” and peo­ple jump to what used to be a euphemistic phrase, “sex­u­al inter­course,” rather than its other—and more original—definitions.²

We come to the Bible with a lot of lin­guis­tic bag­gage, and tend to inject a sim­pli­fied, and poten­tial­ly shift­ed, mean­ing into words. This is the case with “temp­ta­tion.” Temp­ta­tion, in com­mon usage, is used to mean an inter­nal or exter­nal offer to engage in wrong action, with “inter­nal” seem­ing­ly being the pre­dom­i­nant form.

The issue here is that the Bible nev­er describes it like that. Seri­ous­ly, go look up temp­ta­tion through the OT and NT. We can start to see why when we become aware that the Greek words used for “temp­ta­tion,” are the same used for “test.”

This is what I was say­ing about com­mon­ly used words. Temp­ta­tion has been so mor­phed by mod­ern, com­mon usage, that Web­ster’s has “to make tri­al of: test” as an “obso­lete” def­i­n­i­tion. Go to the 1828 edi­tion, and you will see a very dif­fer­ent word that much more close­ly aligns with Bib­li­cal Greek.

Temp­ta­tion is more than an abstract “offer to sin.” Rather, it is described as a state done to, entered into by, or inflict­ed upon some­one; a tri­al to over­come (Heb 11:17), a chal­lenge that has come upon you (1Co 7:5), or even striv­ing to bring about a result (Act 24:6).

Fur­ther, the fact that temp­ta­tion is a state, as opposed to an idea/offer, is why there’s so much descrip­tion of being “in” temp­ta­tion (Jas 1:14, Luk 22:46). In fact, let’s look at that idea for a sec­ond. In James 1:14, God says that each per­son is tempt­ed when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. In this case, we should note that desire (or we could say attrac­tion) for sin is both sep­a­rat­ed from temp­ta­tion and pre­ced­ing temp­ta­tion. The tri­al does­n’t come upon us, then we have a desire for evil. Rather, the tri­al is brought by our evil, flesh­ly desires. This descrip­tion, and oth­ers, does not show an “inter­nal… offer to engage in wrong action.” Rather, they describe a struggle—trial, test—we enter into when we enter­tain the sin­ful desires of the flesh.

This is just a sum­ma­ry of what temp­ta­tion is, not an exhaus­tive, the­o­log­i­cal break­down. Still, I hope we have enough now to answer what temp­ta­tion is:
Temp­ta­tion is a state of tri­al we find our­selves in when an out­side enti­ty attempts to entice us to sin, or when we enter­tain the sin­ful desires of our flesh. The exter­nal tri­als may be a test that proves the gen­uine­ness of our faith, or when we fail, reveals the sin still resid­ing with­in us. The tri­als we bring upon our­selves when we enter­tain the flesh will always reveal the sin resid­ing with­in us, yet may also show the gen­uine­ness of our faith when we repent of the sin that brought the tri­al upon us.

Is Same-Sex Attrac­tion a Sin? Part 2

So now, is same-sex attrac­tion a temp­ta­tion? A per­son­al desire for mem­bers of the same sex does bring about a state of temp­ta­tion, a tri­al. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, as we’ve seen, thoughts and emo­tions from with­in us that pro­duce states of temp­ta­tion are not inno­cent. It seems that the claim that same-sex attrac­tion is a temp­ta­tion is some­what true, but only in its abil­i­ty to pro­duce temp­ta­tion.

It may seem we can lay to rest our cen­tral ques­tion and say that same-sex attrac­tion is sin. If it’s not temp­ta­tion, then it’s sin, right? As I said, we want sol­id foot­ing for why it is sin, and thus far we’ve only tan­gen­tial­ly answered that ques­tion. With that said, let us define one last thing that should give us the final piece of the puz­zle.

What is Sin?

One prob­lem we cre­ate for our­selves is mis­tak­en­ly treat­ing “good” and “evil” as two dis­tinct things, as if they both exist as equals. That’s not Chris­tian­i­ty, that’s clos­er to Hin­duism, with its idea of good and bad kar­ma. Evil is not a dis­tinct thing, in the same way that “cold” or “dark” are not dis­tinct things. All three are mea­sured by their par­ent cat­e­go­ry: cold is a mea­sure of heat, dark is a mea­sure of light, and evil is a mea­sure of good/righteousness. Evil can­not exist with­out good, and evil is only known when it is mea­sured on the scale of good. Unfor­tu­nate­ly for fall­en man, the stan­dard for that scale is God, and “good” is only found at the top of the scale. All of the rest of the scale is evil, a falling short of the good. This is why Jesus can say No one is good except God alone, (Mrk 10:18) because God is good.³ It is God’s very nature that we are mea­sured by.

To sin, then, is to fail to mea­sure up to God’s stan­dard for good. This is an impos­si­ble task for fall­en man, and thus all our right­eous deeds are like a filthy gar­ment. (Is 64:6) That is to say, even our best, the things we humans would call “right­eous,” still can­not be tru­ly good. Thus, the need for Christ.

This is a huge thing to grasp, the real­i­ty of just how infest­ed by sin we are. It is only by the Holy Spir­it that we can say no to sin, our old mas­ter, yet we far too often drop the hand of our new mas­ter in favor of play­ing in the pigsty.

This is all to say that sin is any­thing that is even the most infin­i­tes­i­mal­ly small bit off from God’s stan­dard. We are not yet free from the pres­ence of sin, and will still sin, thus we must be on guard to not let it reign in [our] mor­tal bod[ies] so that [we] obey its lusts. (Rom 6:12) Oh, and speak­ing of “lusts” offered by sin, Jesus uses the same word (well the verb form) to describe a man who looks at a woman with adul­ter­ous desire. Now this is not a look at the exact usage of the Greek words for lust/desire (epithymia and epithymeō) in dif­fer­ent pas­sages, only to point out the strong con­dem­na­tion of any sort of enter­tain­ing dis­or­dered desires.

Is Same-Sex Attrac­tion a Sin? Part 3

We’ve estab­lished that same-sex attrac­tion is a dis­or­dered desire. We’ve estab­lished that it brings about temp­ta­tion, but isn’t temp­ta­tion itself. We’ve clar­i­fied what sin is. Now, I think we are safe to con­clude our jour­ney: Yes, same-sex attrac­tion is sin. It is a dis­or­dered lust of the flesh that when not struck down, will express itself as dis­obe­di­ence to God. That dis­obe­di­ent fruit may be a lust­ful attrac­tion to the same sex, abstain­ing from mar­riage despite expe­ri­enc­ing sex­u­al desires, or sim­ply a belief that you will “always have these feel­ings.”

Lust (desire) for any­one oth­er than your spouse is sin. I think it’s safe to say this fruit of same-sex attrac­tion is sin.

God makes it very clear that it is bet­ter to mar­ry than to burn with pas­sion. (1Co 7:9) To have a pull to mar­riage, fam­i­ly, and sex; but reject God’s design for those things is sin­ful. This fruit of same-sex attrac­tion is sin as well.

The idea that some­one has a fixed and per­ma­nent unwant­ed desire for the same sex is a lie. No, I don’t mean that this won’t be an area where a per­son is attacked over and over and over again. Just ask any­one who has over­come addic­tion. Our bro­ken flesh seeks to crawl back to its old sins just like a dog that returns to its vom­it. (Pro 26:11) It is a lie of the dev­il to say these feel­ings will always be there, will hold some degree of influ­ence over your thoughts or actions, and you can­not resist them at their core. We can, through the Holy Spir­it, resist the dis­ease, not just the symp­toms. This fruit of same-sex attrac­tion is sin as well.

All of the fruit is rot­ten. The tree of same-sex (or any non-mar­i­tal) attrac­tion only breeds tri­als. It is con­trary to God’s design. It is sin. Do not fall into the trap of leav­ing such a thing inside your­self, and do not fall into the trap of con­demn­ing oth­ers to a life of bur­den by telling them it is not a sin.

Not Con­dem­na­tion, but Hope

I want to end on this note: none of this is meant as con­dem­na­tion for any­one who strug­gles with a sin­ful desire for the same sex. Remem­ber, we all have sinned and fall­en short of the glo­ry of God (Rom 3:23), and even once saved we will inevitably find our­selves prac­tice[ing] the very evil that [we] do not want. (Rom 7:19) Until we see Christ face-to-face, we will strug­gle with sin, so we’re all in the same boat. How­ev­er, by God’s gra­cious prov­i­dence, we can be for­giv­en, for If we con­fess our sins, [God] is faith­ful and right­eous to for­give us our sins. (1Jo 1:9) And that tru­ly is our great­est weapon against sin: repen­tance.

Far too often in the Amer­i­can church, we treat repen­tance like a neg­a­tive thing. Sure, it would be bet­ter to not sin. If, though, in Romans 7 Paul could describe his strug­gle with sin using lan­guage sim­i­lar to how we in mod­ern times describe addic­tion, I think it’s safe to say our fight is going to be fought more than we’d like in the realm of “once we’ve sinned.” Thus, we bet­ter be com­fort­able with get­ting on our knees and cry­ing out to God. Remem­ber when a tri­al comes upon us, God will pro­vide a way of escape (1Co 10:13), but the biggest obsta­cle is our stub­born­ness. We jus­ti­fy our sins, recat­e­go­rize them, or in our arro­gance ignore them. Instead of repent­ing at the first stir­ring of sin­ful desires with­in us, we delay until the gen­tle waves turn into a vio­lent storm and we are sink­ing.

We all need to prac­tice repen­tance and turn away from our desires at their ori­gin. With that, we can have vic­to­ry over sin. If you strug­gle with aber­rant sex­u­al desire, and I’m not just talk­ing about same-sex desire, you can expe­ri­ence God’s design for mar­riage and sex­u­al­i­ty. Not just in part or reluc­tant­ly, but to the full­ness that God designed. If God can save us, the wretch­es we were, then He can enable you to live out His per­fect design for mar­riage. Will there be strug­gles? You bet, and the pre­vi­ous para­graph showed that. Yet God is good, so don’t let any­one manip­u­late you into think­ing He’s not good enough to pro­vide a way through the tri­al you face.

Want more? View our inter­view with Dr. Tom Rush on the same sub­ject.

1. “Fun­da­men­tal­ist” is not being used as an insult ↩︎
2. From Web­ster’s:
   2: exchange espe­cial­ly of thoughts or feel­ings: COMMUNION
   3: con­nec­tion or deal­ings between per­sons or groups ↩︎
3. all the time ↩︎