It seems that every week another Evangelical leader or musician or “voice” comes out in support of the normalization of homosexuality. For this week’s list see here and here. The testimonials provided generally include some sort of narrative explaining how their views evolved. The template runs along these lines: “In the 80’s (insert “90’s” for emergent crowd and “high school” for the musicians) I believed that homosexuality was wrong, but now, because of (insert one of “talking to friends who are gay” or “listening to friends who have gay children” or “a personal nudge from Jesus”) my views have changed. I think that God loves all people and that we need to be more embracing as Evangelicals. I think we have bigger fish to fry and there will be a huge price to pay for those churches and individuals that refuse to grow on this particular, and quite marginal issue.”
The cumulative effect of these remarkably similar testimonies is to make a person who continues to believe what the Bible says about homosexuality feel like they are mean, unkind, primitive, rigid and unloving. The momentum and pressure to “get with it” out there in Evangelicalism is very nearly unbearable. The possibility of getting through this cultural phase without declaring oneself on the issue is getting slimmer by the hour. This will be the Shibboleth of our generation. What we say on this topic will be recorded in eternity and also on the internet. As the recent resignation of Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich has illustrated, it isn’t just the Lord who keeps a record of every careless word that we utter; it is also the culture and they too will hold us to account. As that awareness settles on Evangelicals I have observed four patterns of response:
1. Capitulation. Every week someone new steps forward to pinch the incense and placate the gods of culture.
2. Silence and prevarication. This one worked really well in the first decade of the 21st century. Tons of Evangelicals held orthodox views in private and simply found other things to talk about in public; but this no longer works. Pierce Morgan forced even the generally opaque Joel Osteen to confess under pressure that he considered homosexuality a sin. If Joel Osteen can be forced to out himself on this, then there is surely no hope for you and me. You will be forced to declare. Option 2 is expiring.
3. Careful declaration. Heresy always has the effect of wedging off the ignorant and stimulating clarity among the faithful. The church clarified its concept of Trinity in response to the challenge brought by Arius. Protestants clarified their understanding of justification in response to the muddied waters of medieval Catholicism. The current debate on homosexuality is having the same effect on the Evangelical church. We are being forced to go back and look at some of the things we have said (or not said) about gender, about marriage and about sexuality in general. This is a good thing. Now is the time for all Christians, particularly pastors, to carefully think through what they believe on these topics. Failure to do so will land you by necessity in category 4.
4. Careless declaration. It wouldn’t be honest to leave out this option. While I do not tend to wave the flag for Joel Osteen or his particular brand of Evangelicalism, I couldn’t help but feel bad for him as he was forced to declare his views on human sexuality under pressure, on TV, unwillingly and clearly unrehearsed. It was awkward. It was partial. It was unhelpful. I’m sure he would like a mulligan or a redo but unfortunately, it lives on in YouTube world and has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times. Most of us will not be interviewed on CNN any time soon but we will face exactly the same challenge on a much smaller scale. You will be playing cards with some friends, a mixture of believers and unbelievers, and you will be asked something like this: “Did you see that Duck Dynasty guy talking about homosexuality last night on The Daily Show? What an idiot! What century is that guy living in? Jim, you’re a Christian right? Are all Christians stuck in the 15th century or is it only red necks from the swamps of Mississippi?” (Apologies to people who live in Mississippi, some of my friends live very sheltered lives!) If you try this as your answer: “Uh, gee, well I don’t know much about that”, as per Osteen when first asked more or less the same question, you will likely not fare any better than he did. People will not let you off the hook on this issue. If you are not prepared to answer you will end up regretting what you said.
Homosexuality is a cultural issue and it is a Gospel issue and therefore all Christians need to be prepared to speak a Gospel Word in season and the failure to do so is an abdication of our calling as the people of salt and light.
Qualifications And Disclaimers
Due to the inflammatory nature of this conversation and the tendency for these sorts of statements to be taken out of context, it is necessary and wise to state a few qualifications and disclaimers at the outset.
1. I believe that all people are sinners. More specifically, I believe that I am a sinner. Anything that is said by me about this issue is not said from a platform of moral superiority. I am a sinner who deserves hell and who has been saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.
2. I do not believe that homosexuality is any more damning than the sins I personally struggle with. Homosexuality is not in a special class of particularly horrifying sins. While some sins have more profound consequences all sins are equally damning and all sinners fall short of the glory of God.
3. I believe that Christians should be kind, welcoming, hospitable and loving towards people who are gay or transgendered or otherwise differing in their views of human sexuality. All people should be treated with kindness and respect. I would be thrilled if a gay person wanted to attend worship at our church. I would be thrilled if they wanted to go for coffee after to discuss. I would be thrilled if they came over to our house for desert and met our children and engaged us in conversation. However, I would continue to view my new friend as a sinner in need of the Gospel.
Homosexuality And The Gospel
So how does the issue of homosexuality relate to the message of the Gospel? In an earlier post I summarized the Gospel using the mnemonic device of “The 5 G’s”. I happily confess to stealing this both from the Heidelburg Catechism and the general outline of the Book of Romans. For those who missed the original post, I provide this brief summary:
God. The Gospel begins with God. God is the Sovereign Creator of all things and has the right to stipulate the terms of moral life. The Apostle Paul states:
18For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. 20For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, 21because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man (NKJV)
All people everywhere know that there is a God and that he is good and that their own behavior should be determined in reference to his attributes. Any who claim to be unaware of this are “suppressing the truth in unrighteousness”; that is they are pretending that there is no god so that they can act with moral autonomy and indulge their sinful lusts.
Guilt. All people everywhere fall short of the glory of God.
10As it is written:
“There is none righteous, no, not one;
11 There is none who understands;
There is none who seeks after God.
12 They have all turned aside;
They have together become unprofitable;
There is none who does good, no, not one.”
13 “Their throat is an open tomb;
With their tongues they have practiced deceit”;
“The poison of asps is under their lips”;
14 “Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.”
15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood;
16 Destruction and misery are in their ways;
17 And the way of peace they have not known.”
18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
23for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:10-18, 23. NKJV)
All people, gay and straight, fall short of the glory of God. We do not live like we were created to live. Our god is our belly and we do what seems right to our eyes.
Grace. Immediately after the words: “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”, the Apostle describes how we are:
24being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, 26to demonstrate at the present time His righteousness, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. (Romans 3:24-26. NKJV)
We were dead in our sins, a stranger to God and dead to his voice so he came to us and he did for us what we could never do for ourselves and he paid for what we did do in his body on the cross. He offers this grace freely that he might be simultaneously just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Christ.
Paul goes on to sing with words borrowed from Psalm 32:
“Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven,
And whose sins are covered;
8 Blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin.” (Romans 4:7-8. NKJV)
Gratitude. A person who knows him or herself deserving of condemnation but who nevertheless has been justified freely by grace through faith can only respond with gratitude, service and love. This is our reasonable service of worship.
1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. (Romans 12:1. NKJV)
It is reasonable to respond to grace with gratitude. Failure to do so, implies that one has not truly apprehended grace, a point made by Jesus in parable form in Matthew 18:23-35. Grace has a reasonable effect in the life of the forgiven sinner – he or she delights to serve the Lord and to obey him. This becomes definitional of the true disciple:
15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. (John 14:15. ESV)
Glory. The end of the Gospel is the glory of God; both its display in us and its enjoyment by us.
7Therefore receive one another, just as Christ also received us, to the glory of God. (Romans 15:7. NKJV)
All who are truly saved arrive at that point.
29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.
30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. (Romans 8:29-30. ESV)
That’s the Gospel according to the Bible. That is the good news of what God has done in Christ to secure our redemption and our enjoyment of his glory for all eternity. How then is homosexuality a Gospel level issue? Let’s consider that according to each of our 5 G’s.
God. How is the normalization of homosexuality a challenge to the Sovereign rights of Creator God; the beginning point of the Gospel? Quite simply, it denies the authority of God to dictate the terms of human sexuality. Jesus said:
Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female,
5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?
6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. (Matthew 19:4-6a. ESV)
Jesus explicitly states that the design of creation was for humanity to pair as male and female and to become one flesh. You don’t have to go very far into the New Testament before you meet a Red Letter challenge to the normalization of homosexuality.
In fact the Apostle Paul presents homosexuality as a blatant challenge to the Sovereign rights of Creator God. In Romans 1 he says:
24Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, 25who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.
26For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. 27Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due. (Romans 1:18-27. NKJV
Paul presents homosexuality not as a special class of damnable sin, but as a case study of man in rebellion towards his creator. He declares homosexual behavior as a blatant act of rebellion against the most obvious aspects of God’s benevolent design for humankind.
Homosexuality is treated as unique in one way within the Scriptures; it uniquely characterizes a person or a culture in defiant rebellion against the authority of God as Creator and as final arbiter of human life and practice.
Guilt. Earlier this week, and partly responsible for the timing of this article, Matthew Vines released his new book God And The Gay Christian in which he argues that the Bible does not condemn monogamous homosexual relationships, only abusive and exploitative homosexual sex. This isn’t the place to debunk his lamentable hermeneutics (we’ll do that at Hermeneutics Under Fire), but rather to comment on the central thrust of his argument which is that a person can be actively gay AND a professing Christian. That is an obvious attempt to bypass the second G of the Gospel. You can be a repentant homosexual and a professing Christian, just as you can be a repentant adulterer and a repentant gossip and a repentant idolator and a professing Christian but you emphatically cannot be a comfortable sinner of any stripe and a professing Christian. The Bible says:
26 For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins,
27 but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.
28 Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses.
29 How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? (Hebrews 10:26-29. ESV)
Jesus says:
21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.
22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’
23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’ (Matthew 7:21-23. ESV)
Calling yourself a brother or sister in Christ does not make it so. The Apostle Paul was painfully emphatic when he said:
9 I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—
10 not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world.
11 But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one.
12 For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?
13 God judges those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.” (1 Corinthians 5:9-13. ESV)
Matthew Vines tries to get around this by suggesting that the Bible did not know about “sexual orientation” and therefore the Bible’s counsel on human sexuality needs to be taken with a grain of salt and modified in light of recent scientific discovery. In essence, the culture’s sense of “orientation” trumps the Bible’s sense of universal human guilt. I confess to finding the “orientation” argument less than compelling. What is so unique about a same sex orientation? How is that any different than my “fornication orientation”? I, like many men, have an orientation toward fornication, that is I find my flesh inclined to sexual expression outside of marriage. I notice that orientation every time I watch TV or go to the beach. Does that excuse me if I should decide to indulge that orientation? No! On the contrary, the Bible tells me and all other wretched sinners like me to:
Flee youthful lusts (2 Timothy 2:22. KJV)
Martin Luther said that Christianity is at its heart a religion of perpetual repentance. That has been my experience. I need to daily confess to the Lord that my flesh is sinful and daily grow in his graces toward sanctification. I thank the Lord that I am not a slave to my orientation and I do not believe that Matthew Vines is subject to permissions I do not share in. We all must repent of our orientations in order to come under the grace of the Gospel. We are all by nature, children of wrath (Ephesians 2:3) and we all stand in need of forgiveness. To reject this central truth is to bypass grace and to spurn the blood of the Lord.
Grace. But such were some of you. Those words are the grace of the Gospel for homosexuals as much as they are for every sinner whose orientation points them away from the righteousness of God.
9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality,
10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:9-11. ESV)
The trend towards the normalization of homosexuality reflects a failure to apprehend and trust in the power of God’s grace in Christ! Such were some of you! The grace of God in Christ is strong enough to save and change all manner of wretched sinners: sexually immoral folks like me and most every man I know, idolaters like me and every Canadian I know, adulterers, gay people, thieves, greedy folks, drunks, revilers and cheats and liars too! Such were some of you! Such were all of you and all of us and all of me. I can convict myself on 6 of 9 charges from that list, but thanks be to God I am a slave now to none! Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom! The attempts to “de-sin” homosexuality represent nothing less than a loss of faith in the grace of God in Christ. If grace cannot deliver us from sin, then we are of all people most to be pitied. Our faith is dead platitude and self deception. Who are we to rob the Gospel of its power? God forbid! To believe is to believe in the one who sets the captives free. “He breaks the power of cancelled sin” is still the heart and soul of the Christian message; to claim otherwise is nothing less than an assault on grace and a wholesale denial of the Gospel.
Gratitude. If it is true that people who have been truly delivered from slavery unto sin live in perpetual gratitude toward God expressed through service, praise and obedience (as indeed Romans 12:1 and Ephesians 4:1 both seem to suggest) then persistence in homosexual behaviours proves that one has not savingly apprehended the Gospel. Attempts to claim otherwise are transparently self-delusional. Jesus said:
46 “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you? (Luke 6:46. ESV)
The Apostle John said:
4 Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him (1 John 2:4. ESV)
Glory. In the end, I suppose it comes down to this: Can a self identifying homosexual, active and unrepentant in homosexual behaviours, expect to be welcomed into heaven? Will such a person share in the glory of God for all eternity? Only the Bible can answer such a question and indeed the Bible does:
9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality,
10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Corinthians 6:9-10. ESV)
Speaking of the eternal city the Apostle John said:
15 Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood. (Revelation 22:15. ESV)
Far be it from me to alter the terms of the Gospel. It would not be loving for me to do so. The most loving thing I could say to Matthew Vines or to any other dear soul identifying as homosexual and desiring to be a Christian would be this: “Repent and believe the Gospel. Trust that the blood of Christ is sufficiently precious to pay for your sins and his grace sufficiently powerful to defeat your sins. Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom! Repent of your sins and turn to Christ and you will be changed, by one degree of glory to the next into the same image as Jesus Christ – this is the work of the Spirit in all those believing in the Gospel. Come. The Spirit and the Bride say come.”
The Bride of Christ has no other offer because we have no other Master. Even so, come Lord Jesus.
SDG
Paul Carter