How are We as Christians Called By God to Respond to Same-Sex Issues? COMPASSION WITHOUT COMPROMISE

Transcription

1 How are We as Christians Called By God to Respond to Same-Sex Issues? COMPASSION WITHOUT COMPROMISE

2 Rather than refer to someone as a homosexual, I ve taken care always to make gay or homosexual the adjective, and never the noun, in a longer phrase, such as gay Christian or homosexual person. In this way, I hope to send a subtle linguistic signal that being gay isn t the most important thing about my or any other gay person s identity...

3 I am a Christian before I am anything else. My homosexuality is a part of my makeup, a facet of my personality. One day, I believe, whether in this life or in the resurrection, it will fade away. But my identity as a Christian someone incorporated into Christ s body by his Spirit will remain. Wesley Hill

4 2 Corinthians 5:16-18 From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. (17) Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. (18) All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation

5 Ministry Priority #2: Emphasize identity in Christ over sexual identity. We ve probably all drunk the Kool-Aid on this one! Paul reminds members of the church in Corinth of who they used to be: Such were some of you. Apparently, some members of the community in Corinth were former thieves, homosexuals, drunks, and swindlers..

6 This is who they used to be. Now they have a new identification; they live in a new reality. This new identity isn t oriented around a sex act, or any other particular sin activity, but around the reality of God s grace: You were washed. This great community of men and women in Corinth was immersed in the atoning mercy found in Jesus, and they were clean..

7 This was now their primary identity. For any follower of Jesus, our identity is in God himself, specifically the person and work of Jesus Christ. We are no longer the sum of our actions, desires, biological inclinations, or cultural pressures. We are his. This is true for everyone, even gay and lesbian strugglers

8 So we can say clearly, without equivocation, that the gospel can change one s identity. As a matter of fact, this is precisely what the gospel does! Someone can be gay before meeting Jesus, having her whole life centered on her fractured sexuality; and then after finding Jesus, her identity can be centered on Christ. Notice something important:..

9 The goal of the gospel s transformation is not healthy heterosexuality. It is total identification with Christ. This is what the gospel can do for a person s identity. Adam Barr; Ron Citlau,. Compassion without Compromise: How the Gospel Frees Us to Love Our Gay Friends Without Losing the Truth

10 Here s another way of saying this we are more than our desires, whether sexual or otherwise. Personhood cannot be reduced to what we desire. So what s more foundational than sexual identity? Identity found in Christ. ( ). Journal of Biblical Counseling 28-3

11 When someone says they re gay, or for that matter, lesbian or bisexual, they normally mean that, as well as being attracted to someone of the same gender, their sexual preference is one of the fundamental ways in which they see themselves. And it s for this reason that I tend to avoid using the term

12 It sounds clunky to describe myself as someone who experiences same-sex attraction. But describing myself like this is a way for me to recognize that the kind of sexual attractions I experience are not fundamental to my identity. They are part of what I feel but are not who I am in a fundamental sense. I am far more than my sexuality. Sam Allberry

13 GENESIS 19:4-5 But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man, surrounded the house. (5) And they called to Lot, "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may know them."

14 EZEKIEL 16:49-50 Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. (50) They were haughty and did an abomination before me. So I removed them, when I saw it.

15 JUDE 7 "just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire."

16 2 PETER 2:6-7 if by turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes he condemned them to extinction, making them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; 7 and if he rescued righteous Lot, greatly distressed by the sensual conduct of the wicked.

17 LEVITICUS 18:22 You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.

18 LEVITICUS 20:13 If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them.

19 The argument goes like this: Clearly we live as if parts of the Old Testament no longer matter. We mix our linens and wools. We eat bacon" For example: In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul argues against incest, echoing the incest laws of Leviticus 18 and, in some cases, using language that is basically the same. In Romans 1: 32, Paul describes homosexual practice, and other sins, as worthy of death (KJV), echoing the death penalty of Leviticus 20: 13

20 In Romans 1: 27, Paul uses a Greek word aschemosyne ( indecency, indecent exposure ), which is used twenty-four times in the Greek version of Leviticus 18: 6 19 to describe sinful sexual acts. Paul also uses the same word as Leviticus 18: 19 for impurity in Romans 1: 24...

21 Perhaps the most important place we see Paul draw from the Holiness Code in addressing sexual behavior comes in 1 Corinthians 6: 9 10:. In Greek, the phrase men who practice homosexuality is actually one word: arsenokoites. Strictly translated, it means men who lie with men. It is a word that Paul himself formed by putting together two Greek words, arsen and koites.

22 Interestingly, these two words stand side by side in the Greek translation of Leviticus 20: 13. In other words, Paul, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, explicitly endorses the condemnation of homosexual sex in Leviticus. Barr & Citlau Compassion Without Compromise

23 The idea that Jesus was, or might have been, personally neutral or even affirming of homosexual conduct is revisionist history at its worst.... The portrayal of Jesus as a first-century Palestinian Jew who was open to homosexual practice is simply ahistorical. All the evidence leads in the opposite direction....

24 He also did not address other sexual issues such as incest and bestiality, but that hardly indicates a neutral or positive stance on such matters.... Jesus, both in what he says and what he fails to say, remains squarely on the side of those who reject homosexual practice. Robert Gagnon New Testament scholar

25 "One of the most striking things about the New Testament's teaching on homosexuality is that, right on the heels of passages that condemn homosexual activity, there are, without exception, resounding affirmations of God's extravagant mercy and redemption. God condemns homosexual behavior and amazingly, profligately, at great cost to Himself, lavishes His love on homosexual persons." Wesley Hill

26 ROMANS 1:21-25 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things

27 24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

28 ROMANS 1:26-27 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; 27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

29 ROMANS 1:28-31 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. 29 They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

30 1 CORINTHIANS 6:9-10 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.

31 1 CORINTHIANS 6:11 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.