9 Thoughts on Homosexuals and Holiness

     

June 28, 2016

The issue of homosexuality is not a black-and-white issue in the way that many people make it. It's very complex and multifaceted and most people should not even discuss other people's sin without first looking in the mirror or taking a good study into theology, psychology, biology, and Biblical hermeneutics. I am not an expert, but I would be happy to discuss or speak on such a topic at anywhere, anytime and with anyone. So here are my thoughts:

1.       The Bible condemns actions of unrepentant souls not the souls of people themselves. It condemns homosexual behavior, not souls that are struggling with homosexual temptations. Actions are the fruit of the soul and can be changed as the soul changes. A person’s soul will be eternally lost without a repentant and unified mind with the Word of God. God will work out his judgments.

2.       People are born with and/or are nurtured during their infancy and early years with physical, emotional, psychological tendencies. We all are. But we can all understand and respect what the Bible teaches about marriage, no matter our human tendencies and normalcy values.

3.       Marriage is a spiritual covenant, not just legal. This covenant is not consummated and binding until the ACT of intercourse takes place. [It’s like closing a business deal with a handshake. Until you shake hands there is no deal. At least, that was how it happened a generation or two ago. Your hand shake meant something extremely special.] In the act of marriage, the physical act of sexual intercourse, seals a marriage covenant. Hetero or homosexual intercourse, as an act of marriage, is what God abhors because it opposes his design for only marriage between one man and one woman.  Pre-marital sex is like stealing a wedding ring from your beloved parent's bedroom and then wearing it like it was yours. It might feel good, look good, but still cannot satisfy your honor. 

4.       Secularists today have lost sight of what marriage means according to Scripture and made it about our rights to insurance coverage and financially security, which I believe started the whole debate. It’s about money and carnality, not about God-honoring living. Years ago, a gay man publicly stood up and said, I want to be protected financially if my partner dies. It was about self-preservation. At the time, marriage laws prevented that right to money, so the movement to change the laws began. Then it became a political tool and now a spiritual tool to destroy the faithful church.

5.       If we focus on what marriage means we get a different picture of homosexuality. The problem I believe begins with uncontrollable lustful passions that people of all sexual orientations may act on and thus commit acts of sin. We are all born into Sin, and must deal with acts of sin.

6.       I don’t hate gay people. I love them. In fact, my brother is gay and my father is transgender and they are both good and honorable men. My brother is a doctor/professor and my father is a Vietnam veteran and retired iron-worker. I do, however, hate changing and destroying a sacred institution that was created in the early days of humanity’s creation. I believe God hates changing the purpose and intention of His marriage covenant. God loves all people no matter what. Jesus proved it. However, people can choose for themselves if they will sacrifice themselves to receive what God sacrificed himself to offer.

7.       So I say, let gay people do what they are going to do, just like heterosexual people are going to do what they will do. All people of all orientations can be sexually perverted. It’s not about labels, it’s about a heart that is fully changed by God into the image of Christ, his one and only Son, who being the God-man lived a sinless life and had no sexual problems because he was one with the Father, completely filled with the Holy Spirit and self-controlled. We need to allow the Holy Spirit of God to work on and in us, just like Jesus did, and heal our damaged emotions and souls.

8.       The debate about who-can-do-what and still be righteous (or holy) gets us so distracted from this prior point. It turns us actually farther from self-sacrificing faith, hope and love and turns us towards self-preserving faith, hope and love. 

9.      I believe a homosexual who lives in celibacy and lives in the power of the Holy Spirit can be holy. A homosexual who reveres God, his law of love, the sanctity of marriage and remains pure in word, thought and deed… is holy just like anyone else. God’s holy love bids us to suffer and die. When we lose our life, we find it. We receive ourselves in the fires of sorrow as Oswald Chambers wrote.

For further reading this devotional thought from a few days ago applies to the subject at hand even if not directly: Oswald Chambers for June 25 “Receiving Yourself in the Fires of Sorrow”  http://utmost.org/receiving-yourself-in-the-fires-of-sorrow/  (posted on my FB page – June 23, 2016)

Updated July 5, 2016