I had an interesting discussion with an old friend of mine from the church I grew up in. She asked me what I thought about a gay man serving in ministry and whether I thought homosexuality was a sin.
She extolled some exceptional virtues of the man and then made some points then cited several arguments (that I had sympathized with before) why an openly homosexual man should be allowed in the ministry. The man in question seemed by most measures an excellent model of someone who could serve in ministry.
She presented arguments I was familiar with such as, “If heterosexual couples have unloving relationships and divorce, why can’t a homosexual couple get married with the intention of having a monogamous “loving” relationship?” Then there’s the sexual libertarian argument which is “What people do behind closed doors Is their business.”
Granted, all of these reasons can make sense if you are going to prioritize worldly wisdom. Worldly wisdom is predicated on the idea that we can moralize by consensus and what seems like common sense, or, at least, if leaders can get the congregation to agree with any particular criteria for pastoral leadership.
My friend asked if I thought homosexuality is a sin, I responded the Bible is very clear that it is. Considering that all sin is against God and therefore subject to His judgment and wrath, not repenting from hating (which is like murder), lust (which is like adultery), coveting (with is like idolatry) and lying (which is the keynote of satan himself) is just as condemnable as engaging in immoral sex relationships.
The responsibility of church leadership must be to present the Bible and authoritative and inerrant. The Bible does argue in support of itself though we often see the social activist within the church get very selective about passages and ignoring or misrepresenting other parts of the Bible.
Leadership, in general, should be held up to a higher standard. It doesn’t matter if the divorce rate between Christians and secular couples are roughly the same (according to bcworldview.org) in the 26-33% range, you cannot encourage others, or expect them to live to the higher standard if you cannot live up to them yourself. In that sense, her argument about adultery or marital failures among heterosexual pastors is well taken since they have great destructive effects to their churches.
This occasional dark headline of an adulterous affair or worse only emphasizes my point: leadership needs to be held to a higher standard and starting with one founded on immoral sexual behavior does not make those marriages immune to adultery or further immoral behavior.
The Bible sets standards in such passages as in 1 Timothy 3.
It is a trustworthy saying: if any man aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a good work. 2 An overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, sensible, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, 3 not addicted to wine or pugnacious, but considerate, peaceable, free from the love of money; 4 leading his own household well, having his children in submission with all dignity 5 (but if a man does not know how to lead his own household, how will he take care of the church of God?), 6 and not a new convert, so that he will not become conceited and fall into the condemnation of the devil. 7 And he must have a good reputation with those outside the church, so that he will not fall into reproach and the snare of the devil. 1 Timothy 3:1-7
Setting high standards promotes higher standards among those who follow. Lowering leadership standards will not raise standards. A key role of leaders in the Church is to assist in the sanctification of believers. So I would argue that it’s not the responsibility of the church to accommodate a sinful behavior just because we want to be “fair” “openminded” or even compassionate, if being compassionate means acting contrary to the moral guidance in the Bible.
The Bible is pretty clear about what happens to a society that knowingly, even brazenly turns away from God’s moral standards and forsaking God’s offer of grace through the gospel. Getting our personal feelings in the way of the moral law is allowing someone to take the wide path to eternal destruction.
The church I used to belong to, does not highlight the very teachings of Jesus Christ that hell is real and that living in unrepentant sin, no matter how you justify it in our world wisdom will leave a person to experience the full wrath and fury of a righteous God in final judgment.
My dear friend remarked, “The Bible seems too simple.” Too clear, I suppose.
That’s a problem with people when we think we get to intellectually advanced, that we think we can outwit God and what He has authored in the Bible.
People need clarity on what are green lights and red lights, otherwise we can turn red lights into yellow lights until what was once a Red light is now a Green light. That’s what happens If you don’t take the Bible seriously.
The big problem is, as a Christian, once you start poking holes in the Bible, you have already lost faith in its authority to the point where you will not even believe the gospel, nor understand the gravity of your own sin before God who is Holy, Holy, Holy.
If you identify as a Christians and don’t have a handle on the gospel, ask yourself , “Am I saved?” Maybe read Matthew 7 while you are pondering that question.
The beginning of the slow demise of a congregation
I remember the pastor who led our congregation to one that openly accepted homosexuals and promoted same-sex marriage. It was a multi-Sunday series of sermons, a process in which he crafted his oft persuasive sermons and presented the Biblical versus what he considered the compassionate side of the issue.
Looking back, I realize he was tapping the significant popularity he had earned over a 10 year period as our very respected pastor, knowing that he was going to cause a division in the church. He did as much as he could to try softening the impact of his decision. Ultimately, what I recall about his final sermon on the subject, the crux for him was a decision between standing by the law or by showing compassion for others. He declared that how people treat homosexuals as one of the cardinal tests of morality in every social era of history (or something to that effect).
And then he proclaimed his decision. Based on all the information, our church would become an inclusive congregation, accepting and accommodating people who were openly gay. The majority of the congregation was liberal. You might expect that in the center of Silicon Valley where liberals generally make up the majority. Some of the people I knew left the congregation, how many, I cannot remember, though the exodus could have been out of my radar.
For many years after that fateful decision in the late 1990s, I did not develop my own clear position how the church should handle the issue of gay pastors of ministers. If anything, armed with the arguments of my pastor, I found myself at odds with more conservative friends who were Christians.
What I did observe was the demise of the congregation (if not the denomination as a whole) and after several pastoral changes, there were fewer and fewer members. The pulpit became a platform social activist messages and it was less based on any kind of expository teaching of the Bible.
In that church, the Bible as the inspired work of God, was neither treated an authority nor is it considered inerrant. Hints of the Godly authority of the Book could be found in trite ritualistic doctrinal statements that were lost on most people. This was not even lip service, it was non belief repeated without emphasis or understanding.
What about Biblical Marriage, Sin, and the Gospel?
Without the gospel, there is no hope for humankind to be saved. Christ was adamantly clear in his teachings and claimed to be One with the Father from before time began, Through the Bible, and eternity, God’s character is immutable. The inconvenient truth is, when Sodom and Gomorrah was obliterated for the people’s out of control sexual immorality, Jesus Christ was not only present with the Father, but He was one in purpose with the Father.
There are other reasons to support the preservation and protection of Marriage between one man and one woman. God ordained Marriage between one man and one woman. Each has a role and that model is best held up as the standard that the Church should endorse and encourage. Receiving a blessing before God in involving God should be done in accordance to His design and His moral law. Our God is Holy and Righteous.
It is the responsibility of the Church that people are made aware of what is sin so that people know what to repent from. It is critical to understand that Jesus Christ is not only the Savior of the Church but also the Lord of the Church. The relationship with men and women’s roles in Marriage are meant to symbolize and parallel the relationship between Christ and the Church. This is why Marriage in the Church should be held up as Holy and why Christ taught the following:
And some Pharisees came up to Jesus, testing Him, and began to question Him whether it was lawful for a man to divorce a wife. 3 And He answered and said to them, “What did Moses command you?” 4 And they said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.” 5 But Jesus said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart he wrote for you this commandment. 6 But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female. 7 For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother, and the two shall become one flesh; so they are no longer two, but one flesh.9 What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.”
10 And in the house the disciples began questioning Him about this again. 11 And He said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her; 12 and if she herself divorces her husband and marries another man, she is committing adultery.”– Mark 10:2-12
What is a moral sexual relationship? It is between one and one woman in a marriage relationship. All other sexual relationships are considered immoral and should not be condoned by the church just to satisfy sexual libertarianism in the very institution that should be holding up standards of morality.
Moreover, sexual intimacy was created by God for the pleasure of a married couple and for procreation. it wasn’t designed for people to derive their identification from. If anything we should seek to find our identification in Christ, not a sexual act, sin or an immorality.
Sinful behavior should not be condoned by the church when it is stated repeatedly in the Bible that it is a sin (e.g. sexual immorality, fornication, adultery). Sin, whatever form it may manifest itself, needs to be repented from. That power or transformation from sexual immorality or any sin comes from God’s grace and the Holy Spirit.
Regarding same-sex sexual relations:
For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.
26 For this reason God gave them over to dishonorable passions; for their females exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, 27 and in the same way also the males abandoned the natural function of the female and burned in their desire toward one another, males with males committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. – Romans 1:26-27.
Lessons from Israel’s History
There were plenty of pagan religions that worshipped the sexual act and these cultures who worshipped an idol called Molech and others, they practiced burning their babies in sacrifice, which seems oddly paralleling modern society of sexual promiscuity and abortion on demand. These kinds of demon worshipping peoples were judged by God by using the Israelites, who became hardened warriors after surviving 40 years in the desert, as the means of divine judgment when they entered the Promised Land.
When Israel backslid, turning away from faith and worship of God and began succumbing to these pagan practices hundreds of years later, God used, in His righteous judgment, the Assyrians in about 720 BC and then the Babylonias 120 years later to destroy Israel and Judah and send the Israelites into exile. Jerusalem and the magnificent Temple built by King Solomon was ransacked and destroyed and the people were removed and scattered throughout the conquering kingdoms.
But God did not forget His people, though He judged their rebelliousness.
God remembered his chosen people and allowed them to restored to their homeland. That’s another story, but God provides for us today to repent from our sins and to believe His offer of Grace through the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ who suffered the wrath of God for the sins of all who will believe.
For a one minute explanation of the Gospel from the late Pastor John MacArthur, watch this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCP9UcC7BzE
For a review of the Ten Commandments: https://www.challenyee.com/the-ten-commandments/
All quoted excerpts have footnotes removed, usually from Legacy Standard Bible (LSB), sometimes from New International Version (NIV), on rare occasion the Amplified Bible (AMP).
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3.17.2024