Thank you for joining for this important topic, provocatively titled, “Does God Hate Homosexuals”? Two forces are colliding in the political and cultural landscape of our day: religious liberty and homosexuality ideology. White House press secretary Sean Spicer said on Thursday that freedom of religion is getting “pushed out in the name of political correctness,” and cited Christian organizations as examples of groups which have been silenced. “Some Americans see religious liberty as code for discrimination,” a reporter asked Spicer at a daily briefing last week. “Can you comment, give us a sense of how the President views this tension?” “I think there is a line. I think people should be able to practice their religion, express their religion, express areas of their faith without reprisal. And I think that pendulum sometimes swings the other way in the name of political correctness.” Sean Spice, White House Press Secretary
Lady Gaga mainly sang the choruses from her hit songs at the Super Bowl’s halftime show but when it came to her 2011 hit, “Born This Way,” she again offered another clear message of acceptance by choosing to sing lyrics from a verse towards the end of the song: “No matter gay, straight, or bi, Lesbian, transgendered life/I'm on the right track baby/I was born to survive.”
Religious Freedom and Homosexual Marriage
In Massachusetts, Catholic Charities was forced to give up its adoption services rather than, against its principles, place children with same-sex couples. In California, a U.S. District Court held that a student’s religious speech against homosexual acts could be banned by his school as injurious remarks that “intrude[s] upon the work of the schools or on the rights of other students.” And again in Massachusetts, a Court of Appeals ruled that a public school may teach children that homosexual relations are morally good despite the objections of parents who disagree.
Which side you take in this matter is a telltale sign of whether you are a conservative or liberal in your ideology. There’s a divide in this nation over homosexuality and you could see it when AIDS first arrived on the American landscape. First, there’s a conservative ideology in this country, and I know a lot about it because evangelical Christians, unfortunately, in many, many cases have bought into conservative ideology that says, “Well, you know, the people who get AIDS have gotten AIDS through homosexuality and through drug abuse, and therefore, we never liked those people anyway, so let them suffer.” That’s the conservative ideology. Oh, it’s never, never put out there in print, but it’s there.
Then there’s a liberal ideology that says, on the one hand, “There is nothing wrong with this behavior, and we need to fight for these folks and really help these people out.” One side sees today’s issue as religious liberty while the other side views it as “pro-discrimination.”
1. Two Forces Collide
There are two big forces that collide when we consider the issue of homosexuality.
1.1 We are not simply addressing an issue, but we are thinking about people we love. Some who have adopted the homosexual lifestyle or have same-sex attraction are our family members, whom we gave great affection for. A parent with an adult homosexual son writes these emotional words: “Many people don’t realize how fragile a gay man can be. [My son’s] strong feelings that he was born gay has not only caused him to feel isolated from any church, but he also now questions the existence of God and refers to the Bible as an ancient text that could have been written by anyone. He doesn’t understand how God could create him with gay feelings yet reject him.” This parent continues: “I almost feel like I’m talking to a stranger, but yet there is a glimmer of that little boy inside who still listens and tries to communicate with me.”
Perhaps today, I may be speaking to someone who feels attraction to people of the same sex. We are glad you are here. Jesus calls on us to show love and kindness to everyone (Luke 6:27). Our goal is to show compassion without compromise. As a conservative, evangelical Christian, I must recognize that many with the church had failed to speak in love on this issue. We’ve been crude and we’ve demonstrated a form of homophobia. Now, when I use the word “homophobia,” or fear of homosexuality, many would think any teaching that considers this attraction and behavior toward people of the same sex as wrong to be a form of homophobia. I’m not using the word in this way. Instead, we (conservative, evangelical Christians) often demonstrate “homophobia” when we fail to discuss these issues with you in love and face to face. Sometimes we’d rather launch verbal drone attacks from the safe enclaves where all agree with us rather than stepping out into the open and speaking to people who were told to fear.
1.2 We must consider the Bible’s teaching on this matter
1.2.1 The Sufficiency of Scripture
What you think about homosexuality will be irrevocably linked to your thoughts about the Bible itself. Again, how you view the issues revolving around homosexuality are connected to your views on nature of the Bible itself despite how many firewalls or barriers any wish to erect to keep the two separated. As the Bible speaks on the issue of same-sex attraction and the homosexual lifestyle, how you form your opinions on homosexuality will serve as a window into what you think about the Bible.
1.2.2 The Nature of Scripture
We believe that when the Bible speaks, God speaks. Every word of Scripture is true and flawless. Every word of Scripture is God’s very words and to disbelieve any word of the Bible is to disbelieve and disobey God’s Himself. When you look at the issue of homosexuality for any length of time, you’ll end up asking the ancient question from the Garden of Eden: “Did God really say…?” So for the next few moments, let’s survey the Bible’s views on homosexuality specifically and marriage and sexuality in broad brushstrokes.
1.2.3 Highlights on the Biblical Sexual Ethic
Homosexuality, like all other variations of sexual expression, is a subset of a bigger question of human sexuality. Homosexuality is a branch on the tree of human sexuality and the Bible has a great deal to say on this subject. Let’s start with none other than Jesus Himself on the subject of sex. Jesus was asked about the possibility of divorce in His day and He responded with this:
“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. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matthew 19:4-6).
Often it is said that Jesus never spoke on the issue of homosexuality, but this is only partly true. As you clearly see, Jesus defines marriages and by implication, He disallows all other unions. When Jesus and Paul have something to say about marriage and sexuality, they do not appeal to polygamist kings like David or Solomon or to polygamist patriarchs like Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob. For all the importance these Old Testament figures have in the history of redemption, Jesus and Paul do not look to any of them as the paradigm for understanding marriage and sex. Instead they always go back to Adam and Eve – the paradigm for marriage everywhere. So our main anchor point for today’s discussion is found in Genesis 2 and I invite everyone to turn there with me.
Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” 19 Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. 21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said,
“This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,
because she was taken out of Man.”
24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed” (Genesis 2:18-25).
This is the paradigm for all marriages everywhere. When questioned about marriage and the possibility of divorce, Jesus would go back to the paradigm for all marriages – the first couple, Adam and Eve. This is our model and our lighthouse when relationships become foggy.
Keep in mind that within six generations, barely after Adam had died, the Bible records that “Lamech took two wives” (Genesis 4:19). In addition to Lamech, individuals who engaged in polygamy include prominent men such as Abraham (Genesis 16:3), Esau (Genesis 26:34; 28:9), Jacob (Genesis 29:30), Gideon (Judges 8:30), David (2 Samuel 3:2-5; 5:13), Solomon (1 Kings 11:3), among others. Although no explicit rationale is given in Scripture by those who were polygamous, among other possible reasons, the practice was likely engaged in for financial increase and stability, as an expression of authority and power, and in order to increase the number of one’s offspring. In ancient times, there was an option for a man who desired a regular sex partner but did not wish to marry her. He could take a low-status woman as a concubine. He could enjoy her company as long as it pleased him, and he could dismiss her at any time. The man-made no promises and signed no contract; consequently, the concubine had few legal protections. Any children that she bore would have an inferior legal status. The early Church fought long and hard against this practice. The early Church insisted that such a sexual relationship, without the permanent and total commitment expressed in marriage vows, was immoral and unjust. Over the course of a thousand years, this practice retreated into the shadows of social disapproval. The book of Genesis radically critiques the institution of polygamy, even though it was the accepted cultural practice of the time, by vividly depicting the misery and havoc it plays in family relationships, and the pain it caused, especially for women.
2. The Bible’s Verdict on Homosexuality
“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” (Romans 1:26-27).
Here in Romans 1, we learn that all sin, including homosexuality, is a result of idolatry. The root sin is not worshipping God – this is the root sin. The failure to give thanks and praise to the one true and living God stands at the heart of sin. Paul tells us that homosexuality is contrary to nature, meaning contrary to what God intended with men and women. In verses 26 and 27, Paul uses different and complementary terms for the various genders.
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:27-28).
“ Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, 9 understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, 10 the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, 11 in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted” (1 Timothy 1:8-11).
“Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body” (1 Corinthians 6:18). The word for sexual immortality comes from the Greek word, porneia. Porneia is an umbrella term for all sexual activity outside of marriage. Paul stands on two Old Testament passages in Leviticus: “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination” (Leviticus 18:22).
3. The Different Genders Complement One Another
There are other churches in this country that put a lot of emphasis on denouncing sexual immorality and making a pretty big show of it but at the same time essentially ignoring what the Bible says about greed and the importance of involvement with the poor and not spending too much of your money on yourself. Marriage is a permanent and exclusive union between (and listen carefully to the numbers and gender here) one man and one woman. Adam was created first but God said it wasn’t good for Adam to be alone - “It is not good that the man should be alone” (Genesis 2:18a). He was incomplete by himself. Notice as we get to verse 23, we see the words of Adam toward Eve, the first woman. Adam feels she compliments him wonderfully. They were a perfect fit. This isn’t just one couple in history. No, their story is true for all of humanity. You can immediately see the implications the first couple has for everyone when the Bible says these words: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh” (Genesis 2:24).
The same connection between creation in the image of God and creation as male and female is made in Genesis 5:1–2, “This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. 2 Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man1 when they were created.”
Anatomy
We should pause to take special note of the different genders presented here. God, in His great love and care for Adam, brings Adam a women, someone who’s like him but also different from him. The wisdom of the Creator sees the two sexes as complimentary. The practice of homosexuality does not fit with God’s design for our sexuality. The very design of our anatomy speaks to this and even electricians recognize this when they speak of male and female connectors. This shouldn’t make us blush so much but instead we need to recognize God’s beautiful design of the human anatomy: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27). The sexual differences are both equal and beautiful in the eyes of God.
God has embedded our sexual identity into the very biology of the human race.
Again, both sexes are made in the image of God. Sexuality is not an accident of nature but it is by the direct act of God. Marriage would not exist with these differences because marriage is based on gender. The basic roles of a husband and wife are not interchangeable. It’s because of the sexual differences that we have marriage. The gender roles are not “plug and play” as if “who does what” doesn’t matter. Homosexual marriage cannot exist because it denies the very nature of marriage itself, by arguing for same-sex.
Emotional Compatibility
Two people of the same sex can try to get that deep kind of completion through a sexual friendship, which is homosexuality. The Bible says you can’t get that kind of completion, the completion we’re talking about in marriage, from somebody of the same sex. A friendship with somebody of the very same sex cannot complete you in the way that Eve was built to complete Adam.
4. How Should Our Church (And You) Respond?
I am quoting from Pastor John Piper here as I could not improve on his work.
1. We believe that heterosexuality is God’s revealed will for humankind and that, since God is loving, a chaste and faithful expression of this orientation (whether in singleness or in marriage) is the ideal to which God calls all people.
2. We believe that a homosexual orientation is a result of the fall of humanity into a sinful condition that pervades every person. Whatever biological or familial roots of homosexuality may be discovered, we do not believe that these would sanction or excuse homosexual behavior, though they would deepen our compassion and patience for those who are struggling to be free from sexual temptations.
3. We believe there is hope for the person with a homosexual orientation and that Jesus Christ offers a healing alternative in which the power of sin is broken and the person is freed to know and experience his or her true identity in Jesus Christ.
4. We believe that all persons have been created in the image of God and should be accorded human dignity. We believe therefore that hateful, fearful, unconcerned harassment of persons with a homosexual orientation should be repudiated. We believe that respect for persons with a homosexual orientation involves honest, reasoned, nonviolent sharing of facts concerning the immorality and liability of homosexual behavior. On the other hand, endorsing behavior which the Bible disapproves endangers persons and dishonors God.
5. Questions/Answers
5.1 Can I be a homosexual and be a Christian?
When a person experiences a homosexual desire, something is fundamentally wrong:
“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).
It’s obvious to see, the Bible talks about “former homosexuals” who have been changed by the power of the gospel. Like any of the sins listed here, homosexuality is something someone must repent from. Must be careful here because the question is giving us only two choices. I think we should expand the categories. In order to answer your question, I need to make a distinction between same-sex attraction and behavior. Celibate homosexuals are people who experience same-sex attraction but often fight this in a desire to repent of their sins. We should anticipate that people may not be able to change their desires for same-sex attraction. But will instead, spend their much lives fighting same-sex attraction. We must remember: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17). But you can change through the power of the gospel and the impact of the Holy Spirit in your life.
5.2 Picking and Choosing in Leviticus?
We keep God’s command about homosexuality, but what about his commands for farming, clothing, and food? While Leviticus was written for us, it was not written immediately to us. Leviticus is written to the nation of Israel under the Mosaic covenant. The Lord gave Israel commands to govern her life as a nation, and these commands served a variety of purposes. Some were intended to remind the people that they were separated from the nations and belonged to the Lord. At every meal and with every change of clothes they would have a reminder. But some commands were clearly tied to the nature of God and God’s creation, such as commands concerning murder, or theft, or sexual immorality. The command, “you shall not lie with a male as with a woman,” comes with a reason tied to Genesis 1–2. This text from the Old Testament in Leviticus is important, but it is not all we have.
5.3 Do You Continue a Friendship when a Person Claims to be Christian and Live a Homosexual Life?
This is where someone engages in homosexual sexual behavior and doesn’t fight it. And this is someone who sees what the Scripture says because the two of you have talked it through and yet, they effectively say, “I don’t care what the Bible says…” …then I believe you should lovingly communicate the need to stop the friendship. In the closing conversation with your friend, you should tell them you love them and you will pray for them. Usually, the person who is engaging in this risky sexual behavior will cut off the friendship first. Remember the person isn’t a project but they are a real person whom God calls you to love.
5.4 My daughter and mother of our grandchildren have revealed she’s a lesbian. What do we do?
Lesbianism typically presents a different picture from male homosexuality. Many lesbians were once heterosexual. They might have even conceived, borne, and raised children without much questioning of their sexual identity. But over time the men in their lives proved disappointing, violent, drunken, uncomprehending, or unfaithful. Perhaps during the unhappiness of slow marital disintegration, or while picking up the wreckage after a divorce, other women proved to be far more understanding and sympathetic friends. Emotional intimacy and communication opened a new door. Sexual repatterning as a lesbian came later. This reshaping of their sexual desires wasn’t initially sexual. Instead, they wished to be treated tenderly and sympathetically—to be known, understood, loved, and accepted
5.5 Our Son Wants to Bring His Partner to our Home, What Should I Do?
My Dear James,
I’d rather say this man-to-man and face-to-face, and I hope I will have a chance to do so soon. However, to avoid misunderstanding, and to ensure that you have something in black and white you can keep and refer to, I want to make sure you know one thing: I love you, and I always will. I do not hate you, and I never will.
Our relationship will probably change a bit as a result of your chosen lifestyle, but my love for you will never change. I will continue to seek your very best, as I have always done. In fact, I will probably, by prayer and other practical means, seek your good as I’ve never done before.
Maybe you’ve been afraid that I will reject you and throw you out of my life. I want you to know that you will always be welcome in our family home. Text, email, phone regularly. I certainly will. We’d especially love you to come home for birthdays and for other special occasions. I hope we can continue to go fishing together and to share other areas of our lives.
Your male friend may also visit our home with you, but we will need to discuss certain boundaries. For example, I can’t allow you to share a room or a bed together when you are here, and I will not allow open displays of affection for one another, especially in front of the other children. If you stay with us, you will attend family devotions, and if you are with us on a Sunday, you will come to church with us to hear the Gospel.
Perhaps these boundaries are not going to be easy for you to accept, but please try to understand that I have a duty to God to lead my home in a God-glorifying manner. Psalm 101 commands me to prevent sinful behavior in my home. While extremely anxious to preserve a relationship with you, I am especially concerned that your siblings are not influenced into thinking your lifestyle is fine with God or us.
I know that you don’t like me calling your lifestyle and sexual practices a sin. However, remember I’ve always told you that I myself am a great sinner, but I have an even greater Savior. I hope the day will come when you will seek that great Savior for yourself. He can wash us snow-white clean. He is also able to deliver us from the bondage of our lusts and from everlasting damnation.
I will not bring up your sin and the Gospel every time we meet, but I do want you to know where I stand right up front, and also that I’m willing to speak with you about the Gospel of Christ anytime you wish.
I hope you will not call this message hate. This is how love sounds.
I will always be your Dad. And you will always be my son.
As I will never stop loving you, I will never stop praying for you.
With all my love,
Dad (Ps. 103:13).
Recommend Resources
Is God Anti-Gay? by Sam Allberry
What Does the Bible Really Teach about Homosexuality? By Kevin DeYoung
