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The questions raised by homosexuality are deeply personal, for the most important factors in this controversy are not civil laws and policies, but human persons whom God calls into right relationship with Him through the gospel of Jesus Christ.
The questions raised by homosexuality are deeply personal, for the most important factors in this controversy are not civil laws and policies, but human persons whom God calls into right relationship with Him through the gospel of Jesus Christ. Sometimes they are persons whom we know, persons close to us. Always they are persons whom God calls us to love: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” (Lev. 19:18), a command second in importance only to “thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart” (Matt. 22:37–39).
Some people would say that the discussion need go no further than, “Love thy neighbor.” There is no absolute law, they say, except the law of love. They dismiss or reinterpret the teachings of the Bible because they claim that the rejection of homosexuality causes great harm to people inclined to it.1Scanzoni and Mollenkott, Is the Homosexual My Neighbor, 1–3, 6, 28–29, 43, 46, 51–52. Vines, God and the Gay Christian, 12, 18–19, 25, 29–30, 50, 95–96, 129, 156–58, 165–67, 169–72. If labeling homosexuality as sin produces bad results for people, then the label must be wrong.2Vines, God and the Gay Christian, 14, 129. On Vines’s abuse of Christ’s metaphor of bearing good fruit, see Denny Burk, “Suppressing the Truth in Unrighteousness: Matthew Vines’ Take on the New Testament,” in Response to Matthew Vines, 55. One man wrote, “Any interpretation that hurts people, oppresses people, or destroys people cannot be the right interpretation.”3Dale Martin, cited in Brown, Can You Be Gay and Christian?, 201. The love of God, we are told, requires the church to accept unconditionally those who practice homosexuality.
Cruel words spoken and violent actions done by professing Christians have hurt people deeply. Slander and murder are forbidden by the Bible. We hear the pain in the words of one secret lesbian, “If the people in my church really believed that gay people could be transformed by Christ, they wouldn’t talk about us or pray about us in the hateful way that they do.”4Anonymous, quoted in Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor’s Journey into Christian Faith, expanded ed. (Pittsburgh: Crown and Covenant, 2015), 25. Christians must repent of their failure to be like Christ in His love for sinners, and of their own failure to walk in humility, knowing that they too are sinners.
However, the Scriptures also teach that unrepentant homosexuality harms people. It degrades them in this present life (Rom. 1:27) and excludes them from the kingdom of God forever (1 Cor. 6:9–10). Love is patient and kind, yet love does not rejoice in sin but rejoices in the truth (1 Cor. 13:4, 6). Therefore, in love we must speak the truth and call people to repent of their sins—even as we repent of ours (Eph. 4:15; Matt. 4:17; 7:5).
To say that the only law is the law of love is not obedience to God’s Word, but situational ethics, a form of moral relativism that rejects the teachings of the Bible in order to follow our feelings. Christ did not say, “Just love one another, and don’t worry about the rest of the Bible,” but gave a host of specific commands and teachings. How can we know what hurts or heals, what oppresses or liberates, and what destroys or saves people, apart from God’s Word? Christ did not come to abolish God’s laws, but to fulfill them (Matt. 5:17). He said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15). God’s laws teach us what love means: “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments” (1 John 5:2). Therefore, we must love one another, and learn from the Scriptures what God commands.
Excerpt From
One Man and One Woman: Marriage and Same-sex Relations
Joel R. Beeke & Paul M. Smalley
