We Christians are often judged to be hypocrite, bigots, jerks and more all for the bolded statement which follows shortly. And yet it is true and it must be said. Please read
the whole article before you lambaste me on facebook.
Homosexuality and same-sex
attraction is sin, breaking the 6th commandment of God, and is deserving of
judgment by God.
Please, all you who disagree,
calm down. Hear me out. I’m not saying this hypocritically. It’s the truth: it is sin.
At the same time, please, those
of you in the church, don’t cheer yet, don’t celebrate and say, “Go get ‘em, Pastor.” Don’t be all high and mighty, or pious and
holy. Because I have more to say, which
you yourself may find offensive to your ears. Yet what I’m about to say is just as true as
what I just said. It needs to be said,
and you probably need to hear it if your heart is beating. As I say what follows, remember Christ’s
words, “Remove the log from your own eye before worrying about the speck in
your neighbors eye.
When you live together with your
“significant other” outside of marriage, it is sin that in God’s eyes is just
as bad as homosexuality and just as deserving of judgment. When you have sex with someone who is not
your God-given spouse, it is sin. When
sex is between 3, 4, 5, or more people, it is sin. When a teenager is pregnant out of wedlock,
it is sin.
When you look at someone and
imagine what is underneath their clothing, it is sin. When you look at pornography – and statistics
show that 70% of you did last month (one site alone had more visits that ESPN
and CNN combined!) – you are guilty of sin against the 6th
commandment just like homosexuality. If
you’ve taken a picture of yourself naked and given it to someone in any
variety, it’s sin.
When you check out the bikinis
on the beach. When you have the one-night
stand with the person at the bar. When
each of your children have a different set of parents. That is sin.
When sex is just about pleasure and fun, and not about the two being one
flesh, it is sin. When you chat with
people in explicit ways on websites, it is sin.
When you are by yourself and your hands are not on their best “Christian
behavior”, it is sin.
Or how about these? When divorce is a part of your life, it is
sin. When there is not giving and
receiving, loving and submitting in your marriage as Paul writes in Ephesians
5, it is sin. Husbands, when you won’t
be the spiritual leader of your family, teaching your children the faith and
sitting with them in the pews, it is sin on the caliber of homosexuality. Wives, when you despise your husband,
purposely undermining his spiritual authority, it is sin. When husband and wife fight and argue, it is
sin.
All of these things are sin - whether you've called them that or not, whether you've admitted it or not.
You see, we Christians have no
room to be high and mighty in regards to the 6th commandment. We are just as guilty and wrong in regards to
God’s Word about sex and marriage as the next.
God’s Word is very clear about sex and marriage. If we are going to take it seriously on one
point, we have to take it seriously at all points. We can’t gerrymander the meaning of God’s Word
to fit what we want. It means what it
says and says what it means.
If God’s Word is true, we all
stand equally condemned. God’s Sixth
Commandment Word condemns me to hell.
God’s Sixth Commandment Word condemns you to hell. God’s Word is so very clear. There can be no avoiding it. It condemns.
It is a sharp sword cutting to the soul, separating joint and marrow. We’ve sinned against God, and the
consequences are dreadful. If you don’t
realize that, it is only because you are lying to yourself – suffering from the
hypocrisy that Christianity is so often accused of.
The question then is this, “What
do we do about the situation?” There are
two options.
Option
One: Decide that Scripture is not
God’s Word. Thus, God’s Word does not
condemn our sixth commandment sins. Thus
we are free to do all of the things listed above freely without any fear of the
consequences – after all, love wins!
This is direction many mainline churches have gone, notably the ELCA,
the Presbyterians, and the Episcopalians.
This is the easy option. When the going gets tough, go another
way. This option fails to address
serious questions about why believe anything in the Bible if Scripture is not
God’s Word. It also disregards an
omnipotent, omniscient God who knew what society would be like when He founded
His church. It is an option based not on
the opinions of God, but the opinions of man.
If you follow this opinion, your
only option in responding to a differing view is to respond in kind – when
party one is “persecuting” party two, in your opinion, you just persecute them
back more severely than they are doing while patting everyone who agrees with
you on the back.
Option
Two: Believe God’s Word condemns
you, and confess your sins. Realize the
same condemnation that condemns the sin of homosexuality is the same
condemnation that condemns you for your sin against God’s gift of
marriage. Confess it boldly,
non-hypocritically. Admit your sin with
a repentant heart, in the full realization that there is nothing that you can
do to erase your sins by your actions. Confess
and trust in Christ.
It is Christ who paid for your
sin and my sin. He died for homosexual’s
sin, and straight people’s sin. He died
to make the unrighteous righteous. In
Him and in Him alone is there forgiveness and an answer for sin against
marriage. Confess your sins to your
pastor, so that you might hear the words of absolution for your sins, and trust
that when he speaks them to you, it is really Christ who is forgiving your sin
in heaven as well as on earth. After all,
Jesus wins!
Do you see the difference
between the two options? Option one is
based upon the human feeling that “I can determine what is right and wrong on
my own, and therefore I can justify whatever I want.” Option two says, “God determines what is right
and wrong and tells me in His Word – He also tells me the only hope for my
justification is Jesus.” Therefore we as
Christians live a life according to God’s Word as best we can – obeying what
God says, instead of throwing it out.
This tragedy, the Christian
disregard for the 6th commandment, has now been realized in the Supreme
Court ruling, but it did not begin there.
It began with sinful ignoring of God’s Word. We ought not be surprised then, since in our own
sin we have been ignoring God’s Word about marriage in a variety of ways. If we want to do something about the Supreme
Court ruling, let’s follow Jesus’ advice and get the log out of our own
eye. Let’s call cohabitation and sexual
perversion what it is, in all of its occurrences! Husbands, let’s love our wives as Christ
loves us. Wives, submit to your husbands
as to Christ. Let’s strive for “‘til
death do us part”. Parents, continually tell your children that sex outside marriage is sin. Teens, let’s quit
sexting, and fornicating, and instead live a chaste life, saving ourselves for our spouse,
so that we can fully realize the one-fleshness of marriage and raise children
in the fear and love of God.
I know that is heavy law. But it is necessary for us to hear and
believe so that we might repent of our own sin as we call our society into
repentance.
It won’t be easy. It will be totally against society and its
teaching. It will be us living our lives
“in” the world but not “of” the world.
As Christ says, “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.” That’s
marriage.
Repent for not making marriage
the way that Christ describes it. Repent
and be forgiven by His mercy, and His mercy alone.
And uphold marriage. Our failures to do so is 100% of the problem with the supreme court and society today. As your pastor, I will be working to do so to the best of my ability.
