JP’s Mind

Is homosexuality natural?

Does it have genetic causes?  If it is a natural condition of some, why would God say it is a sin – is that fair?

Can homosexuals be Christian?

If homosexuality is the same as all other sins, why does the bible mention in specifically so often?

Many questions and very few adequate answers, or so it had seemed to me.While roaming around the net. I went to favorites and quite arbitrarily clicked on one of the links to a Christian website (Desiring God Ministries), and began to peruse the articles. I ran across a link to a sermon on homosexuality and decided to read it. What I found was a revelation. I have no doubt in my Christian mind that the Holy Spirit had led me to this place, to read this sermon, in order to reveal His truth to me on an issue to which I have thus far been confused. I believe that there are few mysteries in this life, which cannot be understood with the help of Scripture, and it has bothered me that these issues have left me thinking, “Well, I guess I’ll learn the truth when I am with my Lord”.

 That idea in itself bothered me, but I had nowhere to go to find the truth – various discussions have always ended without acceptable conclusion.

I found this sermon at a time when my mind and heart were not set on anything in particular, I did not have an agenda in mind and my mind and heart were open to the truth from the Spirit unlike it has ever been before. Therefore, I ask that all of you who have participated in discussions regarding homosexuality, and those who have just thought about it and wondered – please go to the links I have posted and read the sermons, then let us talk about them.

The Other Dark Exchange: Homosexuality
The Other Dark Exchange: Homosexuality, Part 2

Let me highlight a few of the more salient points for I fear you may miss the relevance of his message, particularly regarding ‘natural’ tendancies and how it relates to our condition of human in light of our state of seperation from God.

 …Human beings exchange God for what God has made; we prefer the creature to the Creator.Step 2 – God hands us over to what we prefer.Step 3 – We act out externally and bodily in our sexual relations a dramatization of the internal, spiritual condition of the fallen human soul, namely, the horrendous exchange of God for man and the images of our power …First time through the three-fold sequence – verses 23-34.
Step 1 “They exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man . . .” (verse 23).  Step 2 “Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity” (verse 24).Step 3 “. . . so that their bodies would be dishonored among them” (end of verse 24). In response to the rejection of God’s glory as their treasure, God wills that there be a disordering of their bodily life in dishonorable deeds. He hands them over to impurity “so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.” The sexual disordering of the human race is a judgment of God for our exchanging him for the creature – all of us.…1. The deepest problem of our lives, whether heterosexual or homosexual, is the terrible exchange of the glory of God for images (verse 23). The exchange of the truth of God for a lie (verse 25). The disapproval of having God in our knowledge (verse 28). Failed worship is our worst disorder. This is beneath all the maladies of the world. Repairing this, not first our disordered sexuality, is our main business in life. 2. The sexual disordering of our lives, most vividly seen in homosexuality (though not only there), is the judgment of God upon the human race because we have exchanged the glory of God for other things. Sometimes people ask, “Is AIDS the judgment of God on homosexuality?” The answer from this text is: homosexuality itself is a judgment on the human race, because we have exchanged the glory of God for the creature – and so is AIDS and cancer and arthritis and Alzheimer’s and every other disease and every other futility and misery in the world, including death. That’s the point of Romans 5:15-18 and Romans 8:20-23, which we looked at when talking about Romans 1:18. And what we saw there was that those who believe in Jesus Christ and are justified by faith and become the children of God are not taken out of this world of woe, but are given the grace to experience the very judgments of God on the human race as the merciful pathway to holiness and heaven rather than sin and hell.

3. The reason Paul focuses on homosexuality in these verses is because it is the most vivid dramatization in life of the profoundest connection between the disordering of heart-worship and the disordering of our sexual lives. I’ll try to say it simply, though it is weighty beyond words.We learn from Paul in Ephesians 5:31-32 that, from the beginning, manhood and womanhood existed to represent or dramatize God’s relation to his people and then Christ’s relation to his bride, the church. In this drama, the man represents God or Christ and is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. The woman represents God’s people or the church. And sexual union in the covenant of marriage represents pure, undefiled, intense heart-worship. That is, God means for the beauty of worship to be dramatized in the right ordering of our sexual lives.

But instead, we have exchanged the glory of God for images, especially of ourselves. The beauty of heart-worship has been destroyed. Therefore, in judgment, God decrees that this disordering of our relation to him be dramatized in the disordering of our sexual relations with each other. And since the right ordering of our relationship to God in heart-worship was dramatized by heterosexual union in the covenant of marriage, the disordering of our relationship to God is dramatized by the breakdown of that heterosexual union.

Homosexuality is the most vivid form of that breakdown. God and man in covenant worship are represented by male and female in covenant sexual union. Therefore, when man turns from God to images of himself, God hands us over to what we have chosen and dramatizes it by male and female turning to images of themselves for sexual union, namely their own sex. Homosexuality is the judgment of God dramatizing the exchange of the glory of God for images of ourselves. (See the parallel uses of “exchange” in verses 25 and 26.)

4. Which leads us to one last word: The healing of the homosexual soul, as with every other soul, will be the return of the glory God to its rightful place in our affections.
 

Finally let me share this with you (this was produced by Pastor John Piper regarding the Bethlehem congregation’s position. I agree with it.)