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HOMOSEXUAL BEHAVIOR—THE GAY AGENDA
Before addressing the gay agenda of homosexual behavior the following statement must be made, which is biblical truth: God loves everyone, those who are straight sexually and those who are not; and He will grant eternal life to anyone who will by faith alone in Christ alone receive His gift of salvation! Let there be no mistake about this. God’s grace-gift of eternal life is available to anyone who has recognized his need of salvation and who in faith, plus nothing else, turns solely to Jesus Christ for his personal salvation. Salvation is available to all sinners regardless of their sexual orientation.
If a person accepts the Bible for what it truly is, the inerrant Word of God, and will take it at face value in its evaluation of homosexuality, he cannot escape the reality that God hates and condemns homosexuality and will harshly judge those who habitually practice it. Although there are those who would like to think otherwise, the Bible is not silent on this subject. And all references in the Bible to the gay agenda and those who believe and engage in it—homosexuals and lesbians—are unified in the assessment that such activity is despicable, contemptible and loathsome to God.
God created and established only one pattern and means for sex within the human race when in Genesis 1:27, 28, He “created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it . . . .’” From that time forward God has never introduced or condoned another approach to or for sexual behavior. God meant then and means today for sex within the human race to be strictly between a man and woman. The die was cast at creation, and it has never changed.
In Genesis 19:1-26 God unmistakably denounces and harshly judges homosexuality. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were assessed by God as totally evil because of their extreme worldliness that eventually deteriorated into flagrant and shameless homosexual behavior, which is not unlike many areas throughout America and the world today. In fact, the word “sodomy,” which represents copulation with a member of the same sex and other deviate sexual behavior, is derived from the Old Testament city of Sodom. Because Sodom and Gomorrah were, as a matter of commonality and proliferation, engulfed with homosexuality, God utterly destroyed them with fire and brimstone.
But the Bible has much more to say regarding this repugnant and hideous sin, as follows:
Leviticus 18:22-24; 20:13, 15, 16
You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination. Nor shall you mate with any animal, to defile yourself with it. Nor shall any woman stand before an animal to mate with it. It is perversion. Do not defile yourselves with any of these things; for by all these the nations are defiled, which I am casting out before you. . . . If a man lies with a male as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them. . . . If a man mates with an animal, he shall surely be put to death, and you shall kill the animal. If a woman approaches any animal and mates with it, you shall kill the woman and the animal. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood is upon them.
In this passage homosexuality is just as horrific as bestiality, and God required a death sentence for both perversions.
Romans 1:26, 27
For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due.
This description of “vile passions,” being homosexuality, is only one of many atrocious acts against God (sin) that Paul states will receive God’s wrath, as seen in the entire passage from verse 18 to verse 32. See also 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:9, 10, verses which detail God’s judgment upon those who are steeped in (habitually practice) homosexuality and other terrible sins.
The following from the Believer’s Bible Commentary by William MacDonald is very instructive in regards to this issue:
No practicing homosexual will inherit the kingdom of God. So-called “gays” pay a high price for their immoral lifestyle. Paul says that they receive in themselves “the penalty of their error which was due” (Rom 1:27b). This includes venereal diseases, pneumocystis, Kaposi’s sarcoma (a form of cancer) and AIDS. It also includes haunting guilt, mental and emotional disturbances, and abnormal personality changes. . . .
There is a difference between being a “practicing” homosexual and having a homosexual “tendency.” It is the practice that the Bible condemns, not the orientation. There are many who have an attraction to their own sex but refuse to give in to it. By the power of the Spirit, they have disciplined themselves to resist the temptation and to live in purity. . . . Some blame God that they were born with this tendency, but the fault does not lie with God but with human sinfulness. Every fallen child of Adam has evil tendencies. Some have a weakness in one area, some in another. The sin is not in being tempted, but in yielding to the temptation.
There is deliverance from homosexuality or lesbianism, as there is from any form of lust. . . Christians should accept gays and lesbians as persons without approving their lifestyle. Because they are people for whom Christ died, believers should seek in every possible way to win them to a life of “holiness, without which no one will see the Lord” (Heb. 12:14).
The bottom line is that homosexuality is sin and is totally unacceptable to God. As with all sin, the Christian, regardless of sexual orientation, should yield himself to the control of the Holy Spirit, who alone can empower the child of God to increasingly become transformed into the image of Christ. |