Yes, Homosexuality is a Sin; But God Wants to Set People Free from It

This is a reflection prompted by the controversy over tweets and columns by liberal CNN political analyst Roland Martin.

Personally, I am willing to accept the notion that some people--perhaps 1 to 3% of the adult population at any time, based on the data I have seen--have inborn impulses or orientations to homosexuality, even though there is not yet any scientific date definitively proving the point.

But even if a homosexual orientation is inborn, it doesn't relieve the person who has this orientation from heeding the will of God.

If we want the hand of grace, forgiveness, and new life that Jesus Christ offers to us, we must lay down the sins that weigh us down and would otherwise prevent us from having Christ in our lives.

To accept or spurn the grace of God is a choice we all must make each day, whether in relation to the general inborn sinful impulses we all have (the Bible teaches that we are born in sin, a condition of self-will and separation from God) or to the specific sins that seem to especially tempt every person.

All of us are sinners, including me. I sin every day because I am human.

But there's a difference between the sins we commit because of our errant human judgments, on the the one hand, and the sins of deliberate and knowing rebellion against the revealed will of God, on the other.

The Old and New Testaments, and Jesus Himself, the One we Christians believe is God in the flesh, speak unambiguously in teaching that sexual intimacy is a gift from God to be opened only by a man and a woman in marriage.

Citing the book of Genesis, Jesus underscored the sanctity of heterosexual marriage (and the horrors of divorce) when He said:

Have you not read that the One Who made them at the beginning [God] "made them male and female," and said, "For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? (Matthew 19:4-5)

The Bible also gets very specific in dealing with homosexual behavior.

For example, much of the Old Testament book of Leviticus conveys ritual/sacrificial law no longer valid because Jesus Christ has become the perfect sacrifice for sin "once and for all" or civic law, invalidated because we do not live in a theocracy, as ancient Israel was meant to be. But sections of Leviticus, like the portion of it referred to as "the holiness code," are merely explanations of the Ten Commandments, the Mosaic law, which is what Jesus was referring to when He said:

Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. ¹⁸For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. ¹⁹Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:17-19)

This is important to keep in mind when considering this admonition to men found in Leviticus:

²²You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. (Leviticus 18:22)

In the New Testament, Paul says that the increase of all sorts of sin, including homosexuality, is a result of human beings coming untethered from God and giving credence to the human impulse, seen a lot today, toward worshiping the creation, including the self, rather than the Creator:

²²Claiming to be wise, they became fools; ²³and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles. ²⁴Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves, ²⁵because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. ²⁶For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, ²⁷and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error. ²⁸And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind and to things that should not be done. ²⁹They were filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, ³⁰slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, ³¹foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. ³²They know God’s decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die—yet they not only do them but even applaud others who practice them. (Romans 1:22-32)

Exegeting the Ten Commandments for the young pastor Timothy, the apostle Paul singles out homosexuality as a violation of the Sixth Commandment, "You shall not commit adultery," a proscription against adulterating the gift of sexuality by stealing it from God outside of heterosexual marriage:

Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it legitimately. ⁹This means understanding that the law is laid down not for the innocent but for the lawless and disobedient, for the godless and sinful, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their father or mother, for murderers, ¹⁰fornicators, sodomites, slave traders, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to the sound teaching ¹¹that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me.  (1 Timothy 1:8-11)

It may be politically incorrect, but Christians are bound to tell the truth to all tempted by sin or mired in sin (including ourselves) and the truth is that to be tempted by homosexuality is not a sin, but to fall into it is.

But there is hope! Paul also writes in the New Testament:

¹³No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it. (1 Corinthians 10:13)

If we are open to the help of God, God will help us and as we walk more intimately with Him, our lives will be transformed in ways we can hardly imagine!