Q: When is our synod going to join the real world and accept homosexuality as part of God’s creation, similar to how we view different races? I write from personal experience, where two of our wonderful sons are homosexual.”
A: You imply that the moral standards of Scripture can be dropped or modified at whim in deference to prevailing public opinion. This we cannot do. Two quotations immediately come to mind: “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever” (1 John 2:15-17). “Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God” James 4:4).
Our synod condemns homosexuality as the sin it is, not because of an ardent desire to preserve Victorian age principles, but simply because God’s Word calls it sin (see Romans 1:26, 27 and 1 Corinthians 6:9). Now, if God specifically calls it a sin, of which (as with any sin) there must be repentance, what good—what spiritual and eternal good—would it serve to let relatives or friends be deceived into thinking homosexuality is a natural part of God’s created order for the sexes? The Apostle John wrote, “If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives” (I John 1:10).
We do no individual a favor by “condoning” or “overlooking” a public lifestyle of sin. We may feel it is easier to associate with them by avoiding any testimony against the immorality and succumbing to Satan’s invitation to tolerate a sin as “perfectly acceptable by today’s moral criterion.” But in the end, such a soul will not be prepared to meet his/her Maker. And Ezekiel warns, “When I say to the wicked, ‘O wicked man, you will surely die,’ and you do not speak out to dissuade him from his ways, that wicked man will die for his sin, and I will hold you accountable for his blood. But if you do warn the wicked man to turn from his ways and he does not do so, he will die for his sin, but you will have saved yourself” (Ezekiel 33:8, 9).
Our chief goal in life is that we and those upon whom we have an influence know Jesus Christ. But to know Christ means to see him as the one who atones for all sins and grants salvation simply by faith in his grace. Of necessity, then, the acceptance of Christ’s grace means acknowledging sin as sin.
Parents of homosexuals may have a “good intention” by refusing to make any waves about an issue so imbedded in our modern social consciousness. But many so-called “good intentions” have paved the road to hell. Only God’s intentions count. They are far more than mere intentions.