1.
All
human beings are made in the image of God
“Let us make man in
our image, after our likeness… So God created man in His own image, in the
image of God He created him; male and female He created them. And God blessed
them…” (Gen. 1:26, 27, 28)
a)
All human
beings are made by God. Man is a product of a deliberate creative act by
God. From the dust of the ground, and the breath of God (Gen. 2:7) man was
made, with a body and a soul/spirit. Each human being has a soul that does not
die. Man is created as the apex of God’s creation. This gives all human beings
profound dignity and immense worth. No human being is more or less, small or
greater, better or worse, than another before God. All human beings are made in
the image of God. We therefore are to give the same dignity to men or women,
young or old, regardless of their sexual orientation.
b)
By being
made in the image of God, man is like God in three ways: Eph.4:24; Col.
3:10
i)
Knowledge – ability to comprehend what God says
and have a relationship with God and other people
ii)
Righteousness – man is a moral being able to
hear, understand the law of God, and do it. Only men were given God’s law and
required to obey it. Only man can transgress, or sin against God.
iii)
Holiness – Man is set apart from the rest of
creation, exalted to have dominion over the rest of the creatures. Only man can
have a relationship with God.
Homosexuals are also in the image of
God!
c)
God
created human beings with gender distinction – “male and female He created them.” Male and female completes God’s image on
earth. God gave this as common grace for all people. God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone;
I will make him a helper fit for him.” In this statement, God is not simply saying
that Adam did not have a friend, but He is saying that Adam could not find his
full fulfilment in himself or in anything else, but needed fellowship,
companionship and complementary relationship in another human being (similar)
but who would be his helper (different), who could provide this. This is why we
read later on, “… But for Adam there was
not found a helper fit for him.”
d) God blessed them. You notice that the
Bible does not say that God blessed him, but them. This is both before the woman was created (v. 26) and after
(v.28). Special blessing is given to man and woman that had not been given
before. The possibility of God’s blessing of becoming ‘fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have
dominion’ over the rest of the creation.
One of the
greatest disasters with LGBT agenda is that it strikes at the heart of the
family unit. If all people became entangled on LGBT, then there would be no
children, no human life! Is it to say that the human race is rejecting God’s
blessing? Children are a heritage from
the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward. Psalm 127:3
2.
All
human beings are equally sinful
Adam, did not
obey God in the matter of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. For God told
him, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but
of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat of it, for in
the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Gen. 2:16, 17) Clearly sin
has consequences.
Therefore, in
chapter 3 we see Eve and Adam eat of the tree by the instigation of the devil. The
devil overturned the first family by the fruit, and he continues to attack the
family by various means, calling wrong right and right wrong. In eating of the
forbidden fruit, our first parents, brought into the world sin and misery upon
themselves and their posterity. Therefore, God pronounced a universal curse
upon His creation. Therefore, in Genesis 5, we read that Adam lived 930 years
and he died… Seth lived 912 years and he died, etc.
Temptation to sin is universal. There
is difference between being tempted and sinning. Jesus was tempted in every way
as we are yet did not sin (Heb. 4:15). We must not cave in to temptations,
whether sexual or otherwise. We are to pray that the Lord may deliver us from
these temptations or help us to resist but use them for our spiritual good.
Only the Lord can help us to master these temptations, because Christianity
demands that we subdue every thought, every lust, every desire to our faith and
commitment to be under the rule of Christ.
Sin is universal. To be human is to
have this propensity to sin against God and His law. With regard to sexual sin.
We need to realize that all human beings have sexual disorders. We all do have
some aspects of sexual drives which are against the God-designed sexuality.
Lust is too common, but this is rarely admitted. People do all kinds of things
with their bodies in the privacy of their rooms which is wrong and
embarrassing. Therefore, the Bible says, “None
is righteous, no, not one… All have turned aside; together they have become
worthless; no one does good, not even one!” (Rom. 3:10,12)
The consequence of sin is universal.
All die because all sin. And so the Bible says, “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death
through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned… Yet death
reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the
transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come” (Rom.
5:12, 14).
3.
Any
sin can be forgiven.
The mercy and
grace of God, comprehended in Christ is sufficient to deal with any sin. This
is why we read that the Corinthian church had saints who were formerly sexual
perverts, idolaters, homosexuals among others! But they had been washed and
sanctified and justified in the name of Christ and the Spirit of God! (1 Cor.
6:9,11).
We must not exalt or minimize one sin above
the other. No sin is greater than the other. All sins are equally heinous
in the sense that the soul who sins shall
surely die (Eze. 18:4, 20). Each one shall die for his own sin (2Kings
14:6). We must not vilify one sinner since we are ourselves sinful. Instead we
are to realize that any sin is forgivable. LGBT is not the unforgivable sin. The Bible lists homosexuality along with lying (1 Tim. 1:10),
idolatry, robbing, being greedy, swindling (1 Cor.
6:9), gossiping and committing murder (Rom. 1:25). Such broad
lists like these are meant to convey one thing: we all have
a sin issue. It's bad news for everyone. But it's not just bad news that
affects individuals. Sin impacts society as a whole. "Righteousness exalts
a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people," says Proverbs 14:34.
In other words, any society that condones destructive, sinful behaviour (as
Scripture defines sin) is a society that will weaken and decline.
We must not endorse any sin. While it
is true that Christians are loving people, who obey God, by loving God, and
their neighbours as themselves, yet we must in the same breath not condone, or
welcome sin. It is not that Christians are against LGBT, but they are opposed
to any sin, because this is what it means to be Christians. Christians kill
sin! They put to death any passion of the flesh. No true disciple of Christ
will be happy to live in sin, leave alone try to justify his sinful conduct.
You must not
attempt to re-write the Bible. One of the marks of
a Christian is his or her desire to be obedient to Christ's teaching. Certainly
most of us would like to rewrite the scriptures to make life easier, or so it
would seem. I would change where Christ says that lust is the same as doing the
deed. Christianity is a demanding faith. The scriptures define and change us,
not the other way around. A Biblical sexual ethic does not, indeed cannot,
change with the times!
God created sex for His glory and man’s pleasure. God is all for sex in the context of a loving,
male-female marriage. But because of the temptation to sexual
immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. (1Cor.
7:2). He designed it. The joy and
companionship found in Christian marriage will never be rivalled by any
alternative. God is against
the wrongful use of sex because He has our best interests at heart.
It is the curse of sin that warps our minds and leads us to re-define happiness
according to our own desires. We want happiness as we choose to
define it. But God isn't a willing recruit for anyone's personal agenda.
Instead, He wants to rescue us from ourselves.
We must also
not find alternative ways of dealing with sin except what God has provided.
The wages of sin is death but the free
gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom. 6:23). There is
no sin that can be propitiated any other way apart from Christ. Therefore, turn from
your sin and live. "Seek the LORD
while he may be found; call upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake
his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the LORD, that
he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.”
Isa 55:6-7.
Since any sin is
forgivable, if it is confessed and renounced, then why not? The Bible is clear
that he who conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses
and forsakes them sins will obtain mercy (Prov. 28:13)
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