The church of the Lord Jesus Christ finds itself in a profound moral crisis. In 2016, the issue of homosexuality and whether it has a place in Christian faith and practice has emerged as the major ethical matter dividing, and confronting, the church.
In recent days, we’ve seen both heartening developments and saddening ones. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, a parachurch ministry located on over 700 college campuses, has taken the commendable step of requiring all staff to affirm the biblical sexual ethic and live according to its good and liberating design. According to IVCF, holy sexual expression occurs only in marriage between one man and one woman. There is no other context recognized in Scripture as permissible for sexual expression.
The text of Scripture makes this clear from numerous angles. Adam and Eve delight in one another; they are “naked and not ashamed,” showing us the beauty of marital love (Gen. 2:25). Texts like the Song of Songs show us beyond a shadow of a doubt that sex is created not for a permissive playground but for a covenantal couple. Jesus teaches this design of marriage expressly in Matthew 19:3-6, a vision seconded by the apostle Paul in Ephesians 5:22-33. The very storyline of Scripture shows us that earthly marriages are a glimmer, a glimpse, of the greater marriage to take place in the new heavens and the new earth, when the saving Christ dwells bodily with his redeemed bride, the church. From the start, sex is intended for exclusive covenantal union between one man and one woman. To violate this is to go against the clear teaching of Scripture on the matter of marriage and also of homosexuality (see Genesis 19; Leviticus 18:22; Deuteronomy 23:17-18; Romans 1:26-27; 1 Corinthians 6:9; 1 Timothy 1:10).
What InterVarsity has affirmed in calling its staff to gospel-shaped sexual practice, others have denied. In recent days, popular evangelical writer Jen Hatmaker has called homosexual unions “holy” before God. It is her view that “From a civil rights and civil liberties side and from just a human being side, any two adults have the right to choose who they want to love.” Her endorsement mirrors that of philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff. Wolterstorff argued that “When those with homosexual orientation act on their desires in a loving, committed relationship, [they] are not, as far as I can see, violating the love command.” Homosexual couples provide for one another what heterosexual couples offer one another. Romans 1 prohibits “unnatural” homosexual action rather than the type that is “natural” to a person, according to Wolterstorff.
The cases of IVCF on the one side and Hatmaker and Wolterstorff on the other show us the two paths before professing Christians today. We do not have a third option here. We must either affirm the biblical sexual ethic or reject it. To affirm the Bible’s teaching is to find life; to reject it is to plunge into darkness. We have seen in recent years that any neutral ground on this issue is rapidly disappearing. We cannot hang out in a fuzzy principle-free zone. Either homosexuality is totally fine, or it is not.
It is increasingly clear that churches claiming to be “evangelical” have taught little on the biblical design for the family. Hatmaker’s statement speaks to a wholly unbiblical description of love. Husbands are called to love their wives and no other sexual partner; wives are called to submit to their husband and no one else (1 Peter 3:1-7). Love is not what any two adults do; love is what husbands and wives do. The Bible does teach us much about love, but when love is related to sex, it introduces us to sturdy categories: husband-and-wife. Lifelong union, ideally. Exclusive interest. Love in Scripture is not whatever we decide it to be; love of a sexual kind is defined for us from the creation of mankind. Ours is not to remix love; ours is to receive God’s gift of it in obedience.
In terms of Wolterstorff’s citation of “orientation,” we can say that it is possible that men and women may incline from birth toward attraction to the same sex. But though this inclination may be “natural,” we cannot thus conclude that our natural inclinations are doxological. By contrast, the Spirit of God has the natural man squarely in his sights. We think of 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 on this point:
[9] Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, [10] nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. [11] And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:9-11)
We were many things before our conversion; we even took on the identity of our sins. But in Christ, we are no longer what we once were. We have been made new. Our sinful identity was taken by our Savior to a cross. You can no more find the old self we once were than you can find the wood that bore Christ’s body. It is gone. The work is finished. We are not perfect, but we are washed, sanctified, and justified.
The church does not fundamentally hold its ethics out of hostility. It promotes the Scripture’s teaching out of love. Love, like holiness, is defined by God, and none can alter this definition. If we are to have a gospel to offer sinners like us, sinners of every persuasion and type, we must have a God who underwrites that gospel. The good news is that we do, and that he has declared himself and his moral will in the Word.
Churches may have gone soft on God’s design for sex, marriage, and the family in the past. It may have been easier to tilt the sermon series to a less divisive topic. What we are seeing today is this: if we do not teach and preach on these matters, the culture will. The world will swallow our witness and subsume our ethics. Now is not a time for going quiet on human sexuality or making a bargain with the culture. Like InterVarsity has seen, now is the time for clarity. Now is a time to witness.
Now is a time to be counted.