We live in a time when there are widely contradictory perspectives among Christians and those who claim to be Christians. Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., said it well when he wrote we are “living in an age of widespread doctrinal denial and intense theological confusion.”
This dichotomy is most readily seen in the different responses to same-sex issues. Some have capitulated to the propaganda of LGBT activists, and others have faithfully held to a biblical perspective of marriage and human sexuality.
Nominal Christians are lauded by the LGBT community, while genuine Christians are maligned as homophobic, bigoted, and hateful. So what distinguishes a nominal Christian from a genuine Christian?
The simplest definition is a Christian is a follower of Jesus Christ and His teachings: one who lives as He did. If a Christian by definition is one patterning his life after that of Christ then we cannot deny that Christ placed His confidence in the authority of Scripture.
When he was twelve His parents lost Him and later found Him listening to and asking questions of those who taught in the temple. When He was tempted in the wilderness He replied to the devil’s three temptations with “it is written.” In His Sermon on the Mount Jesus said, “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill,” Matthew 5:17.
Time and again when Jesus was questioned about marriage, the resurrection, His authority to do the things He did, He unwaveringly gave the authority of God’s Word as the authority for what He believed and did. Christ never disobeyed the Scriptures.
The inescapable conclusion is that to be a genuine Christian one must place the same confidence in the authority of Scripture Christ did. Anything less is not Christian. Scripture frames the Christian’s worldview, so that the Christian concept of what is sin, and what is not, is informed by Scripture.
If we are to remain true to the Scriptures as Christ did, we must declare homosexuality to be a sin because that is what the Scriptures declare.
But this is not a license to treat those in the grip of homosexual sin in an unloving way, to bully or shame them, because their sin is no greater than our own. We needed someone to love us when we were in sin and warn us so we could repent and turn in faith to Christ.
This is why we are compelled in God’s Word to love and warn those deceived by homosexuality, because while their sin is no greater than ours, it is no less grave.
“Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators…nor adulterers…nor homosexuals…will inherit the kingdom of God,” 1 Corinthians 6:9-10.
It will take more than childish name calling to stop us from warning those who are lost, not because we are bigoted or hateful, but because we love as Christ loved us.
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