Freud or God — which way, Christian?

Is God anti-gay?

Yes, God is anti-gay.

The God of the Bible is anti-gay, and the gods of this world are pro-gay.

Get Our Latest News for FREE

Subscribe to get daily/weekly email with the top stories (plus special offers!) from The Christian Post. Be the first to know.

We have walked the long road with prodigals and their parents. Some have been led by the nose by the false idea that homosexuality is a permanent feature of some people’s humanity and that God loves homosexuality. This grievous heresy has denied an entire generation of young people the repentance needed to fight sin and grow in Christ. We want you to know the truth: you need to hate your sin without hating yourself.

God is anti-gay because God is anti-sin. As Dr. Barry York says, “SSA (same-sex attraction) is SSA (sinful sexual attraction).” Too many people have shipwrecked their Christian lives by not knowing where the battle line is drawn and waiting too late to repent of sin. Sin starts with your heart, not your actions. Any ministry or Christian that restricts sin to actions and not the desires that fuel them, or teaches that same-sex attraction is sinful temptation, a form of fallenness, but not sin proper, is leading people astray.

This last obfuscation truly boggles the mind.

If the word sinful means “filled with sin,” how can something be “filled with sin” but not sin-proper? How can anyone fight an enemy when fellow Christians blur their ability to see sin as sin and even tell them not to repent of it?

Homosexuality is neither normal nor safe nor redeemable for the service of God. And we are not picking on homosexuality and ignoring other sexual sins. All sin is treason against a holy God.

Still, we reject the common assumption that other (hetero)sexual transgressions are of greater concern because they present as “more prevalent sins.” Pornography, adultery, and masturbation are normalized by our anti-Christian age, but they are not lionized and defended by civil law as a social good and civil right carried forth by a “minority” people group. Indeed, God is anti-gay because God is love. He loves His creation and the created order, and homosexuality is, at its root, rebellion against the created order. Homosexuality is found in the fallen flesh, forbidden by the Law of God, and overcome in the Savior, and this is part of the good news of the Gospel.

Homosexuality is found in the flesh

God created male and female in His image as a purposeful pattern (Gen. 1:26-28). He created Adam first and then said it was not good for Adam to be alone, so He formed Eve from Adam’s rib (Gen. 2:18-22). God brought Eve to Adam, and Adam recognized her as “bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (vs.23). Adam called her woman because “she was taken out of man” (vs. 23). God ordained marriage for procreation and stewardship. Adam and Eve set the pattern for humanity, and this pattern includes marriage as normative (Gen. 2:24). God designed men and women for one another, but this perfect design was marred when sin entered the Garden through the serpent’s lies.

God forbade eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but the serpent told Eve that God was not telling her the truth. Looking at the tree through Satan’s point of view, she “saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise” (Gen. 3:6). The word “desired” is translated “covet” in the 10th Commandment (Ex. 20:17; Deut. 5:21). Eve desired or coveted the forbidden fruit before she ate it. She created attraction for the tree in her heart by listening to the serpent. She began sinning in her heart before she tasted the fruit from the forbidden tree with her mouth.

This means that the beginning of sinful attraction, desire, inclination, or impulse is sin proper, not “fallenness” or “brokenness.” Covetousness violates the 10th Commandment (“thou shalt not covet”). The 10th Commandment prohibits the sin that precedes action. Coveting what God has put off limits to you is contrary to Him, and any impulse or desire in us that is contrary to God is sin.

Importantly, the “you” in Genesis 3:1-5 is plural (“you all”): “For in the day you (all) eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Because of her sinful desire, she ate and gave some to her husband. Adam, the federal head, stands as the responsible agent for the sin they — and now we — share. Due to their sin, which is a twisting of God’s good design, the lust of the flesh plunged all of humanity into sin. Now, we are all conceived in sin (Psalm 51:5), and Adam’s sinful flesh is in all of mankind (1 Cor. 15:22). All that is contrary to God in us comes from Adam’s sin, which is now our sinful flesh.

Nevertheless, God’s good design, as reflected in our being made in His image, remains. Sin mars, but does not change what it means to be human, to be made male and female in the image of God, to be made for the purpose of being fruitful and multiplying, filling and stewarding the earth. The normative command is that the pattern of sexual difference (male and female) is heterosexual. You cannot, according to God’s creation ordinance, separate sex from sexuality.

But the category of sexual orientation, a 19th-century Freudian category mistake, does just this — it separates sex from sexuality. The American Psychological Association defines sexual orientation as “an enduring emotional, romantic, or sexual attraction that one feels toward men, toward women, or toward both.”

The modernist invention of “homosexual orientation” asserts that sexual attraction is independent from being male or female, which is only possible because of the sin of our flesh. If you can separate your sexual attraction from your sex, then you are rejecting God’s creation ordinance as binding and true, and you are defining yourself based on how you may feel rather than what God has made and blessed.

Homosexuality is forbidden in the Law of God

The Bible teaches that homosexuality is a perversion — a twisting and deforming of what God calls good — and not a “fallen” personality trait. Homosexuality occurs when “a man lies with a male as with a woman” (Lev. 20:13), when he exchanges his natural relations with a woman for a man (Romans 1:26-27). All of these descriptions reflect things God hates and forbids, not an unchangeable characteristic. Indeed, every scriptural example of homosexuality refers to lust or behavior, showing that homosexual sinners are like all of the other sinners in the Bible:

• Genesis 19:1-11 and Judges 19:16-24 explain how wicked men who were citizens of their cities wanted to know sojourning men as husbands know their wives.
• Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 forbid a man lying with a man as with a woman.
• Romans 1:26-27 describes women and men exchanging the natural use of the opposite sex for the same sex in their hearts and actions.
• 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 says that those who practice homosexuality (in thought and deed) will not inherit the Kingdom of God.
• 1 Timothy 1:9-10 rebukes those who practice homosexuality, acting as men in the sexual act.

The Bible does not regard sexual orientation as a category of personhood because sexual orientation is a 19th-century category mistake. You do not “have” same-sex attraction (like you have brown eyes), and you do not “experience” same sex attraction (like you do a cold or acne). You have a sin nature, and your job is to go to war against that sin nature and its impulses using the power of the Holy Spirit (Jeremiah 17:9).

Homosexuality is overcome by the Savior

Anyone who wants to minister the Gospel of grace to people overcome by homosexual desire must firmly understand why God is anti-gay. God is anti-gay because God is love, and therefore, God is anti-sin. But God doesn’t just condemn sin and leave us to suffer with no help or cure.

The Lord Jesus Christ became sin on the cross so that His people would be ransomed into the grace of forgiveness and the progressive victory over sin as we fight against our sin nature in the power of the Spirit’s grace. But the sexual sinner must fight with active and sincere repentance and drive a fresh nail into their homosexual sin a thousand times a day. You must not be passive and call sin by any other name.

Yes, sexual sin runs deep, and yes, the battle is fierce, but God is for you in this fight. In His power, Christians can repent and live according to God’s design for us as male or female.

If you have sinned in homosexual desire, lust, or sex, you are not “called” to lifelong celibacy; you are called to repentance. The first step in repentance is admitting that “gay” is not who you are. Instead, you are male or female with a pathological sin pattern that Jesus Christ can change. Repent of your evil desires and trust in Christ. Live His morality from your heart and keep repenting of indwelling sin until it is put to death. Yes, you will fight your sin nature for as long as you live on earth, but that does not mean that your indwelling sin patterns remain fixed. Sanctification is a progressive and real process, and God changes the affections of the heart, conforming the repenting believer to walk in His truth.

Jesus Christ is worth the fight against our sinful nature because the tomb is empty — He sits at the right hand of God the Father, interceding on your behalf and leading you to greater and greater victory. But you will not experience any victory if you keep one foot in the gay camp, telling yourself that your sin is your “sexual orientation.”

Conclusion

Freud or God — which way, Christian? Every generation must defend the Gospel anew and protect its young people from Satan’s devices. You are not who you feel you are. You are who God says you are. Neither your flesh nor your feelings determine your identity. God does, and He created you male or female, including your sexuality.

Having trusted in Christ, daily freedom in Christ from false identities is yours for the taking and living, if you will live in humble repentance according to God’s design for you.

God is anti-gay. The question is, are you? If not, you are opposing God and who He created you to be. You cannot kick against God’s design and have joy in Him at the same time. If you are anti-gay, then enjoy Christ above all by repenting of every form of homosexual desire in you. The fight is worth it because Christ is worth it.

Originally published at Clear Truth Media.