Jesus Christ was once asked about marriage and divorce. He replied in this way:
“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” -Matthew 19:4-6 NIV
Jesus was saying essentially that the bond between husband and wife is a sacred union. Jesus made it clear that God’s design for marriage is sacred, permanent in this life, and not subject to change.
The biblical formula for marriage is between one man and one woman. The scriptures are abundantly clear about that. God’s design for marriage is beautiful, artistic, and a wonderful joy.
Unfortunately there is a progressive element in the world today that seeks to redefine and change things in society to reflect the subjective views of a select few of elite social engineers. Increasingly there is a faction of society in the west that wants to change and “evolve” society as they see fit. There is a lot of money and support behind this movement. Today, there is mounting pressure in Europe, Canada, and the United States for Christian organizations to turn coat on the issue of marriage, gender, and other concerns.
In recent years some Christian organizations and denominational movements have made moves to change their marriage doctrines to allow for gay marriage to be practiced. The arguments have been that this is about love, inclusion, tolerance, and equal rights for gay couples. The results have overwhelmingly been that there is a mass exodus from the movement. And with the core principles of the churches compromised, soon other compromises come about, and the movement dies off completely.
We must never, never, never endorse a practice that the scriptures show clearly to be sinful. So in your life and witness, you may come across Christians or groups of individuals, or activists who will be working within your church movement to get the movement to embrace gay marriage, gender ideology, and other non-biblical positions on issues of the day. I’m encouraging you today to boldly stand up against these attempts to circumvent God’s word. I’d like to arm you today to contest with these activists and show from God’s word the plain truth of God’s design for marriage. Let’s take a look at some scriptures.
Regarding homosexuality, the New Testament writer, the Apostle Paul addressed this issue in the flagship book of Protestantism, the book of Romans.
Paul was writing regarding those who disbelieve in God, who refuse to obey His standards when he wrote: “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised.Amen.
Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.”
-Romans 1:21-27 NIV
Critics say that this scripture doesn’t apply because the context is that it’s addressing idolatry. It is true that the context is how God deals with idolatry, which is that he then gives people over to indulge in sin. It makes sense, if people don’t want Him, then he turns them over to their own desires; desires which God defines as sinful. And God indicates that these sinful desires include homosexual activity. Which means despite the context being idolatry, implicit in the scripture is the clear truth that homosexual practice is indeed sinful. Another attack on this scripture is saying that Paul was addressing the pedophilia practiced by men in Rome. But Paul doesn’t say children, he says men. Which means he’s talking about adult men. And he also talks about women indulging in sinful behavior with women. How could that have to do with pedophilia? Paul wasn’t addressing pedophilia. He was addressing idolatry, and implicit in his description of idolatry is the truth that homosexuality is a sinful practice.
Another attack levied against biblical marriage are ceremonial laws of the Old Testament. The objector will start listing off ceremonial and judicial laws from the Old Testament, mainly from Exodus and Leviticus. They say: “Do you eat pork? Do you eat shell-fish? Should you stone your wife if she commits adultery? Do you think a woman who is on her period is unclean? How can you pick and choose!”
The answer to this is that the levitical laws were ceremonial rules for the ancient nation of Israel, mainly for their health and safety. These laws were for an ancient nation 4,000 years ago, to help them stay healthy and to eat the right foods, and so on and so forth. We are not under the ceremonial laws. The judicial laws in exodus were for the ancient nation of Israel once again, as rules for an ancient people to begin to learn to obey their God. They were the very beginning of government laws for an ancient people.
The Bible is what we call a “progressive revelation.” Meaning over thousands of years God interacted with people by slowly revealing His will and plan in ways they could understand. We still look back to the Old Testament at things like the 10 commandments in Exodus, because those commands are spiritual in nature. We still look back to the OT in other areas for inspiring stories and wise teachings, but the ceremonial and judicial laws are no longer binding. We are directly under the teachings of the New Testament today. And time and again homosexuality is directly prohibited in the New Testament (1st Corinthians 6:9-11, Romans 1:26-28, 1st Timothy 1:10).
In fact during the spread of the early church in the book of Acts, the Jerusalem council meets to decide if Gentiles (non-Jews) should be required to keep the OT laws (See Acts 15:1-35). The decision is made that Gentiles must not be placed under the OT laws, because of the grace of Christ, but that the Gentiles should be taught to live holy lives, and it’s specifically mentioned at the Jerusalem council that gentiles should be taught to abstain from sexual immorality. Included in the umbrella term “sexual immorality” is of course prohibited homosexual practices as described in the NT.
Look, I’m not trying to be mean, or judgmental, or unloving. But the Bible says what it says, and doesn’t say what it doesn’t say. And given the choice between the Bible and someones opinion, I’ll take God’s word every time.
Here’s the deal: When you debate with someone who is attacking God’s design for marriage and pushing the gay marriage issue, especially within the church, if you debate with them long enough you’ll notice that behind their objections is one prime factor: They reject the authority of scripture. They don’t really believe the Bible is God’s word. That is the problem. The solution is to rally people to His word and invite them to believe it.
Let me be clear: That is the issue with people within churches. For those outside churches, biblical arguments aren’t going to have any sort of impact, because they don’t recognize even partial authority in the scriptures. They reject them as the creeds of evil men bent on misogyny and bigotry. We know they are not that, but that’s how they are thought of in modern culture.
There is a very simple question to ask: Is the Bible the word of God? If the answer is indeed “yes” which it always ought to be, then we have absolutely no business encouraging that which God has forbidden. It’s just that simple.
At the end of Romans 1 Paul also writes: “Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.” (v.32) Do we want to join the growing number who have decided to approve of those who practice such behaviors? Of course not. So I encourage you, take a stand for God’s beautiful, wonderful design for marriage.
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Source: Christian Post
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