Is Same-Sex Attraction Sinful?
Is same-sex attraction sinful? I will answer that in this blog. Now, there are two ways people look at homosexuality within a Christian circle. There’s the progressive view on homosexuality and they still call themselves Christians. They view homosexuality as many progressive denominations and the United Methodist Church recently just reversed the practice of gay clergy and the United Church of Christ, Episcopal Church, some of the Lutheran and Presbyterian communities, do not view homosexual acts or attractions as sinful. They have their way of interpreting the Bible. And they argue that the historical context of the scriptures is crucial to understanding their meaning.
They affirm and include these groups they advocate for the full inclusion of LGBTQ, the alphabet community, within the life of the church, including marriage and ordination rights. And they emphasize interpretation of the Bible, the focus on love justice and the inherent dignity of all individuals. They reject the traditional explanation of the scripture and they say that those things are culturally and historically conditioned and they advocate for more of a broader view of the gospel that includes everybody and anybody and everybody can join the church, become a member and become a leader including a clergy being homosexual or being straight but progressive Christians miss the following about the homosexuality.
What Does The Progressive View Miss About Homosexuality?
Number one is homosexuality was not God’s plan for sexual expression. In Genesis, we see a similar thing in Hebrews chapter 13:4 Homosexual practice brought the disastrous judgment of God upon the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Homosexuality brings God’s judgment even within the body of a homosexual now. Homosexual behaviour is condemned as an abomination in the Old Testament. The Bible prohibits having sex in seven areas: with parents, with children, with siblings, with another spouse, with animals, with dead people, and with the same-sex.
So it’s not only the same-sex that God discriminates. There are a variety of different things that the Bible gives us God’s purity standards apply to us in the New Testament as they also apply to people who follow the way of God in the Old Testament. The practice of homosexuality in the New Testament is presented as a natural state rooted in the fallen human nature. The New Testament uses five words to describe both male and female homosexual conduct.
Unnatural, perverted, degrading, shameful and indecent and the scripture is clear that practising homosexuals will not inherit the kingdom of God. The progressive Christians, ‘ view on just the topic of homosexuality misses completely what the scripture teaches. No matter how culturally the progressive view on homosexuality is accepted in our culture, the Bible is not endorsing the culture.
Sin is not only in doing sexual sin but also in entertaining lustful thoughts
The scripture says that we are not to conform to the culture but we are to be transformed by the renewing of our mind. Now, when you embrace the biblical view on sexuality and purity, you will pretty much be perceived as a weirdo, a bigoted, a homophobic, transphobic and all other phobics because the culture right away starts throwing all kinds of labels to cause you to be ashamed of the gospel, to be ashamed of the Christian convictions. Still, they did that to believers in the beginning.
Romans would call Christians all kinds of names that were not truthful, they could make them ashamed. Now if you’re watching this video right now and you are a person who is a Christian, and maybe you are struggling with homosexual attraction or you are tempted by that and probably you clicked on this video, this is where I’m going to talk to you right now or if you’re watching and just interested in knowing is this a sin to have an attraction or is just a sin to practice homosexual act. Now, let’s lay the basic foundation. We already said homosexuality is a sin.
The progressive view on homosexuality is not biblical. Gay Christian is an oxymoron as a hateful Christian. Ao you can’t be a gay Christian, it’s a contradiction because a homosexual is somebody who self-identifies as homosexual and engages in sexual activity with members of the same gender. A Christian identifies with Jesus through His death, burial and resurrection and engages in pursuing Jesus’s righteousness in this world. So you can be a genuine Christian and struggle or be tempted by homosexual attraction but you cannot identify as a gay Christian that’s just an abomination and a contradiction.
In the Bible, sin is not limited to just doing acts but also includes entertaining lustful thoughts. For example, when it comes to anger in Matthew 5:21-22 Jesus connects anger, the feelings of anger with murder. It’s not just about killing somebody. Jesus says if you have thoughts of murder and you speak those words, He says, you’re murdering in your heart. Now in the eyes of the law, you’re not going to go to jail for having hate but in the eyes of God who looks at the heart that is like murder then Jesus takes it further in Matthew 5:27 and 28, He deals with the issue of adultery.
Now, you have to understand this because this is a framework by which we judge not only our behaviour but also our thoughts. Jesus calls lust, adultery. Once attraction expands into a desire to do something immoral, it becomes a sin in the heart. Now again, it will probably not be
judged by the courts of the earth but in heaven that is already sin conceived in the heart. James 1:14 and 15 explain how sinful actions begin with sinful desires stating that each person is tempted. When they are dragged away by their sinful evil desire they are enticed and then this evil desire conceives and gives birth to the sin that everybody can see. Since homosexuality is a sin the act of homosexuality, it is sinful to desire to commit homosexual acts.
I don’t consider it a sin to be tempted by homosexual attractions, but desiring to commit homosexual acts is a sin. The Bible in Psalm 19:14 David says, Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight oh Lord my strength and my redeemer. So I want you to notice not only the words and behaviour but also the meditation. The things that I desire, the things that I ponder, the things that I entertain, and the things that I keep in my heart. May they be acceptable to God? God isn’t just looking at your behaviour and your actions.
He’s also looking at what you permit to marinate and stay in your heart. You are not sinned by being tempted in your mind. Your struggle with temptation may lead to sin but the struggle itself is not a sin. Experiencing a sinful orientation or a sinful attraction whether it is to be to an illicit sexual object or an illicit drug or anything else in itself is not a sin. The scripture does not say that sinful attraction is wrong. That is a temptation.
For example, Eve was attracted to the fruit but Satan wasn’t satisfied with her having an attraction to disobedience. He wanted that her would disobey God. However, it’s not something that we should tolerate or accept the attraction towards sin. Jesus was tempted in every respect yet He remained without sin. James 1:14-15 distinguishes between the temptation that leads to sin and sin itself as I mentioned earlier but I want you to notice Jesus’s temptation. Jesus didn’t entertain, tolerate or accept that temptation and simply pondered in it. He resisted it. He came against the devil with the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God and we should do the same.
We are sinners by nature
We should repent of homosexual practices and we should actively reject sinful homosexual thoughts while recognizing that temptation is still a real possibility. Any desire for something God has forbidden is a result of sin. As human beings, because we’re born in sin, we naturally desire something that’s forbidden by God and sin so infected not only our world that we die, we have sicknesses, but it infected our desires. It infected our nature where sometimes evil things look good to us and then we justify those things and so sin causes our thoughts, our desires and our proclivities to be twisted and bent and perverted. The Bible calls us sinners by nature so it is common for a natural man who is born in a sinful nature to desire twisted perverted things. When you become a Christian, you will still wrestle with the residue with the leftovers of that old nature that the Bible calls flesh and it could have desires toward the most bizarre weird things that the enemy tries to infuse the flesh and the Bible says, we crucify the flesh with its passions and desires with its lust.
A passing moment of same-sex attraction is not a sin; it is characterized as a temptation instead. If it’s a spontaneous fleeting moment but if it turns into something more. If it turns into a lustful intention, a desire, you can be assured that now that has become a sin in your heart. That’s why the Apostle Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 10:5 to take every thought captive you know the scripture doesn’t just tell us, Hey accept Jesus in your heart and then it’s over there. The Bible says that there’s warfare that’s going on in our minds. So we can’t take these same-sex attractions and just tolerate them and accept them and say, hey as long as I’m not sinning, I’m okay. The Bible says we have to do spiritual warfare.
We have to take these thoughts and submit them to obedience to Christ because there’s a war that’s going on in our minds. Same-sex attraction is not God’s image or God’s plan for you. It’s not God’s will. It is God’s will to save you from your sin. It is God’s will to heal you from whatever caused that sin and bring you into the image of His Son Jesus Christ by renewal of your mind. I believe there’s a danger of people falling into this thing right now that simply says, I just want to be The danger of saying “I just want to be holy, not heterosexual” holy.
I don’t want to be saved from a homosexual lifestyle and don’t identify as heterosexual. We are indeed called to be holy because the Bible says to be holy as I am holy, But see when Jesus saves heterosexual male or heterosexual female, He doesn’t only save our spirit, Jesus delivers us. He heals our hearts and He wants to restore us to the design that God called us to be in the first place. God gives us a new identity. He gives us a new name and He gives us new desires. He gave us the Holy Spirit who lives within us to develop the fruit that’s consistent with God’s requirements not with the culture. God gave us spiritual weapons to bring down demonic strongholds. And to fight back against every demonic thought that is perverted and lustful and God gives us the path of sanctification.
If you affirm the gay lifestyle, if you affirm the gay orientation and you simply say. I’m just a Christian washed by the blood but you know in my mind, I’m still a gay person and I will always be wrestling with homosexual thoughts and homosexual inclinations, you are also confirming that the gospel has no power. Imagine somebody who gets saved and they got freed from drugs but they walk around telling everybody you know. But I desire to take drugs every single day, it’s just part of you know being a drug addict, always a druggie but you know I’m saved and I’m not taking drugs anymore or somebody who was an alcoholic, get saved and say, you know I desire to drink every single day.
I have this impulsion and as long as I don’t drink. As long as I am sober but my mind is not sober you know I’m Christian. I follow Jesus you know it’s a very painful devastating and defeated way to live. Jesus does not just set us free from the penalty of sin, Jesus sets us free from the power of sin and one day. We will be set free from the presence of sin, meaning we won’t be tempted anymore. When we are in the flesh, we are still tempted, regardless of our sexual orientation or past, if we have become Christians, we are the ones who are tempted. The temptation will be there but temptation doesn’t mean that you accept and tolerate sinful proclivities. Resist those things.
Submit to God. Renew your mind and it might take a while to experience full victory in your thoughts but don’t give up. Don’t give in because whom the Son sets free is free indeed. Don’t lower God’s standard to the low common denominator of the culture. No, expect that God’s grace is sufficient to equip you, to train you, to overcome ungodliness. And overcome lustful tendencies and give you desire you know I personally never battled with homosexual tendencies. Or with homosexuality but Finally thoughts I struggled with pornography.
I was freed from the bond of pornography by the Lord. And I went through deliverance and then I had to still apply discipline. I couldn’t walk around and say well, you know I’m not watching porn but you know I want to watch porn all the time you know that is not God’s will. God’s will is not for me to want to watch porn.
God’s will for me as a newborn again Christian is to be a person who is set free and the person who even when I’m tempted. I know this is not right and I’m going to resist that and I’m going to overcome that. And I’m going to subdue that by the power of Christ and walk in a way that. Even if I’m no longer triggered by that though the possibility might still always be there. I’m not a person who’s a porn addict anymore.
I’m righteous, I’m pure, I’m holy. Though lust, pride, the greed are still a temptation I don’t identify with that temptation anymore. I don’t identify with those thoughts anymore. I identify with Jesus and I resist and I rebuke whatever is not of God. So, is same-sex attraction sinful? The temptation of it is not but if you tolerate it, accept it, justify it and hide behind the whole thing that you’re not committing any sin but you’re living in that.
At worst, you are conforming to the culture and on the path to allow sin to develop in your heart which will give birth to sin in action. May God bless you. I hope that this brought some clarity and conviction into your life. Hit like and share this with other people. Let me know in the comments what you learned today. If you have a testimony of deliverance from homosexuality or any other sexual deviance. We would love to encourage other believers to walk in that freedom.