Homosexuality is growing rapidly in the United States even as the laws prohibiting it are being whittled away. An increasingly permissive atmosphere is bringing acceptance and even status to homosexual practices. A federal government panel has now urged repeal of laws against homosexual activity among consenting adults.
Scripture pronounces its own judgment on homosexuality and states clearly that those who practice it shall not inherit the kingdom of God. This sin, however, is only one of a number that Scripture specifically states will exclude one from God’s kingdom. In the matter of homosexuality, many Christians hate the offender as well as his sin. This the Bible does not endorse. Christ died to save the homosexual just as he died to save the liar, the cheat, and the adulterer.
Undoubtedly the earliest stringent laws against homosexual conduct sprang from the Hebrew-Christian tradition. Wherever Christianity was strong, laws against the homosexual abounded. In our day Christianity is rapidly becoming a minority faith, and with its decline has come a loosening of laws against sexual immorality. Even within the Church there is increasing moral laxity and adherence to situation ethics.
Although impressive arguments are now adduced to justify and legitimatize homosexuality, the Bible sounds a different note. Romans 1:18–32 shows that homosexuality is contrary to nature, and that it is part of the degeneration of man that guarantees ultimate disaster in this life and in the life to come. Homosexuality was one of the leading sins that brought about God’s final judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah.
We are quick to point out that the Gospel is for the homosexual too. But grace does not legitimatize what is sinful. The Church had better make it plain that Christianity and homosexuality are incompatible even as it proclaims deliverance for the homosexual from his sinful habit through faith in Jesus Christ.
