Good day! You might have heard the song “Amazing Grace” a few times at funerals or on the radio. Every time I hear the words, “… that saved a wretch like me, I once was lost but now I’m found, was blind, but now I see” I thank God for his saving grace in my life. I was lost, dead in my sin, on my way to eternal destruction, but God saved me in Jesus Christ. I owe my life to Him, and I promised to tell others of his grace.
You say you are gay, and you feel Christians come down on you to condemn you. I think I can understand where you are coming from, but I think there is a side of the story you need to understand, as much as I needed to quiet my mind and heart before God to hear his voice before I could be saved.
You see, we need to understand that we all are sinners and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23). The good news of the Bible is that although we are all born sinners (Ephesians 2:1-3), God provided a way out. There is a wonderful verse in the Bible which says, “God id not appoint us to suffer wrath, but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us so whether we are awake [alive] of sleep [have died] we may live together with Him.” (1 Thessalonians 5:9-10)
We don’t need to feel rejected and alone; God made it possible to have fellowship with Him – and have joy and fullness of life (Joh 10:10).
Allow me to start at the beginning.
God created the universe perfectly and good according to His eternal plan. He did it for his glory (Psalm 19:1, Isaiah 40:12-26). Everything was created for and through Jesus Christ, who is the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15-20)
In his holiness, righteousness and perfect design, God ordained living creatures to multiply and bring forth offspring to fill the earth (Genesis1:22, 28). He therefore created mankind and animals as male and female (Genesis 1:27)
God’s command to multiply and fill the earth came before the rebellion and fall of man. Man’s fall was not the result of sex, but the result of his rebellion against God’s explicit command.
What amazes me is that God, in some sense, made man to be “under creator”; Adam also had sons “in his likeness” (Genesis 5:3). We understand from the Bible that the act of sex is therefore not exclusively and primarily for man’s enjoyment; it was God’s design to continue his creation of the human race on earth.
When the Bible refers to sexual immorality (and this phrase occurs a lot of times in the Bible!) it describes sex, but practiced not for the purpose for which God ordained it. He designed it to be enjoyed within the confines of God ordained marriage between a man and a woman. It is only when we do not keep this in mind, that some want to redefine marriage, or see sex as something we may practice at will, with whom we will. But decisions like these, as any other way we may try to make our sins look like good choices, always bear fruit – bad fruit ultimately.
The story continues. Man rebelled and sinned against God and had to hide from God (Genesis 3:8). This is the first description of fear, loneliness and anxiety in history. Sin separates from God, from another, and it alienates us from our environment – we now battle with thorns and thistles. This is not what God originally had in mind for us.
Because God is holy, just and righteous He cursed man and the earth, but also left them with the promise that He will one day put things right again (Genesis 3:15). He chased them out of paradise. One can only imagine how lonely and rejected they felt. Every sinner outside of the grace of Christ sometime or another feels this rejection. We feel rejected by others who also feel rejected; loneliness leads to loneliness – it’s a vicious circle.
But there is the promise to make thing right again!
Adam and Eve, now under curse of sin, had to wear the consequences. To be fruitful and multiply bore the scar of sin: children would still be born, but now with pain “greatly increased” (Genesis 3:16); the rest of creation would experience extreme difficulty in producing offspring (Genesis 3:17-19).
The first recorded sin after Adam and Eve seems to express sinful man’s fallen nature to try to reverse God’s command to multiply: Cain murdered Abel (Genesis 4). Only two chapters further is recorded gross sexual abuse, which led God to feel sorry that He had man or earth. This led to the Flood which killed everything on earth, apart from Noah and his family (Genesis 6-8).
You would think that man would have learned from this experience. No! In the days of Abraham the people who lived in Sodom and Gomorrah became so sexually perverse that God’s wrath fell upon the cities, wiping them out (Genesis 19). I think we should learn from these experiences.
As history unfolded God’s Church in the Old Testament, Israel, were constantly called to refrain from sexual immorality, as the surrounding heathen nations practiced (i.e. Leviticus 18). God also declared sex with another man a sin (Leviticus 18:22, 20:13, Deuteronomy 23:18, etc). This practice was not only sinful in the time of Israel, but is always contrary to the plan of God for giving man the privilege of sex as “under-creator” (Romans 1:24-27, 1Corinthians 6:9).
In fact, all forms of sexual immorality is forbidden, because “the body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body”. (1Corinthians 6:13)
But do you remember the promise God gave to Adam and Eve before they left paradise? Well, that happened. God always keeps his word!
In his mercy, love and grace God gave his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, so that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal live (John 3:16).
Whoever? That includes me, and it includes you. You might ask why. I can’t really explain, other than to say, God loves sinners.
I have the privilege to tell you that those who receives Jesus Christ as the Saviour sent by God, receives life and can see the Kingdom of God, and can understand the things of the Kingdom (John 3).
Just as Mark wrote down the Gospel call of Christ then, I proclaim the saving words of Christ to you too: “‘The Time has come,’ He said, ‘The Kingdom of God is near, repent and believe the good news!’” (Mark 1:15)
So, there is just one way to come to God, and that is through Jesus Christ. To repent is to confess your sin before Him, to turn away from what is not pleasing to God, to accept his grace in Jesus Christ, and to follow Christ, and to dedicate your life to Him. He came to take away darkness, to dispel loneliness and rejection, and to give sinners life to the full (John 10:10).
The last book of the Bible, Revelation, speaks of heaven as the New Jerusalem. All those who heard the message of free grace in Christ will have a place in heaven. However, those who do not repent from their sins, “the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers and the sexually immoral, their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulphur, which is the second death.” (Revelation 21:8)
Between that day and now all sinners, including the sexually immoral, are now called to repentance. “Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they might have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city.” (Revelation 22:14)
If you think I come down on you, I ‘m not; I am concerned about your well-being for this world and the one to come. If you think I single you out because you are gay, you are making a mistake.
But I have to honest in warning you, if you continue in your ways and to not repent and follow Jesus Christ, the Bible is clear, God is holy and He hates sin.
I leave you with this last thought. Jesus did “not come into this world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him. Whoever believes in Him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned.” (John 3:17-18).
I pray that you will understand and accept God’s grace in Jesus Christ.
So by the way, always feel free to come to church. You will find a bunch of saved sinners there. At least, this is what the church is supposed to be. Like the others, till you have come to know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour, you will however not be able to enjoy full membership. I’m sure will understand that.
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