God’s Love and Same Sex Attraction, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. He doesn't define you by your sexual desires. Thank God he doesn't define us by anything that is about us or our mistakes. He defines us by what he has made us as his child. When you believe that in him you are washed, which means the penalty of your sin debt has been paid in full, that's what breaks the power of canceled sin and sets the prisoners free. Welcome to Summit Life, the Bible teaching ministry of J.D. Greer.

I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. You know, the topic of same-sex attraction is fraught with an incredible amount of hurt and anger. Too many families and churches have been ripped apart over this issue and many people who identify with the LGBTQ plus community feel rejected by Christians.

They've been told either directly or through the actions of believers that they're somehow outside the reach of God's grace, but that's simply not true. Today Pastor J.D. sets the record straight revealing what God's word really says about same-sex attraction.

If you have missed any of the messages of this teaching series so far, visit us at jdgreer.com or call us at 866-335-5220. But right now let's rejoin our teaching titled, God's Love and Same-Sex Attraction. First Corinthians, chapter six, do not be deceived. The apostle Paul says, neither the sexually immoral nor the idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. There are six passages in the Bible that directly address homosexuality. Every single one of them does so, like the passage here in 1 Corinthians, in explicitly negative terms. Romans chapter one, Paul is talking in Romans one about the human race's rejection of God's authority. He says, because we rejected God's authority for this reason, God gave them, God gave us as a race up to dishonorable passions for their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature. And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another. Men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. The Old Testament says this, if a man, Leviticus 20, lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. The other three passages, which I won't take time to read, are all very similar.

Let me say something. I want to make sure you don't misunderstand it. No one goes to hell for being a homosexual.

How do I know that? Because you don't go to heaven for being a heterosexual. It's not that sin that condemns. We're condemned for our refusal to submit to God and for an exaltation of our simple desires over his will. And that kind of simple heart can be as present in a heterosexual person as it can be in someone that is gay or lesbian.

Someone says, well, is change even possible? Let's go back to 1 Corinthians. Look at what Paul says. And that is what some, he says, of you were, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. And by the spirit of our God, washed means that our guilt has been removed. Sanctified means that we were set apart for God and his purposes.

Justified means that the penalty for our sin has been canceled because it was paid in full, but there is not anything in there about all your sinful desires disappearing when you trust Christ. Can God heal that part of you? Of course he can, but not every broken thing in our lives gets healed immediately. When you accept Christ, Jesus has already begun the process of new life in you. And you already experienced some of its power, but there is a not yet dimension to Jesus's kingdom too, which means that some of our ultimate healing is yet to come. I can look in my own heart and see things that I asked Jesus to heal me from, and he has done it. I am a changed man, but there are other things that I continue to struggle with. I already have the power at work in me, but some of my healing is yet to come. Paul said, even though the power of new life is in me, the apostle, even though I've got the power of new life already in me, I still see every moment in my physical body, the law of sin that is constantly trying to take me back there.

And as long as I have this body, I'm going to have that temptation to go back into sin. When you apply this thinking to sexuality, Richard Hayes says, that means that when someone comes to Christ, there are some whose sexual orientation God transforms. Others, he allows to struggle so that they can be a testimony to God sustaining grace in struggle.

In fact, I might even say that's his normal way. One of the reasons I say that is because John Newton, who wrote this song, we love to sing Amazing Grace nearly 300 years ago. John Newton, I've told you my favorite, one of my favorite books is a collection of letters that he wrote over the course of his ministry. And my favorite letter in that book is a letter he wrote when he was 84 years old to a friend. And he told his friend that I thought that by this point in my life, I would have progressed farther in becoming godly than I have. He said, I thought that by 84, I would have left a lot of these old temptations behind me. He said, but at 84 years old, some of these simple passions have not only not died away, they have gotten stronger in me at 84 years old.

He said, and at first that used to really, really discourage me. He says, but now I realize that what God has done is he has left these things in this physical body so that until my dying breath, I could be absolutely sure that my acceptance is not based on the fact that I've become righteous. My acceptance is based on the fact that Jesus paid it all for me, that it's amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. So God's grace in your life might not be automatically changing that desire. God's grace might be his enablement for you to struggle against it faithfully for the rest of your life with the assurance that you are in Christ, washed, sanctified, and justified, that he no longer holds your sins against you, that as far as the East is from the West, that's how far he's removed your transgressions from you. And though you and I have a body that is plagued by sin and though I am still not sure at all how God looks at me and sees me as righteous, I know that his acceptance is not based on how righteous I've become, it's based on what Jesus did in my place and gave me as a gift. I've been asked by a gay friend before, they've said, well, if God doesn't change my desires and God does not give me a desire for marriage to the opposite sex, are you saying that I must always be alone?

Well, see, that's what our first two weeks were about. It was about confronting the myth that marriage makes for a complete life. The reason there are a lot of people who think that is because we in the church propagate a myth that to the complete life is the married life. And thus, if you're not married, you're not ever going to be complete. But what we saw is that God has other ways of giving you companionship and even offspring. And there are many people that just aren't given a desire for the opposite sex. And then wrong with that.

Paul calls that a gift. In fact, in first Corinthians seven, there are a lot of people who don't even like to hang out with the opposite sex. They prefer to hang out with people with the same sex.

And that's okay too. They can have deep non-sexual companionships with people of the same sex. And what that means is that if you are not somebody that has a heterosexual attraction and God calls you to a single life, but by not giving you a desire for that kind of marriage, He'll give you the empowerment to do it joyfully. Because the abundant life does not come from your marital status.

The abundant life comes from the God who possesses you and walks with you every step of the way. And by the way, in saying that, I realize that for some of you, that feels like a heavy cross to bear. And I do not want to take away from that because I know you're like, oh, it's easy for you to stand up here and say that to you and your marriage and your four kids.

And I understand that. But what I know is that every cross becomes light when Jesus shoulders it with you. That's why He said, come unto me, all you labor and are heavy laden. And I will give you rest for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. It's not that the yoke is actually easy or the burden is actually light, is that Jesus shoulders it with you. And that the abundant life is not going to come from a situation God puts you in. The abundant life comes from the fact that He said, I will never leave you or forsake you. And that my grace in you is greater than anything that you walk through in life.

So that leads me to question number three. How do I love my gay friend? How do I love my gay friend? Again, we look to first Corinthians chapter six, verse 11. Now Paul says, and that is what some of you were.

So the short answer to the question, how do I love my gay friend? I love him or her as a fellow sinner. We often say the ground is level at the foot of the cross, which means, let me give you three practical things. This means it means letter A, you don't judge them. You don't judge them. Judge not lest you be judged.

What does that verse mean? Well, I told you judge not lest you be judged can't mean that we never tell somebody what they're doing is wrong. The reason we know it can't mean that is because Jesus spent his entire life correcting error. And he commands us to be clear in his word as well. Yet, even though Jesus was clear about what was right and wrong, he said, I'm not judging the world. So how was he clear about what's right and wrong saying you're wrong and yet not judging the world. It's because after telling us the truth, what did Jesus do? He brought us close. He made us sinners, his friends.

And here's what we said. You judge someone not when you assess their position. You judge them when you dismiss them as a person. It is not telling someone the truth that judges them. It is what you do after you tell them the truth that determines whether or not you are judging them because judging assumes that you are righteous and they're guilty. So guilty of them needs to get away from righteous you.

You can never do that. What that means on this issue is that when somebody disagrees with us or somebody comes out, we don't push them away ever. We draw them close. Here's a statement I gave you.

I want you to think about deeply. We have to love our gay neighbor more than we love our position on sexual morality. We have to love our gay neighbor more than we love our position on sexual morality. I do not mean by that that we give up our conviction. I mean that our relationship with them must not be contingent upon their agreeing with us.

You want an example of that? You see Jesus on the cross who would not back down from the law of God one bit, but when it came into conflict with us sinners, he stretched out his arm and he died a death that we were supposed to die so that he could uphold the law of God and save us at the same time. You must say I love you more than I love being right and so even if you don't see things my way, I'm going to keep bringing you close and I'm going to remain committed to you. This is where the Christian community has so badly failed to live out Jesus's ministry. The church ought to be the safest place on the planet for a teenager with same-sex attraction to reveal that or to come out because sinners were always safe exposing their hearts to Jesus.

It does not mean that we consent or agree. It just means we never turn away and we never stop loving and we never stop drawing them close. This is Summit Life with Pastor JD Greer. We'll return for the conclusion of today's teaching in just a moment, but I wanted to remind you about our featured resource this month. You know there's nothing magical about the new year, but it does present a natural opportunity for reflection and change. It's a great time to take stock of your life and set some goals for ways that you want to grow in the coming months. Maybe you want to start reading your Bible every day or you want to get better at making time for ministry or leading your family in a new way and whatever it might be. We hope that our 2023 Summit Life Day Planner will be a great tool to help you meet those goals. Reserve your copy right now by calling 866-335-5220.

That's 866-335-5220 or visit us online at jdgreer.com. Thanks for being with us today. Now let's finish up this week's teaching on Summit Life. Here's Pastor JD. At the same time as we not judge them, let her be, we must love them enough to tell them the truth. We got to love them enough to tell them the truth like Paul does here in 1 Corinthians 6.

I want you to think about this. If 1 Corinthians 6, 9 is true that those who openly practice a gay and lesbian lifestyle will not inherit the kingdom of God, what is the only loving thing that you can do? I have to in love warn you against anything that will keep you from joy in God. People sometimes ask me, what if your son one day declares that he's gay? I cannot imagine a human being that I love more than my son, but if I love him, if I really love him, I will tell him what God's word says plainly. If not, I am not loving him, and I hope that in that moment I can teach him too like his daddy, come to the feet of Jesus, broken and repentant, both as broken men who need a savior, both repentant toward a wickedness in our hearts that we have no way of overcoming. And if my son was born with a proclivity toward same sex behavior, and I was born with a proclivity toward anger, pride, deceit, and unfaithfulness, well, we both need to be born again.

And Jesus said, if you come to me, if any man is in Christ, he or she is a new creation, all things are passed away, all things are become new. The only thing, listen, the only thing that will put you outside of God's grace is refusing to acknowledge your brokenness in Jesus's Lordship. It's not sin that ever keeps us from God.

It is our sense of rightness, our refusal to acknowledge he is right. That's what keeps us outside of God's grace. But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, whatever they are, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Come unto me, all you who labor, not the straight people who labor, but all you who labor and are heavy laden. And I will give you rest because the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. His mercy never comes to an end. That as far as the east is from the west, that's how far he has removed our transgressions from us. And as high as the heavens are above the earth, that's how great his love is for those who know him. Let her see, we show them a greater love. We show them a greater love. It's like we've talked about throughout this series, our sexual desires go down to the core of who we are. Our souls are thirsty, they're starving for love. And we find in sex something that goes down and gives us this love, which we crave. The love that you and I need is not the love of another human being.

The love that you and I need is the love of God. You see, we are all captives to sin because of the absence of the love of God in our life. And it is only the love of God that sets us free from our captivity to sin. That's probably most clearly illustrated in John chapter eight. In John chapter eight, a woman is brought to Jesus who was caught in the very act of adultery.

And all those who brought her say, the law says she ought to be stoned, she ought to be killed. And Jesus looked at them and says, what is now famous? He looked at them and says, well, let him who is without sin cast the first stone. And one by one, they all drop their rocks in the ground and they all go home. Then Jesus and the woman, the only one standing there, he actually was without sin.

Then he looks at her and says, what are you doing? Neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more. I've told you what is amazing to me about that statement is not that he said it, it's the order that he said it in.

Because I would almost always reverse those two phrases, wouldn't you? If you go and sin no more, then I won't condemn you. But Jesus, listen, put her acceptance before change. It's not that he didn't tell her to change.

He told her go and sin no more. But he put her acceptance before her change because he knew she would never have the power to change until she had the assurance of his acceptance. It is the power of his acceptance that gives you the ability to be free of sin. God's acceptance of you is not based on you having right desires. Jesus paid the penalty for your acceptance.

He did it. You're not based because of what you are. You're not accepted because of what you've done. You're accepted because of what he did, that he watched you and sanctified you and justified you through his work on your behalf and not your work for him. So in the midst of sexual sin of whatever kind God says to you, just like he said to this woman, I never stopped loving you, never. Not in your darkest moment, not in your darkest desire on the cross. I took everything about you that made you unacceptable. And the rocks of judgment got pummeled into my body, not yours.

And I died for all of them. Jesus' last words on the cross to us were not go fix yourself. His last words were it is finished.

It's not going to fix yourself and come back to me when you're ready. It's I will fix you and that I have died for you and that I will accept you on my behalf and not yours. And when you believe that, when you believe that in him, you are washed and you were sanctified, which means that he has accepted you and set you apart for his purposes, that you were justified, which means the penalty of your sin debt has been paid in full.

That's what breaks the power of canceled sin and sets the prisoners free. You see our message, our message is not simply stop sexual sin. Our message is behold the extravagant grace of your God, because his is a greater love. See if this is you, if this is you, he doesn't define you by your sexual desires. Thank God he doesn't define us by anything that is about us or our mistakes. He defines us by what he has made us as his child. He, if you let him, you can be washed, sanctified and justified in Christ.

Finally, let me tell you that if you're struggling with this issue, you need to remember that the sexual ethics is what I said at the beginning are not the center of Christianity. John 1 12, as many as received him, it is to them he gave the power to become the children of God, to those who believe on his name, not to those who behave correctly, but to those who believe. God makes you his child, not based on what you do, it's on the fact that you receive like a gift. Receive means acknowledge him as the Lord.

Receive means that you receive the grace that he has bestowed on your behalf. To you believers, here's what I'll tell you. We have to let the cross shape how we engage this issue. We have to be full of grace and truth. Y'all, we gotta be faithful to what God says, but we gotta be full of grace so that as we're faithful to that, we never push away like Jesus when he told the truth and they stretched out his hands and they nailed him to a cross.

What comes out of his mouth? Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. By God's grace, we can't back down like Jesus didn't back down, but when they nail our hands to a cross, I hope what comes out of our mouth is not God's judgment is coming, but Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. And if God's righteousness and your sin intersect, let it intersect in my death, because I want you to know that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am the chief. And I want you to know Romans 10, 13, that whosoever will call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Not whosoever the straight community, but whosoever, whosoever. For those same Lord, Paul says Romans 10, 11, is Lord unto all who call upon him. There is no difference in the Jew, or the Greek, or the black, or the white, or the rich, or the poor, the young, or the old, the religious, the irreligious, the gay, or the straight. There is one Lord over all. There is one kind of person sinner. There is one kind of savior and that is Jesus Christ. For God so loved the world, not the straight part of the world, but the world that he gave his only son so that whosoever, not straight whosoever, but whosoever would believe in him, he would give eternal life to. What separates you from God's grace is not the kind of your sin.

It's not the depth of your sin. It's simply that you and I won't want to receive him. You have your issue.

I have mine. If you come humble, contrite, repentant, trembling at his word, he will save you. I close with this letter from another young man in our church who wrote me recently to tell me about his journey with same sex attraction.

Listen to this. Three years ago, I heard you preach on the cross and you explained that Jesus took away all of my guilt and my shame by bearing it himself, that I was not just forgiven. I was made pure by the blood of Christ and then for the first time it made sense.

My same sex desires don't define me. My identity is now built on something much greater, Jesus in my place. God knew me from before the foundation of the world. He knew my sin. He knew what my struggles would be and he still chose to send his son to live the perfect life.

I could never live and die the death that I deserved. On the cross, he traded places with me. He took my sin and my shame and he gave me his place of righteousness before the father. Now, even with my same sex desire, I am in Christ and I am a new creation.

I began to see my struggle with same sex attraction. Listen, as a way for me to draw closer to Christ, as a way for me to see my own sinfulness and be driven even more to treasure the gospel, to treasure the fact that in Christ I am fully known and fully loved and the thought then of eternity became so much sweeter knowing that one day, even if I struggle in this world for the rest of my life with same sex desire, one day I will be with my savior and then finally completely free from sin forever. All of that is to say thank you for being relentlessly committed to the gospel. I am proof that faithfulness to the gospel in this area is crucial because at a fragile time in my life when everybody else was telling me something different, when I could have been driven to despair or to an abandonment of the Christian faith altogether, I heard, I submitted to and I treasured the gospel and I thank you and the Summit Church for your role in that. This is a message of eternal implications and you and I, God has appointed to be his representatives which means we have to be full of grace and truth. And if we fail to say clearly what God has said clearly, God tells us, Ezekiel 33 8, when I say to somebody you will surely die, you will be judged for that and you don't tell them that, they'll die in their sin but I'm gonna hold you accountable for their blood. He's put us here at this time, he didn't put it here to be popular, he didn't put us here to get rich and grow a huge church, he put us here to be faithful and by God's grace we're going to be faithful and may that young man's story be multiplied a thousand times over because there is salvation to all who believe but to believe you must repent and you must come to Christ because there's infinite grace but there is no grace apart from repentance. No matter what you've done, no matter who you are, the ground is level at the foot of the cross.

We are all equally in need of God's grace and equally loved by him. You're listening to Summit Life with J.D. Greer and a refreshing message about God's love. It's part of our series on God's design for sex and relationships titled From the Beginning and you can hear all the previous messages when you visit jdgreer.com. The free teaching archive on our website and these daily radio and podcast broadcasts are made possible by listeners like you.

When you give, you're helping people across the country, even around the world, dive deeper into the transformative power of the gospel. So when we say Summit Life is a listener-supported ministry, we mean it and we're so excited to see what God's going to do in this coming year. As our way of saying thanks for your year-end gift, we'd like to send you one of our most requested resources every single year. It's the 2023 Summit Life Day Planner.

Now this is so much more than a calendar. As you use it, you're also going to notice Bible verses that remind you of the timely and important truth that God makes all things new. We've also included a Bible reading plan that'll take you through large sections of the Bible over the next year. Ask for a copy when you make a generous year-end donation by calling 866-335-5220 or request the planner when you give online at jdgreer.com. While you're on the website, you'll also want to subscribe to Pastor JD's weekly newsletter.

The articles and resources go in-depth with many of the topics that we cover here on the broadcast. Sign up online at jdgreer.com. I'm Molly Vidovitch, and next week we're looking at another difficult topic, what the Bible says about divorce and remarriage. We'll see you next time right here on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.