Thanks for joining us today on the line of fire where we stand here with you to equip you, to empower you, to help you stand strong on the front lines. We're all in the line of fire today, like it or not, that is the reality of the spiritual war in which we find ourselves, but by God's grace and Jesus, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. And together, we know that nothing can be done against the truth, that light will continue to shine in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it. Michael Brown, so glad to be here with you and start another week together. This is going to be another eye-opening week.
Call a friend, text a friend, encourage them to tune in to each and every broadcast. We're going to continue to look at what the Word says. Can you be gay and Christian? What does the Bible say? We've been laying a lot of foundations, spending a lot of time in the Word. Now we want to transition this week as well and talk about some of the cultural issues, some of the moral issues, how do we address them with grace and truth together. Last week, I shared briefly from Romans 13 a verse that's often quoted by gay activists and their allies, and it's this. Romans 13, 8, let no debt remain outstanding except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellow man has fulfilled the law. The commandments do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not covet, and whatever other commandment there may be are summed up in this one rule, love your neighbor as yourself.
Love does no harm to its neighbor, therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. So you say, right, how does that help make the case for a gay Christian, somebody who professes to be a gay Christian, how does this help support their position? Before I get into that, one quick reminder. We have never seen in the history of our ministry so many people signing up to get our brand new Frontline newsletter. We really pour into it every month. Those who've gotten it already, you're nodding.
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We are so glad to welcome you into our online family. All right, so this is the argument that would be given, that since love does no harm to its neighbor, when you tell two gay men who love each other and tell you that they love the Lord, that they can't be together. They can't be together romantically or physically. They can't do what you and your heterosexual spouse do. They can't have that romantic relationship, they can't have that physical intimacy, that it's forbidden. It hurts them. It oppresses them. It makes them feel unwanted by God. It makes them feel as if their love is not as worthy as your love.
It makes them feel second class and sometimes it just leads to frustration and sexual sin. But when you affirm them, when you recognize them, when you say, hey, I love you and I accept you for who you are, then it's freeing, it's liberating, it's health-giving. So Justin Lee, who is a leader in what's called the Gay Christian Network, who has spoken a number of times for Pastor Andy Stanley and who is himself, quote, married to another man and as such has spoken for Pastor Andy.
And yes, we have engaged back and forth very intensely over these issues. Listen to what Justin Lee says, with these standards in mind, it became much easier to interpret scripture's difficult passages consistently. Yes, there were slaves in Bible times, but that, but doesn't selfless agape love demand their freedom? Rules about head coverings and hair length had a purpose in Paul's culture, see 1 Corinthians 11, but if they have no ultimate bearing on our commission to selflessly love God and our neighbor, then led by the spirit, we can safely set them aside today. So now he wants to apply those same standards to the question of homosexual practice.
So he says this, I was just looking for my glasses on my shelf as a read from my own book, but I have my glasses elsewhere, so I will make this out. But suppose two people loved each other with all their hearts and they wanted to commit themselves to each other in the sight of God, to love honor and cherish, to selflessly serve and encourage one another, to serve God together, to be faithful for the rest of their lives. If they were of opposite sexes, we would call that holy and beautiful and something to celebrate. But if we changed only one thing, the gender of one of those individuals, while still keeping the same love and selflessness and commitment, suddenly many Christians would call it abominable and condemned to hell.
President Barack Obama, May 9th, 2012 said this, at a certain point, I just concluded that for me personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married. The thing at root that we think about is not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it's also the golden rule, you know, treat others the way you would want to be treated. Let me share with you what Dr. Jay Michelson says, a gay Jewish scholar. These are his words. One New Testament scholar has written that any interpretation of Scripture that hurts people, oppresses people or destroys people cannot be the right interpretation, no matter how traditional, historical or exegetically respectable.
This is a crucial point. If we approach the question of homosexuality as a legal, academic or hermeneutical enterprise, we will get nowhere religiously. All the arguments work and the anti-gay ones are just as clever as the pro-gay. No, to be responsible members of a faith tradition, we must first open our hearts, allow them to be broken by the heart-rending stories of gays who have suffered from exclusion, plague and self-loathing and uplifted by inspiring stories of integration, love and celebration. This is the evidence that we must admit in our deliberations and if it's not immediately available, that we must seek it out. Any pretense of theological disposition that does not include in its procedure a long period of listening is morally bankrupt and borders on the blasphemous. All these quotes, friends, are found in my book, Can You Be Gay and Christian Responding with Love and Truth to Questions About Homosexuality.
It's the book that, along with Scriptures, our textbook this entire month, we'll let you know later in the broadcast how you can get a copy for yourself. But right now, let me focus on the strength of those arguments. I hope you do feel the weight behind them.
I hope you do feel the humanity behind them. Many people don't. They just think theologically. They just say, hey, the Word is plain. The Word is clear.
And I believe it is. I believe we've laid out strong scriptural arguments in the previous days on this very broadcast and reiterated it in the book, Can You Be Gay and Christian. But it's important also that we feel the humanity of these lies. Sometimes we don't until someone close to us comes out, a family member, a close friend, and says that they've been same-sex attracted all their lives and didn't know what to do with it. And now they're in a same-sex relationship and they realize that God has accepted them in this way, that the fear is gone and the sense of oppression is gone and the loneliness is gone and they're thriving and they're so happy. One Catholic scholar, Catholic New Testament scholar, said this. Look, the argument against homosexuality in the Bible, I'm paraphrasing, not quoting exactly, is clear. It's clear that the Bible does not support homosexual practice.
He said, but look, you can make a strong argument for slavery based on the Bible and say that the Bible supports slavery. What turned him, what changed his mind was his daughter. His daughter came out as a lesbian. His daughter thought based on church teaching that she could not have a relationship with another woman and be blessed by God. And it was difficult for her and it led to depression. I'm not sure if she was suicidal or not, but it was depressing to her. Then when she got in progressive theological circle, so-called progressive, and she realized that the Bible was being misinterpreted and that nothing in the Bible speaks against loving, committed, same-sex relationships, that she and her partner were liberated by it, that they're church going and they love the Lord and they love each other and they're thriving.
So what do you do with something like that? This caused this Catholic New Testament scholar to change his theology. It reminds me of an interview I did with a Methodist pastor years ago named Frank Schaeffer, not Frankie Schaeffer, son of Francis Schaeffer, but a Methodist pastor named Frank Schaeffer. At that time, he had been defrocked by the Methodist church because he performed the wedding ceremony for his son and another man. And he was shocked and hurt that he was defrocked because he felt he was doing something that was loving and Christ-like. And over the years, he reinterpreted scripture. He began to question how he read scripture and ended up reinterpreting it.
So I asked him a question. I said, if your son came to you one day and said, Dad, I made a terrible mistake. This is not the will of God. I'm living in sin. God has not blessed this relationship. This is not what the word teaches at all. I said, would that cause you to reevaluate scripture?
He said, absolutely. And my only response was that Jesus said, whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me.
Whoever loves their own self more than me is not worthy of me. The point is we should feel the weight. We should feel the emotional weight. We should listen. I did my best and I still do my best to listen before I speak.
When I'm dealing with issues like this, to sit with people, to hear their stories, to read their stories, to sit with them face to face if I can and say, give me your perspective. I even offered a local professing gay Christians. I said, I will come and meet with you and not say a word, not argue with you, not debate, not say a word.
I just want you to tell me your stories and share with perspective. But I guess I was too notorious in their eyes or they felt it would be too painful. And the invitation was declined. But that invitation stands.
If you represent a group of professing gay Christians, you would identify as gay Christians. And you want to sit with me and do a zoom call for an hour and just tell me your stories and tell me in your view how you think I've hurt you and been a destructive force. And and you just want me to hear that and I don't get to respond. I'm in contact our ministry through the website, the line of fire dot org, and we'll do our best to make it happen. And I pledge, I will just listen if you want it. If you want me to respond to questions or challenge is fine. But my goal would be to listen.
That remains the case. I want to have God's heart for you. And I want to do my best, although I cannot fully, I want to do my best to see the world through your eyes. All that being said, I am 100 percent sure that the most loving thing to do is to tell the truth. The most loving thing to do is to say the Bible is clear and under no circumstances does God bless or sanction same sex relationships. All right, we're going to get back into the scripture on the other side of the break.
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No compromise in our convictions, but compassion flowing from the heart of God. I want to read to you from 1 Corinthians chapter 6. So if you missed the previous weeks where we went through scripture, scriptural argument against homosexual practice, you'll find everything we covered in my book, Can You Be Gay and Christian?
At the end of the broadcast, I'll tell you how you can get a copy for yourself. But I want to read to you from the King James Version. This is 1 Corinthians chapter 6, verse 9 in the King James Version. Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind.
And he goes on with the list, will inherit the kingdom of God. Notice those words, effeminate and abusers of themselves with mankind. What does that actually mean? Well, let's go over to the ISV and the end of 1 Corinthians 6, 9 speaks of in the ISV, male prostitutes and homosexuals. Let's go over to the ESV and those two Greek words together are translated nor men who practice homosexuality. The HCSB puts those two words together as anyone practicing homosexuality. The LEB puts these words as nor passive homosexual partners nor dominant homosexual partners. The MEV nor male prostitutes nor homosexuals. The NASB renders with homosexuals. The NASB 1995 nor effeminate nor homosexuals. So you see on the one hand, the NIV, the more recent NIV 2011, nor men who have sex with men.
The NLT, male prostitutes, or those who practice homosexuality. Alright, so on the one hand you might say, these translations are all over the place. How can we know what the Greek actually says?
Fair question. On the flip side, what's categorically clear is one way or another it's describing men having sex with men and put it in the same category as adultery. Alright, now the two Greek words used are malakos and arsenakites. Malakos inherently means something soft.
It can mean something delicate as in soft or delicate clothing. But when it's speaking about a human being, the King James said effeminate, but it doesn't mean some man who maybe was raised by his mother, his older sisters, and his grandmother and he has some effeminate kind of habits. No, it was talking about something much deeper in the description of effeminate there that would actually have sinful sexual connotations. When it's used side by side with arsenakites, even gay and lesbian scholars, many of them have recognized that the two words side by side clearly speak of homosexual activity. And that's why some modern translations say men who have sex with men putting those two words together, one being the so-called passive partner, the other the active partner, the so-called bottom and top, so folks who have no idea what we're talking about, great, the younger ears have no idea what we're talking about, but this is how many understand these two words together.
And even while there's some debate over malakos, does that mean a male prostitute or does it just mean the male passive partner in the in the sex act? For sure arsenakites is a term that either Paul coined or was coined by another Jewish believer early on before Paul. The words are literally from the Greek, it is a male lying with or male bedding with. It is taken from the Greek, the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from Leviticus 1822 and Leviticus 2013 that forbid a man lying with a man. So you have the words there in the Greek in Leviticus 2013, Leviticus 1822, it's forbidden for man to lie with a man and that's what arsenakites is, it's a man lying with a man. That's what it means, that's the fundamental meaning of it. Later in Greek it takes on some other nuances as well, but there, especially in the first century as being used, there's no question where it comes from. Anyone reading that that was familiar with the Septuagint, it would jump right out at them and therefore it's Paul's way of tying things right back to Leviticus.
It is simply to say, and then Paul uses this again in first Timothy one, just arsenakites, speaking of male homosexual practice. This is forbidden just as adultery is forbidden. This is forbidden just as fornication is forbidden.
Let me ask you a question. If a couple loves each other dearly, young man, young woman, right, they love Jesus, they fall in love with each other, but they're lacking discipline and self-control and they start having sex out of wedlock, is that sin? Yes. If they continue in that sin without repentance, will there be consequences?
Yes. Let's say a man is in a terribly unhappy marriage, let's say his wife is cruel and nasty and doesn't, she's never intimate with him, she never says a good thing to him, she's been nastier every year that goes on, he falls in love with someone on his job, this woman cares about him, just everything about him, she cares for him, she loves him, they want to spend the rest of their lives together, they start having sex together out of wedlock, is that sin? Yes, it's adultery and if he doesn't repent, if she doesn't repent, there will be consequences. What about two gay brothers, two gay brothers, 24 and 28, raised in the same home and having what scholars refer to as genetic sexual attraction and they're drawn to each other, they're drawn to each other, or maybe a more common scenario, they're separated as boys at birth but find each other later and have this deep attraction to each other and they want to be together, is that sin? Yes, it's sin because it's incestuous. In other words, even if the people love each other in different settings, there are boundary markers that cannot be crossed ever and even though it's painful to tell someone that, it is the truth, it is the truth, it cannot be denied scripturally, that's why despite centuries of having people who are same-sex attracted in churches, some of them being theologians, some of them being leaders, some of them secretly suppressing their feelings, others maybe sinfully acting them out, you don't find any pattern of people trying to reinterpret what scripture said at any broad level because it's just too clear. What I've found, all the ex-gays that I know and there are so many that I've talked to over the years, they would tell you the most loving thing to do is tell the truth and even if it means painful breakups, even if it means separating a family in some way, just like if there was an illicit marriage, someone shacked up with someone after an illicit divorce and realize they're living in sin, they've got to go back to their families and their original spouse will accept them, we have to honor and obey the Lord and when we do, his blessing is greater than any earthly religion. Earthly relationship and he will meet us where we are and bring us into wholeness and bring us into fullness.
It's heartbreaking but it's true, love tells the truth. I want to help equip you to stand strong on the front lines. I want to help you have the answers in your own heart, having wrestled things through, having the information in your mind, being confident that you know what the Word says and how to minister in grace.
This is Dr. Michael Brown. Thanks so much for tuning in. Just a reminder that we are listener supported. If we have been a blessing to you, if you're being enriched in the Word and prayer and your own walk with God through this broadcast, then stand with us so that we can reach many, many more and bless many, many more. Together, friends, we're making a difference. So go to thelineoffire.org and click donate.
