January 25, 2020 7:00 pm
The Bible teaches that Christians are made new through their faith in Christ, but this raises questions about how to live with remaining sin. Some argue that Christians should accept and affirm their desires, even if they are considered sinful, while others believe that Christians should declare war on sin and seek to mortify their fleshly desires.
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Maybe you could explain, Tom, what the crux of this issue is. I think this one's a difficult one to discern. Most Christians might think, well, of course, you know, we're fallen. We have desires for wrong things. Some heterosexual Christians have desires for adultery or lust and so forth. How is that really any different than a Christian who has homosexual desires, and that's just who they are?
How would you answer that? Yeah, well, it goes back to the question of identity and, you know, if anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation. Old things pass away, all things become new. This is Paul's language to us in 2 Corinthians 5. So the issue is in what way then are Christians made new?
How are we made new? Does that newness mean that we go ahead and live with the sin that remains in us having signed a peace treaty with it because that's just who we are? Or do we live with remaining sin in us saying we declare war on that sin and we're going to mortify the deeds of the flesh and the lust of the flesh so that we might live and not die because if we don't, we will die. The sin that remains in a Christian is of the same quality of that which used to dominate us before we were Christians. And so we have to continually declare war on it and put to death the deeds of the flesh by the power of the Spirit.
This question is a naughty one and it can be difficult, especially you get into the deep weeds pretty quickly with it. But one way to bring clarity is to substitute other types of sin or you can just take other types of sexual deviancy for same-sex attraction. So we say, all right, I'm a same-sex attracted Christian and I expect you to accept me and my identity that way because that's just who I am. That's how God made me. Would we feel comfortable to hear someone say, you know, I am just a pediatric Christian. I'm a man who wants to have sex with children.
That's my desire. But I'm a Christian and I'm not going to act on that. But that's who I am. Don't try to change me or I'm a I'm a bestial Christian. I'm a man who wants to have sex with with the animals, but that's just who I am. Those are my desires.
They're inherent in me. Of course, we wouldn't. I mean, we automatically see that still at this point give us 10 years. We may not. But at this point we still see that that is perverse that that is sin against nature. It is a violation. It's a turning on its head the way God designed mankind as sexual beings.
