Just as in the beginning, God’s laws originated in His love for those He created in His image. Though Adam and Eve were cast from the Garden because of their rebellious disobedience to God’s one-rule restriction, God’s love for humans continues on—all the way to the cross of Christ, wherein He died in the place of sinners to make them right before God (justified) and to give them new life by which to live by His life and grow into the image of Christ by grace through faith. Therefore, before we proceed to present the biblical view of same-sex practices and other forms of rebellion against God’s design of sexuality and God’s laws regarding sexual practices, we want to emphasize that God is good. He is not withholding that which is ultimately good for His creation.
God designed men and women perfectly for one another with their corresponding sexual organs uniting them as one flesh to fulfill His plan for mankind. However, after the Fall, mankind devolved through the accumulation of sin and its effect on the entire human race. The Bible clearly states: “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Rom. 5:12). Thus, through generations of sin, both inherited and perpetrated, the original gift of sexual union plunged from perfection to perversion. Because God is holy and just, sin must be punished; yet, because God is love, He paid the eternal penalty for all who believe, receive new life, and follow Him.
Prior to warning us about God’s wrath against ever-increasing sinfulness in the first chapter of Romans, Paul extols the power of God in the Gospel, which saves those who hear and respond by grace through faith. Paul emphasizes the righteousness of God as revealed in the Gospel, whereby both His great mercy and perfect justice were satisfied, and by which Christians live by faith:
For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, the just shall live by faith. (Romans 1:16-17.)
Therefore, God’s gift of salvation is to everyone who believes the Gospel and thereby receives forgiveness, justification, and new life in Christ Jesus. God’s righteousness shows forth in the Gospel and believers are to live by faith in God’s righteousness rather than in their own righteousness. By God’s merciful grace they live by faith in God and His Word instead of trying to earn His acceptance. This glorious truth precedes the verses that reveal the devastating consequences of rejecting God and replacing Him with any man-made god (idol) or man-centered religion (idolatry).
Christ came to redeem His creation and, with that redemption, believers are given new life whereby they are enabled by the Holy Spirit to glorify God. They thus have the ability to glorify Him in their bodies as they unite in marriage, in purity and holiness, according to His original sexual design, with their corresponding sexual organs. Our plea is to Christian couples—that they reflect His unadulterated design for sexual union in both faithfulness and form.
PsychoHeresy Awareness Letter, January-February 2018, Vol. 26, No. 1)