homosexuals

Hate the sin, love the sinner.

Jesus came to save the lost. That is why he spent so much time with people that religious leaders would not. Jesus loves everyone the same, regardless of their sin. However, that does not mean that homosexuality is not a sin.

 

What you could to him answer? </font>[/QUOTE]1. I would argue that Jesus is God, and therefore, any condemnation of Homosexuality anywhere in the Bible by God, is also a condemnation from Jesus as well.

2. Jesus was not very accepting of the pharisees, calling them snakes and I think an evil generation. This argument simply isn't true.

3. I don't question the justice or the decisions of God. That is not my job to judge him. He is the one who will judge us.

Joseph Botwinick

 

Baptistas,

The hardest part about counseling someone, in my opinion, is discerning whether a person is seeking the truth or seeking justification for their sin. Usually just a little bit of kind listening is necessary to get to that truth.

I am afraid that we as Christians are more than ready to stigmatize a person struggling with temptation in this area. In other words we often recoil and freak out. The Bible teaches that sodomy (the act) is sin. The Bible also teaches us to control our imaginations and to not make provision for the flesh. It sounds to me like the person who you quoted might just want to find some sense of normalcy. The Bible teaches that all temptations are "common to man". Lust is lust. Heterosexual sex with someone other than your spouse is deviant behavior and expressly forbidden by scripture. Sodomy is more deviant. Then it just getss worse from there. (Pedofilia, beastiality, etc.)

Here is my point. Queer temptations are "common to man". (Not as common as temptations toward heterosexual fornication, but common nonetheless.) Is the man fighting and resisting? A Christian brother who wrestles with queer temptations, pornography, drugs, etc. needs our love and support just like anybody struggling with other sins. (Maybe moreso.)

But we need to treat them with the understanding that we all struggle with "common" sins. The Biblical principals that keep us from running off with the church secretary or going out and getting drunk, will work for him too.

Having an attraction for the opposite sex is not a birth defect. It (according to the Bible) is a "common" temptation. It must be resisted, confessed, etc. He must flee this fornication just like any other fornication. And if he stumbles, he must repent and sin no more. Just like you and me.

Lacy

 

Preach on Lacy!

 

Lacy said it well, and did it in a scriptural, non-condemning, and humble manner.

 

Ditto!

 

Double ditto!

In His service;
Jim

 

Why would God create a homosexual and then say they'll go to hell?

1 Corinthians 6:9 Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, 10 nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.

 

John, in John 1:15-19 says that Jesus revealed something about God that many people found difficult to accept. It was so difficult for a certain group of religious people to accept that they crucified Him. While others, found the quality of Jesus to be something that they absolutely needed more than anything in the world and they followed Him by the 100's and 1000's because of it.

The quality was that Jesus was full of "grace and truth."

You would think that those qualities would contradict each other but in Jesus they didn't. And that is what He did that divided people so strongly.

Jesus had the ability to never compromise the truth. Yet, after he had pointed out the truth, He would offer complete forgiveness. Grace flowed from him. And just when they didn't think he could be gracious to another person, he would.

The truth said they were sinners but grace said they could be forgiven and slate could and would be wiped clean.

And if Jesus were dealing with a homosexual whether it was today or 2000 years ago...I'm sure he would be full of grace and truth.

And many of us would be uncomfortable...we prefer the law. If you do this...you get this!!!

 

Baptistas,

The hardest part about counseling someone, in my opinion, is discerning whether a person is seeking the truth or seeking justification for their sin. Usually just a little bit of kind listening is necessary to get to that truth.

I am afraid that we as Christians are more than ready to stigmatize a person struggling with temptation in this area. In other words we often recoil and freak out. The Bible teaches that sodomy (the act) is sin. The Bible also teaches us to control our imaginations and to not make provision for the flesh. It sounds to me like the person who you quoted might just want to find some sense of normalcy. The Bible teaches that all temptations are "common to man". Lust is lust. Heterosexual sex with someone other than your spouse is deviant behavior and expressly forbidden by scripture. Sodomy is more deviant. Then it just getss worse from there. (Pedofilia, beastiality, etc.)

Here is my point. Queer temptations are "common to man". (Not as common as temptations toward heterosexual fornication, but common nonetheless.) Is the man fighting and resisting? A Christian brother who wrestles with queer temptations, pornography, drugs, etc. needs our love and support just like anybody struggling with other sins. (Maybe moreso.)

But we need to treat them with the understanding that we all struggle with "common" sins. The Biblical principals that keep us from running off with the church secretary or going out and getting drunk, will work for him too.

Having an attraction for the opposite sex is not a birth defect. It (according to the Bible) is a "common" temptation. It must be resisted, confessed, etc. He must flee this fornication just like any other fornication. And if he stumbles, he must repent and sin no more. Just like you and me.

Lacy </font>[/QUOTE]Amen and Amen!! (you sound like this Joey guy I know)
dmw

 

Dear Baptistas,

I think I might first give this person the gospel, then I would try to prove to him the preeminance of the Bible. It sounds to me like this person is either severly backslidden and desparately seeking to justify himself, or else he is not a believer at all. Nevertheless, I will try my best to answer these statements.

Furthermore, everything that's actually on the list is in the category of universally recognized ethics-- except one thing, "fornication", the ethics of which is dependent on culture and specific circumstances. Homosexual acts are of that same sort-- the act itself is neither ethical nor unethical, the ethics depend on the circumstances and culture.</font>[/QUOTE]The OT is very clear in it's condemnation of sodomy. It is an abomination. The NT is equally clear. If we give ground to this kind of subjectivism, then truth becomes meaningless.

Romans 1:21-28
21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, 23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. 24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: 25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. 26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: 27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. 28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;

The first part of this is just homosexual propaganda. It is a gross stretch of the truth that sodomy was "widely accepted" in the "ancient world". But even if I grant him the argument, starting from the ancient pre-flood world, to Sodom and Gomorreah, to the Greeks, the Romans, and right on through, the cultures that were characterized by widespread deviant sexual behavior were judged by God and fell.

As far as Rev 14:4, please notice these verses:

1Co 7:2
Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.

Heb 13:4
Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.


This is a clear command for a man and wife to share heterosexual sex. Sex between a husband and wife is in no way defiling. It is as holy an act of obedience as partaking of the Lord's table and being baptized. With this in mind, the virgins who did not defile themselves were (Had to be!) single. Of course it defiles a single man or woman to have sex. That is called "fornication".

Their "sexual orientation" (another propaganda phrase) is not in queation in Rev 14:4. If they were tempted to fornicate (either with men or with women) they resisted. that is the main reason they were exalted.

Again, this person does not believe the Bible applies to him. There is no dichotomy between Christ and Paul. The Bible (66 books) is a unit. I could justify any sin I wanted if I simply chose to ignore the verses that didn't touch that specific subject. As far as Christ's supposed "erotic relationships", one would have to be already perverted in his thinking (My eighth graders call it "dirty minded") to ever see anything like that in scripture.

I would hope one didn't risk his eternal state on "extraBiblical sources". There is a reason that God caused the canon to be closed and his revelation to be specifically limited to the 66 books of Scripture.

More undocumented queer propaganda. I would like a list of the "many early communities". If it "never occured to them" to change, they weren't studying their Bibles. Even if you found an "early church" full of sodomites, it would prove nothing. We don't base doctrine on history. Having said that, I would be willing to bet that those supposedly historical sodomite "churches" were not left untouched ny the hand of God's judgment.

Quaint. Poetic. Absolutly anti-Scriptural.

I'm sure there are "good" and "bad" (relative terms) homosexual relationships. What in the world difference would that make? Such subjectivism in a supposed "catechism" is very alarming. "Good" as compared to what? Cancer? A famine? Bamboo being driven under your fingernails?

Will that be his answer to God at the Judgment seat? My extra-marital fornication, or sodomy, or pedophilic relations, or bestiality were all "good" relationships!.

May God have mercy.

I hope that helps.

Lacy

 

God did not create homosexuals. We have free will.We are to hate the sin and love the sinner. Would Jesus have talked to a homosexual? Sure he would have dealt with him/her and thier problem and told them to go and sin no more.

 

The bible also has an answer for those who will be followers of Jesus, and not Paul:

1 Corinthians 14
37 If any man think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord.
38 But if any man be ignorant, let him be ignorant.

 

What you could to him answer? </font>[/QUOTE]I would say:
Jesus said he was the fulfillment of the law and the prophets; in Him rested all of God's righteousness, and the law, which reflects God's righteousness. Jesus did not have to mention homosexuality because 1) it was not accepted among the Jews, having been condemned in the OT by God; and 2) because in claiming to be the Son of God, Jesus was asserting his deity, and complete harmony with God. Therefore, anything God condemns, Jesus condemns, too.

God does not create people with tendencies toward something he condemns; those tendencies are from the Fall. God made man good but man chose to go against God and thus the Fall came about, tarnishing man from within and giving decay from without.

The good news is that we can be redeemed! This is why Christ came (and then go on to give the gospel)....

 

What you could to him answer? </font>[/QUOTE]I would ask him why he believes what is written above and where is the evidence for it. For example, where is the evidence for Jesus having sexual relations in the gospel, and where is evidence for early Christian communities practicing homosexuality? Christians did not practice trantric sex (that comes from Hinduism).

The "extrabiblical traditions" about Mary Magdalene have shown to have no evidence at all and to be based on myth and supposition (this popular notions comes from the bestseller _The Da Vinci Code_ and its forerunner, _Holy Blood, Holy Grail_).

 

I am coming to think of homosexuality as a type of cross one has to bear. It is not something that God creates in a person, rather it is sin that is a very strong weakness for some.

If you are able to resist and turn away from it you will receive a reward in heaven, for choosing God and His ways.

I think each person has their own weakness or cross to bear. If they can bear it with all the gracefulness that Christ bore His with, then that is a very strong person. It is so much easier to just give in to any want or any thought that comes to mind, but think of how proud God will be when you see his face and he tells you "Well done good and faithful servent."

Too many people in today's society are just giving up and giving in to anything they want. We are a nation of weaklings. Okie I'll get off me rant box now. =o)

azwyld
&lt;*}}}&gt;&lt;

 

Lori, everyone has crosses to bear. If we don't bear it, we get crushed under its weight. Wouldn't it be unfortunate if we with our own crosses got treated in the same manner with which we often treat homosexuals? Perhaps it would make us rethink how we should act. Hmmm, that gets me thinking. Perhaps we Christians are at least partially to blame for many of the ills in the world, because of how we address them. We spend more time pointing a finger than lending a hand.