As Christians we believe in loving and respecting everyone, as all human beings are made in God’s image, but this does not mean that we need to endorse all behaviours and lifestyles. The desire to act on same sex attraction can be a strong temptation and being careful not to affirm wrong doing (1 Timothy 5:22), we must be there to help friends who are struggling in this way.
As Christians we believe in loving and respecting everyone, as all human beings are made in God’s image…
The Bible speaks about homosexuality in both the Old (e.g. Genesis 19, Leviticus 18 and 20) and the New Testaments (Romans 1:18-32, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, 1 Timothy 1:8-10 and Jude 1:7). These passages show that homosexual activity is a sin, but like every sin, one for which there is forgiveness and from which we can be set free (1 Corinthians 6:9-11 – see personal stories on the True Freedom Trust website [1]).
Marriage between a man and a woman was designed by God and has been present since the creation of the world. One of God’s purposes for marriage is procreation. God commanded men and women to…
…be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and to subdue it.
Genesis 1:28
He instituted marriage in Genesis 2:24 as the means by which this should take place. It is only through the sexual union of a man and a woman that new life is naturally conceived. The Bible teaches that this sexual union of marriage should be kept pure and that all sexual unions outside marriage, as He designed it, are not what God intended.
If we reject God and His ways, all our desires can become distorted by sin and contradict God’s purposes for His creation and lead us to want to do things we are not naturally designed to do. The Bible teaches that pursuing this rejection of God and His ways will lead to judgement in the future (Romans 2:5) and in the present if He removes His restraining influence from our lives.
Romans 1:24-32 describes three ways in which God can give us over to living with the outcome of our sinful desires. He gives us over to sexual impurity, unnatural sexual relations, and to minds which desire all kinds of wrong activities. Homosexual activity is not the only sinful act listed in Romans chapter 1, but it is specifically mentioned and was particularly relevant to the cultural context of those who would be reading Paul’s letter to the Christians in Rome, as it is to our world today. 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, however, reminds us that, then as today, some of the Christians had been saved from just such sins.
