Jesus was responding to the Pharisees when he answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together let not man separate.’” (Matthew 19.4-5)
Recently in Canada a bill (C-4) passed the House and Senate without opposition. Having received Royal assent on December 8 it became law on January 8, 2022. In the preamble of the bill it says that the “belief that heterosexuality, cisgender gender identity and gender expression that conforms to the sex assigned to a person at birth are to be preferred over other sexual orientations, gender identities and gender expressions” is a “myth.”
According to Andrew DeBartolo, a Pastor in Canada, “On January 16, 2022, faithful men across this country will be preaching on God’s design for marriage and a biblical ethic of sexuality. We will be doing so illegally declaring to the State that there is one God and one Lord over his Church, and that Christ alone gets to both define marriage and dictate what is required in the pulpit.”
Faithful Canadian pastors are going to preach on the issue, calling for a biblical understanding of sexual sin, the eternal judgment that falls on the unrepentant and Gospel-rejecting sinners, and the grace of God in the Gospel which offers forgiveness to those who repent and believe in Christ.
In I Co.6.9-11, Paul clearly articulates why we must speak the truth: “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. 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 Christ and in the Spirit of our God.”
Commenting on the passage, one American Pastor states, “All sinners need conversion, but here Paul focuses specifically on ‘the sexually immoral…adulterers…effeminate…[and] homosexuals,’ who will not ‘inherit the kingdom of God.’ Our calling as Gospel ministers is to preach the truth, confront sin, and call all men to repentance and obedience to the Gospel – the Good news that achieves soul conversion and saves sinners from eternal wrath.”
The world’s view believes maleness and femaleness have no transcendent purpose or importance. “Androgyny” rules (maleness and femaleness are interchangeable because they are unimportant). Homosexuality is the logical outgrowth of androgyny as is now the entire LBGTQ+ agenda. If a persons being male or female is unimportant, then one is free to have sex with whomever he or she wants.
The biblical view teaches that maleness and femaleness have inherent meaning. Therefore, to confuse or deny maleness and femaleness is to contradict the created order.
Maggie Gallagher, in her succinct, insightful way, explained these unique aspects of marriage this way:
“Sex makes babies. Society needs babies. Babies deserve mothers and fathers. Together these three ideas explain the public purposes of marriage, its shape and its form. Marriage intrinsically aims at an enduring, exclusive sexual union between a man and a woman, because managing the procreative consequences of human sexual attraction is at the core of its reason for existence.
“The consensus of world cultures from their collective experience is that the best way to sustain and operate societies is to funnel the sexual behavior of their people into marriages consisting of one man and one woman because it provides the most secure social environment. One where the entire spectrum of humanity, man and woman, live together in harmony, to nurture the next generation in the norms and principles of the society. Those children grow into adulthood and fulfill the same process.”
All Biblical norms regarding sexuality can be generated from the theological truths explained in Ephesians 5.22-33. If sexual relations in marriage indicate the heavenly truth of Christ’s intimate love for the Church, then any sexual immorality would contradict that truth.
Maranatha!
Pastor Steve can be reached at PastorSteve@MaranathaBibleChurch.org