Many within my denomination believe that the world already knows what the Bible declares regarding human sexuality in regards to homosexuality, transgenderism, and same-sex attraction. Based on my own evangelistic interactions with unbelievers, I strongly disagree. With groups of Christians telling the LGBTQ community that Jesus is all love who requires no repentance on their part, confusion as to the teaching of Scripture regarding these issues abounds among the lost.

A square circle. A married bachelor. An African-American millennial PCA pastoral intern who believes in biblical social justice and agreed with the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) commending the Nashville Statement as a biblically faithful document. I not only agreed with it but I signed it and promoted it to others. Some will read this and think that, like the first two examples, the third is a contradiction of the highest order. I assure you it is not. As an evangelist who has been sharing the Gospel in the public sphere since 2006 across the United States and abroad, I see the need for this statement at this particular time in history.

Part of the Problem

I well remember my first semester of college in the Fall of 2007 in Southern California. I joined a campus Christian club and when it came time to speak with non-Christian students, I was surprised by their form of “evangelism.” Their method of evangelism was simply to talk of God’s love for all. No mention of sin, righteousness, or the judgement to come (Jn. 16:18). Their message gave the non-Christian students they encountered the impression that God is not angry at sin nor at the sinner and that all was fine between them and their Creator. Although shocked, I shouldn’t have been. This phenomenon of withholding clear biblical truth isn’t new or quarantined to Southern California only. It is worldwide.

Early last month in the Philippines, a group of professing Christians attended and walked in a Pride rally in Marikina City. They held up signs which included messages such as, “Christians harmed the LGBT community”…”I’ve rejected and hurt your family in the name of ‘family values.'”…”God loves you, so do we,” and “I used to be a Bible-banging homophobe Sorry!!” The pastor of this group, Val Paminiani, even went as far as to say, “I used to believe that God condemns homosexuals, but when I studied the Scriptures, especially the ones that we call ‘clobber Scriptures’ that are being cherry-picked from the Bible to condemn LGBT people, I realized that there’s a lot to discover, including the truth that God is not against anyone…”

Some of the “cherry-picked…clobber Scriptures” he is speaking of are undoubtedly Leviticus 18:22, Romans 1:26-27, and 1 Corinthians 6:9-11. None of these verses are taken out of context and all of them clearly condemn homosexuals and homosexual behavior as well.

That sort of argumentation is a case in point of professing Christians seeking to be nicer than Moses, the Apostle Paul, and the Triune God Himself. To compound the problem, many Christians believe that when homosexuals and transgender people think of Christianity, they think of people who hate them and call them the worse sorts of names (and, to hate and call precious image bearers names is a heinous sin; rather, we are called to love our neighbors as ourselves). This is, however, quite a deceptive misconception–as many in the LGBTQ community are predominately hearing the demonic lies of theological liberal mainline denominations which state, as Pastor Paminiani said, “God is not against anyone…”

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