“Everyone who reveres the gospel has compelling reasons to champion biblical sexual ethics. It is falling to our generation to raise up a prophetic counterculture in the face of the sexual revolution’s direct attack on Christ and his marital appeal at the heart of the gospel. The fact that we too are sinners does not exempt us from taking this stand. Our own sinfulness simply means that we take our stand with humility and honesty. But we must not be silent. What is at stake in our sexuality is nothing less than the gospel itself.”

Ray Ortlund, one of the original signers of the Nashville Statement, in his book Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel, wrote poignantly on the gospel implications of taking a public stand on sexual issues in a culture such as ours:

“Everyone who reveres the gospel has compelling reasons to champion biblical sexual ethics. It is falling to our generation to raise up a prophetic counterculture in the face of the sexual revolution’s direct attack on Christ and his marital appeal at the heart of the gospel. The fact that we too are sinners does not exempt us from taking this stand. Our own sinfulness simply means that we take our stand with humility and honesty. But we must not be silent. What is at stake in our sexuality is nothing less than the gospel itself.”

The PCA has agreed with this sentiment, recently passing an overture to “declare the Nashville Statement to be a biblically faithful declaration.” Some have pointed out that what the PCA did is tremendously important for several reasons, including the benefits of showing forth the clarity of God’s word as it speaks to current and pressing cultural issues.

However, some within the denomination have argued that this was a mistake because there is no need for making such a statement, citing the fact that we are a confessional denomination, and our standards speak clearly enough. Others have argued that it is not pastoral in nature. It was even argued on the floor of our General Assembly that certain parts of the Nashville Statement are hurtful to those who identify as same sex attracted.

If this is the case then I would simply point out that the Nashville Statement overture passed by the PCA was simply a “declaration” that this was a “biblically faithful declaration” about a specific, culturally sensitive, and terribly relevant issue. The real pastoral help should, can, and does come from Scripture and is set out in our confessional standards.

Therefore, given some of these recent arguments against the PCA’s decision to declare the Nashville Statement to be biblically faithful, I thought it would be helpful to look at the clarity of the Westminster Standards, specifically as to what our standards have to say about sexual ethics and the ordering of sexual desires. After all, I and all ministers in the PCA have taken vows “to sincerely receive and adopt” the teaching of these devotionally and pastorally useful doctrinal standards. While pastoral in nature, they are far more convicting and constricting than the Nashville Statement regarding how our sexual desires are to be ordered and directed.

According to LC 139, among the sins forbidden by the 7^th Commandment are all “unnatural lusts” and “all unclean imaginations, thoughts, purposes, and affections.” The Westminster Confession of Faith 6.4-5 teaches that the corruption of nature itself, from which our sins proceed, is in itself, prior to any transgression, truly and properly sin. So, when comparisons are being made that seem to put SSA in the same category as non-moral physical maladies (unless I am misunderstanding something) there seems to be some–at least implicit–disagreement between teaching that includes comparisons such as these and the Confession and Catechism’s teaching on the taxonomy of sin and corruption.

But there is another line in the previous WLC question (138) that should be very relevant to the current issues in the PCA. Larger Catechism 138 seems to speak into the current situation in a way that I have not yet seen addressed in any sort comprehensive manner. Among the duties required by the 7^th Commandment is “marriage by those that have not the gift of Continency.” Also forbidden by the 7^thCommandment (LC 139) according to our standards is the “undue delay of marriage.”

Here seems to be a significant area that some of the Spiritual Friendship and Revoice proponents within the PCA need to address: do our confessional standards teach that the 7^th commandment requires biblical marriage for those who have strong sexual desires (however disordered)? The Catechism seems to be arguing that the presence of strong sexual desires rules out one’s having the “gift” of continency. Here is what the English Puritan, Thomas Ridgeley, in his famous exposition of the Westminster Larger Catechism, A Body of Divinity, says:

“As for those who cannot, without inconveniency, govern their affections, but are sometimes tempted to any thing which is inconsistent with that purity of heart and life which all ought religiously to maintain, it is their duty to enter into a married state; which is an ordinance that God has appointed to prevent the breach of this commandment.”

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