How has such an identification with the serious sin of homosexuality become acceptable in Christ’s Bride?  How have we become so biblically ignorant of God’s Truth?  What other sin would believers permit that seeks to trump God’s Truth? His truth is holy and sacred; we dare not ignore God’s revelation.  We need to ensure that our love for God and one another is grounded in our obedience to the truth shown to us by our Creator and revealed in his inspired Word.

The title of this article may surprise or shock you.  Due to an issue facing both Reformed and Evangelical churches this thought came to me: It’s about Christians and pastors who claim to identify themselves as “gay” Christians.

To be clear, in my many articles, I readily emphasize the balance between truth and love.  In this article I am not denying the important balance we should maintain in our Christian faith. What’s different this time?

In order to maintain the biblical balance, we need to recognize that certain truths become primary, which are highlighted throughout God’s revelation.

That God is loving and merciful is a fact.  He demonstrates this time and again by forgiving our evil and rebellious sins.  He sent his beloved Son, Jesus Christ, to atone for our sins; how great his love!  This love draws us to receive his forgiveness and mercy, which leads us to confession and repentance. This gracious love urges us to receive by faith his Son as Redeemer and Savior.  God’s “Truth” always trumps our faulty application of the expectations of God’s love. Note the following:

From the Old Testament

• God commanded His people to have “. . . no other Gods before me” (Exodus 20: 3). His covenant children, the Israelites, were forbidden from combining idol worship with worship of him. That truth trumped love, since disobeying that truth meant lacking genuine love for God.  No other god or idol was acceptable to God; they were required to be destroyed.
• David sinned against God by commanding a census of the people in 2 Samuel 24. “Now again the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and it incited David against them to say, ‘Go, number Israel and Judah’… Now David’s heart troubled him after he had numbered the people. So David said to the Lord, ‘I have sinned greatly in what I have done.  But now, O LORD, please take away the iniquity of Your servant, for I have acted very foolishly.’”  God gave David three choices of punishment.  “So the LORD sent a pestilence upon Israel from the morning until the appointed time, and seventy thousand men of the people from Dan to Beersheba died.” God’s “Truth” trumped David’s actions and punishment was required. Again, love of God’s “Truth” took precedence and promoted love of God and loving correction followed.

From the New Testament

• God’s Word makes clear what is sexually moral or immoral. Incest was forbidden. 1 Corinthians 5 reports a case of incest in the church.  “It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father’s wife. You have become arrogant and have not mourned instead, so that the one who had done this deed would be removed from your midst. . . I have decided to turn such a person over to Satan for the destruction of his body, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord.”  God’s “Truth” trumped love in dealing with this person. Nonetheless, he was treated with love in a severe fashion in order to bring repentance and return him to the church.
• God’s Word also makes clear that same-sex sexual desires, passions, and deeds are immoral and forbidden. Romans 1: 24-27 describes homosexual deeds, desires, and passions with the strongest words and sternest rebuttals. “Therefore, God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.  For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator…For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts . . .” God’s “Truth” trumps misdirected love, as he prohibited homosexual desires, lusts, and acts. His “Truth” promotes love first to God and then to those in error in order to rescue them. One cannot ignore such words as lusts, impurity, degrading passions, unnatural, burned in their desire, and indecent acts.

These examples support the notion that truth is primary and also serves as the foundation for love.  We see this in the relationship between parents and their children, when out of love and for the sake of the children, the parents’ love, based on truth, directs their loving discipline.

Now applying this principle of truth and love to professing believers who identify themselves as ‘gay’ Christians, since same-sex sexual desires, passions and acts are equally condemned, there are no biblical grounds to support such a self-identification.

Some more questions: How has such an identification with the serious sin of homosexuality become acceptable in Christ’s Bride?  How have we become so biblically ignorant of God’s Truth?  What other sin would believers permit that seeks to trump God’s Truth? His truth is holy and sacred; we dare not ignore God’s revelation.  We need to ensure that our love for God and one another is grounded in our obedience to the truth shown to us by our Creator and revealed in his inspired Word.

Truth really does trump love! In fact, truth is the basic foundation for love.  Godly love cannot exist apart from, be ignored by, or separated from God’s Truth.

Helen Louise Herndon is a member of Central Presbyterian Church (EPC) in St. Louis, Missouri. She is freelance writer and served as a missionary to the Arab/Muslim world in France and North Africa.