Question: When God made woman for man and man for woman and love is not a sin, why is it a sin for men to love men and women to love women?
To start, love is certainly not a sin. I agree with that and believe that the Bible shows us that we are to love one another as we love ourselves. To summarize the greatest commandment, Jesus said, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” Check out Matthew 22:34-40 for more on that. So, Jesus tells us to love God and others as we love ourselves. What’s very clear is the fact that we are to love everyone. However, when you start to think about the love that comes between a man and a woman, this isn’t just the brotherly love that we have for everyone. The love between a man and a woman is a special and intimate commitment that is only to be shared between the two of them.
Paul talks about this love between a man and a woman when he says, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh,” in Ephesians 5:25-33. He is requiting Jesus and the words that Moses wrote concerning Adam and Eve. Paul is talking about the relationship between a husband and a wife as Jesus loved the church (God’s people). It is a special love, just between the two, that should never be separated and cannot be duplicated outside of marriage.
So, this really leaves us with the question, “Why can’t men love men and women love men?” We know that love is real, that Jesus commanded it, and that the love between a husband and wife is a special bond that no one else should share. So, why does this love only happen between a husband and wife, rather than in a homosexual relationship? The question being asked is one of homosexuality and whether or not God allows for homosexual relationships within His plan.
I think, in order to answer this question, we should examine two separate questions: (a) Does the Bible say that homosexuality is wrong? and (b) What does God expect from a biblically-based marriage? There are more ideas that we could explore, but these two seem to be the strongest.
To start, there seems to be a lot of evidence in the Bible that warns against homosexuality, but here is just one example. In Romans 1:24-27, Paul speaks very strongly about God’s wrath against mankind:
“Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator – who is forever praised. Amen.
Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.”
God was so frustrated with humanity for perverting His idea of the marriage relationship (and sex) that He allowed them to deal with the consequences that come from having homosexual relationships. Some consequences that have been observed from people having multiple homosexual partners include sexually transmitted diseases and other physical complications, a lack of commitment to any relationship, an inability to understand Jesus’ relationship to the church (His bride), and a separation from God’s will for the marriage relationship between a husband and a wife (discussed later). These are not the only consequences, but just some of what Paul was trying to convey in his letter to the Romans. God considered the act(s) to be indecent and shameful, because they had exchanged His truth for the lies given by the community around them.
Often, homosexuality can seem like the thing that “feels” right, because it feeds the sexual passion that every human is born with; however, it’s not fulfilling the sexual passion in the way that it was meant to be fulfilled. In another of Paul’s letters, he says, “‘Food for the stomach and the stomach for food’ – but God will destroy them both. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.” (1 Corinthians 6:13) As humans, we tend to try and rationalize that, because we feel an urge, we have to fill it with something that feels right. People use the same argument for sex that they also use for food: I have a sexual desire, so I must fulfill that desire. That just doesn’t seem to be the way that God intended things to be.
Paul said that the body is for the Lord. We were created by God and therefore we are His. He has a plan for our lives, a desire to see every one of our needs and wants fulfilled, but in His plan, not our own. In Genesis 2:18, the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” Later on, in verse 23, Adam says, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.” Then, Moses sums the whole concept up in verses 24-25 by saying, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.”
There is something that happens between a man and a woman that proves to be shameless. When the married couple comes together for sexual intimacy, there is no shame, because that is exactly how God expected the relationship to be. In fact, from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians (two paragraphs up), we find out that the act of sexual intimacy is a spiritual matter as well as a physical matter. God expected that this union of the man and woman would make them one – it would bind them.
Going back to Genesis 1:26-28, we see what God had to say about His intentions behind creating man and woman:
“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’”
God desired that the man and the woman – together – would be one and that they would both reflect His image. As the man and woman come together, they reflect God together. The act of sexual intimacy links the man and the woman together and then together they reflect God with their lives and their actions. God didn’t make the relationship to be man and man or woman and woman. He made them male and female.
Some might question God’s judgment in this. Why would God only create them to be male and female? Why didn’t he allow for sexual relationships between homosexual partners? Because, male and male or female and female does not reflect God. When God created the man and the woman to reflect Himself, He knew what His reflection looked like. He is the one – as God – who decides what His will and purpose is for all of creation.
So, the last thing that we must consider is what to do with the information that we have been given. Jesus, very clearly, tells us to love everyone (men and women), but this is the brotherly love, not the intimate man-woman love that happens in the marriage relationship. God created the marriage to be between a man and a woman, because together, the two reflect His image. If we are going to submit to the will of God for His creation, then we have to start viewing the marriage relationship with the reverence and dignity that He destined it to have.
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