“Marriage is to be held in honor among all, and the marriage bed is to be undefiled; for fornicators and adulterers God will judge” . The Greek word translated “undefiled” is only used in this exact form four times in the New Testament, and it means “uncontaminated” or “set apart.”
Any sex outside marriage between a man and a woman, God will judge. Splitting hairs doesn't help. If you care about the soul of a gay person, you tell them the truth about their sin. The same as if a couple was living together without marriage, or sleeping around on their spouse. But marriage is between a man and a woman in the eyes of God.
Hi
@ThereRoseaLamb,
You know I have the utmost respect for you, so I'm not saying this to argue at all -- it's just something I've always pondered, growing up in the church.
I am not in any way saying that homosexuality is justified -- not at all. As Christians, we all know homosexuality is wrong. But I know what I've grown up seeing is a lot of straight, married Christians condemning others who are "obviously" sinning -- openly gay, straight and living together, etc. But the thing I've always wondered, and I think this might be part of what
@lonelysummer is getting at, is if straight, married Christians have a right to judge the sexual sins of others, who has the right to stand up to THEM about their own sexual sins?
I have known at least two Christian women who tearfully told me that their husbands preferred oral and anal sex to what we would call normal sex. And since they only preferred women, they considered themselves 100% straight and not doing anything wrong -- all while freely condemning homosexuals and others in outward sexual sin.
But who would be able to step in and correct them? Especially because these women were much too embarrassed to go to their (male) pastor or anyone else. In one case, it was to the point where the husband would just force her, and she was ashamed and terrified to tell anyone. She was sobbing so hard she couldn't talk as she was trying to relate this to me, and I cried right along with her. We both knew, in the churches we were in, she would never be allowed to leave him -- and she certainly wouldn't want to tell anyone why.
What it boiled down to is that these wives were being pressured and/or forced to participate in acts with their husbands that they did not want to do. I realize there would be debate about oral, but I would think Christians would definitely agree that sodomy against anyone, let alone a wife, is wrong.
I honestly think issues like this are a lot more common than anyone in the church is willing to admit.
Likewise, many of the men (including pastors and elders) in the churches I attended confessed to porn addictions, and they weren't having much victory. So they could point out the sins of a homosexual one minute to save that person's soul, while going home and having to hide what they were watching on their computers every night from their wives. How many married Christians are fantasizing about another man or woman during their private time with their spouse?
And won't God judge these things too?
On the outside, these were respected Christian couples, well-known in their churches and community. But their private lives told a much different story.
Another young man, a new Christian, was trying to get away from the sexual sins of his past, and he asked me (online) if God would be ok with him and his wife experimenting with "toys" as a way to help him satisfy his cravings and get over them.
I told him I was raised in a church that believed this was wrong, but I strongly advised him to talk to his own pastor and study what the Bible says for himself.
I don't want to speak for
@lonelysummer, but I think I understand where he's coming from. From the time I was a teen, one of my biggest questions became, "What's the difference between between confronting someone in order to save their soul and confronting a self-proclaimed Christian (because only God knows if they truly are) who is repeatedly guilty of habitual sin?"
And why do the ones with the secret sins get away with pointing their fingers at the ones who's sins are outward? The only difference is, one is observable, and the other is not. It's a lot like a young woman who is pregnant out of wedlock -- much is said to condemn and correct her, but usually not so much about the man who is the other part of the equation. It's just that her sin is much more noticeable.
I can admit I might be a bit jaded though, as I grew up watching people claim to be so close to God that they could apparently somehow point out everyone else's sins without anyone else knowing about, or no one was brave enough, to confront them about their own.
Again, I'm not meaning this as an argument at all. And I'm certainly not trying to defend homosexuality.
But the points that were brought up in these posts are something I think and pray about quite often.
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