When Jesus was asked about divorce, He answered by returning to the creation of male and female and the marriage of a man to his wife. I understand that answer, together with the passages that address sexual conduct directly, to establish marriage between one man and one woman. That conviction also requires me to examine my own conduct, because I cannot appeal to God’s authority over someone else while making excuses for myself.
Why Jesus Returned to Creation
Genesis begins its account of humanity with God as our Creator. The people He made did not establish their own worth or decide for themselves what their relationship to Him would be. They received life from Him, and the text identifies them as bearers of His image:
So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
Both male and female bear God’s image. In Genesis 2, God says that it is not good for Adam, the first man, to be alone, and He makes a woman to be a helper comparable to him. That description does not make her lesser in worth. God brings her to Adam, and Adam recognizes her as bone of his bones and flesh of his flesh. The account then explains the union that follows:
Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
The man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife. They establish a household and share their lives in a covenant of faithfulness, with sexual union belonging within that commitment. This gives us a positive account of marriage before we consider the passages that prohibit sexual wrongdoing. God made our bodies, and His creation was good. Being male or female is not itself a reason for shame.
When members of the Jewish religious group known as the Pharisees questioned Jesus about whether a man could divorce his wife for any reason, He brought them back to these words in Genesis:
Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning “made them male and female,” and said, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”?
Jesus was answering a question about divorce, but the reason He gave rested on what God had done at creation. He joined the creation of male and female with the man and woman becoming one flesh. I cannot take that reasoning seriously and then treat the definition of marriage as something we are free to replace. The pattern He reaffirmed joins one man and one woman.
That also gives sexual conduct a setting larger than personal preference. The God who made us has authority over how we use our bodies. Sexual union has a proper place within marital faithfulness, and sex outside that covenant remains accountable to Him. The fact that a choice is private does not make it independent of the Creator.
Our Conscience Needs God’s Word Too
Someone may feel strongly that a particular choice is right. Before I use that feeling to settle a moral question, however, I need to consider what Scripture says about conscience. Paul describes an inward witness even among people who had not received the written Law God had given Israel through Moses. He says that they are people:
who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them
The Greek word syneidesis refers here to conscience, our inward moral awareness and judgment. Paul’s description includes thoughts that accuse and thoughts that excuse. We recognize something about moral responsibility, but that does not mean that every judgment of conscience is accurate.
In 1 Corinthians 8:7, Paul speaks of a weak conscience, while Titus 1:15 speaks of a defiled conscience. In 1 Timothy 4:2, he describes a conscience seared as though with a hot iron. I understand that image to warn about a loss of sensitivity to wrongdoing. I should not try to silence my conscience simply because it troubles me, but neither should I assume that feeling comfortable proves I am right. My conscience needs the instruction and correction of God’s Word.
Paul’s larger argument keeps that responsibility personal. Romans 1 describes humanity’s rejection of God, but chapter 2 turns to the person who condemns others while continuing to practice sin himself. By chapter 3, Paul has established that all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory. I cannot use the first chapter to inspect someone else’s life and then refuse to let the next chapters inspect mine.
If I condemn another person’s sexual conduct while privately defending pornography, I am not applying Paul’s argument faithfully. I am selecting the part that directs attention away from me. The same problem arises when a church speaks loudly about homosexuality but overlooks adultery or divorce without biblical cause among people whose influence it values. Scripture’s authority does not change according to whose conduct is being examined.
Temptation and the Choice to Act
Conscience is not the only inward experience that needs to be examined. Desire can be powerful, and a person may not have chosen to feel it. Yet the presence of a desire does not settle whether acting on it is right. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God in Eden, sin entered human life. I understand our disordered desires in relation to that rebellion, often called the fall. James explains how temptation can develop into sin:
But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.
Notice the movement James describes. Desire entices a person, and when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin. Hebrews 4:15 also tells us that Jesus was tempted without sinning. Temptation and consent to sin therefore cannot be treated as identical. A person may experience a temptation and resist it because he wants to obey the Lord.
I apply that distinction when someone speaks about same-sex attraction. He may not have chosen the initial impulse, but he is responsible for what he does with it. Deliberately feeding a desire or planning how to act on it involves choices, even before an outward act occurs. Those choices must be brought under God’s Word. They are different from the resistance of someone who is asking for help to remain faithful to Christ.
This responsibility belongs to every disciple. A married person’s attraction to someone outside the marriage does not authorize an affair. An unmarried person’s desire does not authorize fornication, meaning sexual relations outside marriage. If I make allowances for lust in people I happen to like, I cannot claim consistency when I address someone else’s desires. Christ calls each of us to deny ourselves and follow Him.
That distinction should also affect how we listen. If a believer tells me he is resisting same-sex temptation, I should not respond as though he has confessed to an act he has not committed. I need to understand what he is telling me. He may be asking for prayer, help understanding Scripture, or the encouragement of someone who will keep walking with him. Disgust will not help him obey Jesus, and neither will telling him that every desire ought to direct his choices.
Nor should I give him a timetable Scripture has not promised. Continuing attraction does not mean that Christ has abandoned a believer. Marriage to someone of the opposite sex is not a treatment for temptation, and entering such a marriage does not prove that someone has changed. Some believers may live faithfully in celibate singleness while continuing to resist desires they did not choose to experience. Their faithfulness should not be measured by a promise we invented for them.
The Passages That Address Sexual Conduct
The creation passages establish marriage, and other passages address conduct outside that design directly. Leviticus 18 contains teaching about sexual holiness, including prohibitions concerning incest and adultery. It also condemns child sacrifice. Within that broader chapter, God says:
You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination.
The word “abomination” identifies the act as something God rejects as detestable. I should not weaken the command simply because its wording is strong. At the same time, the command does not give me permission to regard a person as beyond mercy or to treat him with contempt. The chapter names conduct God forbids; it does not appoint me to humiliate the people who need to hear His Word.
The church does not enforce ancient Israel’s national penalties or recreate its civil code. The moral teaching, however, is repeated in the New Testament. In 1 Timothy 1:8–11, Paul names homosexual practice among conduct contrary to sound doctrine. His warning appears alongside other sins, so it cannot be used to make this the only wrong that concerns God.
In Romans 1:24–32, Paul first describes people exchanging God’s truth for idolatry. They worship and serve the creature in place of the Creator. He then describes a departure from the created sexual order, including women as well as men, and speaks of men desiring one another. I understand his appeal to creation and his description of both sexes to address same-sex sexual conduct broadly. His argument is not confined to one abusive male custom or one particular pagan practice.
That is why I cannot resolve the question merely by asking whether affection is sincere. Affection and loyalty can be real without making every sexual relationship right. A married person may say that he deeply loves someone outside his marriage, but that feeling does not cancel his obligation to his spouse. In 1 Corinthians 13:6, love rejoices in truth. I understand genuine care for another person to remain accountable to the boundaries God has given.
Jesus’ teaching and the apostles’ teaching also belong together. His answer in Matthew 19 affirms the male-female marriage pattern even though the immediate question concerned divorce. He authorized the apostles whose teaching forms the church’s foundation. I cannot receive that authority when Paul’s words agree with me and then dismiss it when his words become uncomfortable.
The needed response is consistent repentance. When a church tolerates sexual wrongdoing among its own influential members, the charge of selective judgment is justified. It needs to face that failure. The remedy is to apply God’s Word to ourselves as well, rather than declare another category of conduct exempt from it. Loud denunciations of other people cannot cleanse the wrongdoing I am concealing.
What Paul Says Happened to the Believers in Corinth
Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 6:9–11 help us see both the warning and the hope. He was writing to a church in the Greek city of Corinth, and some of those believers had practiced the conduct he was about to name. He warns that the unrighteous will not inherit God’s kingdom, naming several kinds of sexual wrongdoing along with sins such as theft and greed. Homosexual conduct is included, but it is not presented as uniquely unforgivable. After the warning, Paul reminds the believers of what God has done for them:
And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.
Some of the people hearing that letter had practiced the very sins Paul named. Yet he could now address them as people who had been washed, sanctified, and justified. Christ had shown them mercy. Their former conduct was real, but it was no longer the whole account of who they were before God.
Being sanctified means that they had been set apart as His own. Being justified describes God’s declaration that they were righteous in Christ. Paul attributes these saving acts to the Lord Jesus and the Spirit of God. He does not describe rewards given to people who first made themselves worthy by overcoming every temptation.
I think that order gives a struggling believer a necessary reason for hope. He resists sin as someone whom the Lord has redeemed. He is not trying to become acceptable enough to approach the Savior. Paul does not promise that every temptation disappears at conversion, and the presence of a struggle does not cancel the standing God gives His children.
The grace that saves also teaches obedience. Titus 2:11–14 says that grace teaches us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts. Forgiveness therefore cannot be turned into permission to keep practicing what Christ calls us to leave. Turning to Him may mean ending a sinful relationship or changing entertainment habits that deliberately feed lust. Those decisions are fruit of repentance. They do not purchase forgiveness.
Taking those steps may require patient help. Someone who has spent years hiding may need to learn how to build honest friendships and receive accountability without being controlled. A church can share Scripture, pray with him, and include him in the ordinary fellowship that sustains Christian life. It cannot guarantee that his attractions will change or declare continued temptation to be proof that he has not received new life.
The Forgiveness Christ Provides
The cleansing Paul describes rests on what Jesus has done, not on the church’s ability to manage a person’s behavior. Jesus is the eternal Son, fully God and fully man. He lived without sin and willingly gave Himself to be slain as the perfect sacrifice for us. His offering was sufficient because He was perfect and gave His own blood and life for our sins.
Wicked men inflicted real torture on His innocent body and crucified Him. He willingly offered Himself, and His saving sacrifice was complete when He shed His blood and died. The Father did not punish, curse, abandon, strike, bruise, or pour wrath on Jesus. Father and Son remained united in redeeming us. Jesus was then buried and rose bodily from the dead.
Because He died for the whole world, the offer of salvation is genuine for every person who hears it. People can resist and reject Him, but whoever repents and trusts Christ is forgiven and born again. The Holy Spirit comes to live within that believer and seals him for redemption. His salvation is eternally secure in the Savior who has made him His own.
An outward profession without new life does not establish genuine faith. At the same time, a believer does not lose salvation because a temptation returns or because he fails and needs to confess sin. Christ’s completed work remains the ground of assurance. Grace continues to teach the believer obedience, so helping him means encouraging repentance and dependence on the Lord, without abandoning him to despair or telling him to stop resisting sin.
I need that mercy myself when I teach this subject. Knowing which conduct Scripture condemns does not make me the source of another person’s cleansing, and it does not excuse my own sin. My responsibility is to direct him to Christ and to obey the same Lord whose Word I am asking him to receive.
What Faithful Care Looks Like in the Church
A church that avoids the subject because it is unpopular leaves people to look elsewhere for answers. We should explain God’s design, the meaning of repentance, and the new birth Christ gives. The way we treat the person listening must agree with that teaching. Cruelty does not become faithful merely because a biblical statement accompanies it, and kindness does not require hiding what we believe Scripture says.
A believer who is resisting same-sex temptation belongs among fellow Christians. He should be able to hear Scripture, share in the church’s work, and receive prayer and patient encouragement. Fellowship is part of the help he needs. Treating him as though his struggle makes him unfit for ordinary Christian friendship can leave him isolated precisely when he is asking for support.
His honesty also places a responsibility on the person hearing him. If someone trusts me with a private struggle, I have not been given permission to turn him into a sermon illustration. I should not make his participation in fellowship depend on public disclosure he has not chosen. Helping him understand and obey Scripture does not require making him a public example.
Biblical conviction gives no permission for slurs, bullying, threats, humiliation, or violence. Parents and pastors must not use fear or isolation to control someone. Nor should they pressure him with promises of instant change. Accountability should help a believer follow Christ. When it becomes a means of coercion or shame, the person offering it needs to examine his own conduct before God.
The reason for treating a person with dignity is already present in the creation passage we read. Every person bears God’s image, including someone who experiences same-sex attraction. Mocking him disregards a person God made. I can speak about accountability to God while remembering that responsibility in the way I address him. For a believer, temptation is also not the final definition of who he is. Through the new birth, he belongs to Christ.
If we are practicing sexual sin, changing its name will not remove the guilt. Despair cannot cleanse it either. We need to come honestly to Christ and trust the blood He shed for sinners. That invitation applies to the person whose conduct has become public and to the religious person whose conduct is still concealed.
If you experience same-sex attraction and want to obey Jesus, seek wise, faithful believers with whom you can speak honestly. Receive their help as you keep walking by the Spirit. A difficult struggle does not remove your need for fellowship or put you beyond the Lord’s care. The church should help you follow Him with patience, rather than make you prove that you no longer face temptation before it will walk beside you.
My Final Thoughts
I understand Scripture to establish marriage between one man and one woman and to call sexual conduct outside that covenant sin. Jesus’ appeal to creation and the apostles’ teaching give me no reason to set that conclusion aside. They also give me no permission to humiliate someone, confuse temptation with consent, or protect sexual wrongdoing in people I happen to favor.
Paul’s words to Corinth show that the call to repentance comes with real hope. Christ washes, sanctifies, and justifies people who come to Him, and His grace teaches those He saves how to live. I want our churches to explain that mercy clearly and to offer the patient fellowship that helps a believer obey. If I ask someone else to bring his life under God’s Word, I must be willing to do the same.