John 8:30-32, “As he spake these words, many believed on him. Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, ‘If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.’”
Do you ever reach a place where you know that a wise decision can be made only by drawing upon God’s limitless wisdom? When you realize that the God in whom perfect holiness and perfect mercy met on the cross of Calvary is the One who cares the most for every human being and thus should be the one deeply consulted for decisions that deeply affect their lives?
I find myself there with the matter of gay marriage, or, more specifically, with the matter of how to counsel gays who come to Jesus for salvation.
I am coming to this post with holy fear, even while putting it up for “Controversial Tuesday.” I am coming to this post with holy fear because the subject is so complex and because probably no human could address every possible case that occurs and never make a mistake in determining a good course of action in each case. We need to cling so closely to our Saviour in such determinations, as we risk harming real people in real situations if we rely on ourselves and simplistic answers.
The questions I am attempting to answer with this post are: “Under what circumstances should the leadership of a church intervene in a home’s existing living arrangement?” and “How soon should this happen?” My answers are not necessarily “one size fits all” answers. We live in a fallen world, but it is also a complex world. What is right for one home is not necessarily right for another.
As an initial answer, I can think of one situation where we must intervene in a living situation and must do this immediately, as soon as we become aware of the need. That would be a situation in which a child is being abused, either by violence or sexually. No one in a position of authority has any excuse for not acting right away to get a child removed from such a harmful setting.
With adults, the situation gets more complex. If you have a gay couple attending your church, but not yet saved, you are not yet in a position to influence their living arrangement, by virtue of the fact that they don’t yet have the Holy Spirit to help them extricate themselves from sin.
It is analogous to an unmarried heterosexual couple living together while attending your church. Until they are saved, they don’t have the power to stop sinning, regardless of the amount of conviction they may get from hearing your sermons.
If you truly have a heart for helping gay people become the people Jesus created them to be, you will eventually deal with this issue in your church. Someone who is currently living a gay lifestyle will come and start listening to your teaching.
It is important at this point to not allow those churchmembers who have a personal “ick” factor about gayness to run these new people out of the church by way of ugly behavior toward them. Don’t allow them to be inconsistent in their witness. Sexual sin is sexual sin. It is only different from generic, run of the mill sin because Jesus told us sexual sin is directed against our own bodies.
If your church has learned to deal redemptively with people who have conceived babies out of wedlock, with people who have had extramarital affairs, and with people who have lived together before marriage, then you know the redemptive attitude you need with gay people. The Lord forgives sin and grows the repentant sinner into sanctification.
And, indeed, the question of intervening in living arrangements is much wider than the question of how to counsel gays when they get saved. There are any number of heterosexual people living together without the benefit of marriage who would have the same issue upon getting saved. How do church leaders compassionately break the news to such couples that their living arrangement is one that will keep them from spiritual growth in their new life in Christ?
I am going to borrow from the traditional missionary understanding of how to deal with polygamy overseas. The reason for doing so is not because I find the traditional missionary response to be a perfect one, but because I find it to be a compassionate one.
Traditionally, if a member of a polygamous marriage gets saved overseas, the missionaries who disciple him have influenced him to decide on one of the wives and keep her as a mate, while divorcing the others. That, in itself, may be debatable (because it involves divorce). But the compassionate thing that occurs is that the missionaries realize the families have all been supported financially by the husband/father, and they keep the financial arrangements in place.
Certainly we must realize that, when a man gets saved, he does not become less financially responsible for the lives that have been nurtured in his home, even if his living arrangements have not conformed to the one man-one woman marriage for life that Jesus laid out in the gospels.
There would be nothing to be gained by throwing the additional wives and their children out into a gutter. They are the innocent victims of man’s sin, at least the children are.
And, if we think about it long enough, we will realize that God used Abraham, Jacob, and King David while they were living in polygamous situations. That is not to say that those were ideal situations. Jesus defined marriage in the gospels as a picture of Himself with His bride, the church. He defined it as one man-one woman, married for life.
Through pondering all of this, I have come to believe that we must go slowly and prayerfully with new converts who have been living in a relationship that does not reflect Christ’s definition of marriage. Obviously, no one can join the church leadership team while still in such a living arrangement. But most pastors don’t ask new converts to join leadership during the first year after they are saved anyway! They need to focus on personal growth for at least a year, in most cases.
There can be situations where two people have totally combined their finances for years, or decades, and pastors may end up counseling them to leave the financial supports in place, especially in the cases where a couple may have had one person at home, taking care of small children, instead of working for an income. This could ostensibly apply to gay couples as well as to unmarried heterosexual ones.
The part of the situation that will require the most discernment is the point at which church leadership advises a couple to move to separate living quarters. If it is a heterosexual couple, seeking to be legally married, I agree with my pastor to get them to separate housing for several months while they work on their lives individually prior to taking their marriage vows. If they are serious about following Jesus, they won’t take the change in living arrangements as an inconvenience, but rather as a chance to glorify their New Master!
With a gay couple or a heterosexual couple that does not seek to marry, for whatever reason, there could be more time to gradually ease into a separation. The point of this would not be to give the couple more time to engage in sin, but just the practical considerations of preparing to live life apart, setting aside their loyalty to each other in order to give their highest loyalty to the Saviour and His commands.
Someone will ask, “What if the extended time together allows them to still engage in sexual sin?” I would put that under the same umbrella that covers every other home. Just because a married couple lives together and their pastor teaches about the proper role of sexuality within marriage, there is no guarantee that one or both of those people are not engaging in sexual sin elsewhere. At some point, we all realize it is not the role of the pastor to conduct bedchecks on his people.
If a pastor is preaching truth from the pulpit, and counseling truth to the newly saved couple, they should eventually move forward into living arrangements that reflect the truth of God’s Word. Maybe not right away. There can be powerful emotional aspects to a gay relationship, aspects that I don’t even pretend to understand. If a couple is counting the cost, moving ahead, getting ready to follow what the Lord is telling them to do . . . there is a lot to be said for their obedience. It would be best if it were immediate obedience. It may not always be so.
Try to put yourself in the place of a woman who has identified herself as exclusively lesbian for the first forty years of her life. Maybe she has lived with a partner for twenty of those years. She gets saved and understands God’s design for marriage. And she is willing to obey, but . . . she also sees that she not only needs to leave a relationship that has defined her, but she also needs to leave her self-definition as a lesbian.
Even if this woman is one of the gay people who never moves over into a heterosexual identity and marriage (as evidence is mounting, in our fallen world, that many born again gay people don’t make that transition, remaining celibate the rest of their lives), she still has to adjust her self-perception, as a new creature in Christ. That is a lot of change. The least we can do is walk beside her in compassion as she navigates it all.
I have read that the biggest facet of a gay relationship is the emotional comfort attained in the relationship, the same way that occurs in heterosexual marriages. Lesbians are, it has been written, more attracted to being in an emotional relationship with a woman than they are attracted to the sexual relationship. The same has been said for gay males.
If that is indeed the case, the easiest part for the new convert will be giving up the sexual relationship; the part where they might need patient encouragement is in leaving the emotional bonds that keep them inordinately tied to the other person.
I will conclude with a story. I realize not every lesbian relationship resolves this way. A friend of mine once told me about her daughter, who lived in a lesbian relationship for a year or two right after college. She was already a Christian, as was, I believe, her partner. The wonderful thing is that God broke through to them and showed them the need to leave their relationship in order to grow in Him and serve Him. And, in this case, He gloriously delivered both of them into a heterosexual marriage. In fact, they were able to remain best friends, without inordinate emotions between them, and both served as maid of honor in the other’s wedding.
God can do anything! We just need to stay close to Him and follow His lead as we counsel people into His will.
Tags: counseling people with lifechanging decisions, Gay churchmembers, gay people attending a Baptist church, heterosexual couples living together without marriage, Homosexuality and Gay Marriage, needing God's wisdom
iconobaptist 