What do I do with Homosexual Christians?

What do we do with homosexual Christians? This is a blog, so one doesn’t need credentials to consider questions that have elements beyond his full understandings. Such credentials would require a fuller knowledge of psychology and related fields than I hold. I have no such qualifications apart from courses taken and books read on the subject. Then there are all those pastoral experiences where a man or woman will speak openly to their pastor about feelings and behaviors that frighten them and trouble them.

One experience that has set me back in my sensitivity and understanding of the person who feels sexually and emotionally drawn to the wrong gender is more than thirty years trying to convince my Church that homosexuality is an unethical behavior and if embraced boldly will quench the Spirit within the proud homosexual. That fact breaks my heart. My time and effort would have been better used trying to reach such persons with love and pastoral concern.

The person who feels unnatural desires is often confused and shame filled. Popular culture helps such persons to “embrace their gift.” They are told that they are wonderfully special. They are counseled that they are not less than normal but different from the statistical norm. They are told that they do not love wrongly but merely differently.

The homosexually inclined are often looking for support and comfort. Like all persons, they want to feel accepted by those they meet and in their churches where they worship God. They want friends who will not judge them harshly on account of their sexual feelings. That is something we each want and ought to have.

There are Christian ministries to persons who are homosexually inclined. Most of them welcome those who view their homosexual feelings as sinful. Some report full reversal of these unwanted sexual feelings. Others just can’t get the cure and leave no better for their efforts. Some are cured but return to homosexual behaviors. The more reasonable approach is to support the homosexual to do what all Christians must do when faced with a besetting sin.

I really don’t know what it is like to be a Christian who feels a longing for the emotional and sexual intimacy of someone from their own gender. I do know what it is like to a Christian who sins. At the core of it, homosexual Christians are simply Christians who sin. I do know what it is like to undergo the terrible grace of sanctification. This is a work of Spirit within the believer where one’s residual sins are brought to the conscience and mortified (killed) by a godly sorrow. The old believers called it living under the conviction of sin. One of the virtues of living with residual sins is humility.

This mortification of the flesh and this vivification of the spirit is an experience  just as much for the saved as the lost. There is no temptation that is not common to Christians. Paul says this very clearly. We are redeemed forensically – that is our legal guilt is placed on Jesus. Our sins, including my sins and those who the homosexually inclined, are sufficiently covered by means of the covenant between the Father and Son – the covenant irrevocably sealed in his body and his blood. As homosexual Christian stands before the judgment seat of God, he or she is viewed as righteous and holy as Jesus himself.

What is required of us who are saved by the blood of Christ regarding our besetting sins? As the Westminster Standard says, we confess our particular sins particularly. I might say, “Lord I am a fearful man who refuses your comfort. I am man prone to lustful thoughts, hateful thoughts, and thoughts that exclude your will from my plans.” Surely the homosexual Christian confesses these sorts of sins as well.

I discovered long ago that it is spiritually dangerous to tame our guilt and sinful feelings. It is far better to grieve over them than to make peace with them. If homosexual behavior is a sin, we, as pastors, dare not counsel the homosexual sinner to accept it as a gift from God. If Romans One is correct, then homosexuality is an unnaturally desire and a willful exchange of the truth for a lie. It is not a sin per se, but the curse casued by a greater sin, a more foundational sin. It is a curse for open rebellion against God. Yet, so is all other manner of sin. If I embrace my cowardice, my depression, my constant worries as gifts from God; it is as though I exchange the truth for a lie. The truth is, I have no reason to fear because God is my savior and the lord of my life. His promise is to protect me. He is also that for any homosexually inclined person who is redeemed by the finished work of Christ.