Chapter 25: Hard Preaching, Part 2: There's No Such Thing As A Gay Christian

Genesis 19: 24 – 25: “Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven; And He overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.”
 
Leviticus 18:22 – “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is an abomination.”
 
Romans 1:27 – “And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.”
 
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           In my last post I stated what part 2 would be about. As you can see from these verses and the title of my message today, I’m going to be addressing a sin that has invaded the church like a cancer. It’s a sin that was once decried and preached quite loudly against; it was denounced thunderously from every pulpit in America, especially those in the southern states, also known as the “Bible Belt”. Pastors, reverends, bishops, preachers, and church leaders once took a very firm stand against this sin, and would not allow it to fester and grow within the walls of their sacred auditoriums. There was once a very clear line drawn between this particular sin and the life of the true Christian. There was, once upon a time, and not too long ago, a very clear difference between the ones who lived this sin and were proud of it and the ones who were saved from it, turned away completely, took up their cross, and followed Christ.
            That sin is called homosexuality. While that specific word is found nowhere in scripture, it is clearly described by God, and He uses the term “sodomite”. (Deuteronomy 23:17; 1 Kings 14:24, 15:12; 2 Kings 23:7.)  In fact, He utterly destroyed the twin cities of Sodom and Gomorrah for this particular sin, which is the origin of that word. From the very beginning, in Genesis, to the final chapters of Revelations, God is very clear and explicit in His holy word about what He thinks of sodomy and those who practice it without repentance. I emphasize those last two words because God also emphasizes that throughout the Bible. That distinction is clear and very important to the heart of my message today.
            Until a mere 50 or 60 years ago, every church in America – no matter the denomination or size of its congregation – viewed sodomy the same as God. One would have been hard pressed – very hard pressed, in fact – to find a church where one could be openly and proudly gay and still be an active and welcomed member of that congregation. Homosexuality was properly preached as sin, and anyone practicing it was encouraged to come forward to the altar, repent of their sin and be saved by the blood of Christ. In the aftermath of the Stonewall Riots of 1968, and throughout the 1970s – the decade which birthed the sexual revolution, most notably the sin of rebellion known as feminism – homosexuality was still properly addressed by Christians and their pastors as a lifestyle choice that one needed to be saved out of and never practice again. National organizations such as Exodus International were birthed in the ‘70s as a way to help homosexuals of both genders repent and recover from their deviant nature and walk with Christ in true fellowship.
            Leviticus 18:22: God was very clear that the ACT of sodomy was an abomination, NOT the sinner committing the act. God loved – and still loves – the sinner. But He abhors the sin. I make this distinction now, at the beginning of my message, because this is where I – and every true Christian – should clearly stand. I do not hate the sinner. I, like my Lord and Savior, love the sinner. I want him or her to come out from their sin, repent and turn away from it, and walk with Christ.
            But I, like Jesus, hate the sin. It is an abomination. It is unseemly. It is vile, and disgusting, and an offense against God and His holiness. And it is with great sadness and heavy burden of my heart that I am witness to so many religious denominations – Baptist included – that have allowed this vile sin to not only penetrate, grow and prosper within their sacred halls, but also celebrate it by allowing gay marriage and adorning the outside of their cathedrals with rainbow flags. Sodomy, to them, is now just another way that we can worship God. The newer translations of the Bible have done their best to soften – if not completely erase – the word “sodomy” and “homosexuality” from God’s word. To them, “gay Christians” are also children of God and should be accepted and celebrated without judgment. After all, Christ himself said, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” (Matthew 7:1) And, after all, God is love, isn’t he? How could He judge and send to hell a Christian who was born gay and wants to love others as God loves him or her? Did God really destroy Sodom and Gomorrah for the “sin” of homosexuality? Are you sure about that, fellow Christian?
 
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             There are two specific groups of sodomites that I am going to address in this sermon. Both members of this group call themselves “gay Christians”, but one group refuses to act upon their same sex attraction (SSA), taking a “vow of celibacy” in order to properly serve God, while the other group believes it’s perfectly okay to not only commit the act of sodomy with fellow men and women but also marry one another of the same sex and adopt children together. For this part of my message I am going to address the first group.
           In just the last decade and, especially in the wake of the ruling by the supreme court in 2015 which made gay marriage legal and legitimate in all 50 states, the term “gay Christian” has become a popular moniker among churches and other religious groups. This particular congregation of “Christians” – and I use the term loosely for a reason – would have you believe that you can have your cake of sin and eat it too. “Christian” authors and speakers love to regale their rapt audiences – most of whom are struggling with the sin of homosexuality themselves – with tales of “celibacy”, and “God loves you just as you are”, and “God created you this way”. They are quick to assure their followers that yes, homosexuality is a sin, but God made you this way, and You can serve Him by declaring a public vow of celibacy, and you can help bring other gay Christians into the fold by creating programs and ministries that directly serve that growing crowd.
            Gay Christians are also quick to “pooh-pooh” the staunch conservatives that still rail against and thunderously denounce this sin from their pulpits. Gay Christians believe this is a wrong approach, that it will cause more harm to those in the gay community who are unsaved and are afraid of coming to church because they don’t want to be rejected or yelled at or condemned as gross and disgusting. The “gay Christians” want to, instead, create ministries and outreach programs that seek to affirm the unsaved gays – they don’t like the term “homosexual” – and assure them that God loves them, and that it’s okay to be gay. No, you can’t have a relationship with anyone of the same sex, but you’re perfectly okay to talk about your sexuality, to talk about your physical attraction to others of the same sex, and you can follow Jesus just fine while still claiming your sexual identity. Because, let’s face it, God made each of us unique, and while our sexuality is indeed unnatural, and yes, God has marked it as a sin, it’s also part of our uniqueness in Him, and we shouldn’t be so quick to suppress it or try to erase it completely.
          Consider the following quote from “gay Christian” author Gregory Coles, from his latest book No Longer Strangers:
             “Those of us who love Jesus are indeed called to find our paramount identity in him. Every other identity is placed in submission to Christ, upturned and radically reordered by the logic of the kingdom of God. But our particularities are not erased in the process. We are not recycled paper, blended into a pulp and recast as a blank sheet. We are a painted canvas in the hands of a master restorer, painstakingly cleansed and healed and remade until we finally become the irreplicable artwork we were always intended to be.”
            I use this particular quote because I’ve used it once before. I posted it on my social media just over a year ago as a great example of sanctification. What I recognize now – but was blind to then – is the insidiously deceptive lie in Gregory’s writing that so many like him – myself included – have fallen victim to. One of my favorite shows when I was a kid was The X-Files. Agent Fox Mulder of the FBI, along with his partner, Special Agent Dana Scully, were investigating the existence of extra-terrestrials here on earth and the various government conspiracies to cover up and deny said existence to the American public. In an early episode of season 1 – and one of my top ten favorite episodes of the whole series – Agent Mulder is in a secret rendezvous with one of his primary informants within the government, a shadowy character known only as “Deep Throat”. Deep Throat (played by the marvelously wonderful Jerry Hardin) says the following after Mulder confronts him about lying to him: “…a lie, Mr. Mulder, is most convincingly hidden between two truths.”
            Ironically enough, and very likely without them consciously aware of it, the writers of that episode were quoting Satan’s best strategy in the spiritual war of our modern age. Christians are not fooled by the red man with a pitchfork and horns and fangs. But they are so easily and cleverly deceived by the “angel of light” that Paul describes in 2 Corinthians 11:14. That “angel” very carefully and very smartly takes a doctrinal truth, i.e. God is love, God loves the sinner, and places on top of it a lie, that God is okay with your perverse sexual identity as long as you don’t act upon it, and then places on top of that another truth: once you are saved God is working within you to sanctify you according to His calling.
            In the paragraph by Gregory Coles that I quoted above, he is absolutely correct in that, once we are saved, our paramount identity is indeed found in Christ. And yes, every other identity is placed in submission to Him. But then Gregory makes a false statement in the very next sentence: “But our particularities are not erased in the process. We are not recycled paper, blended into a pulp and recast as a blank sheet.” My dear Mr. Coles, that is precisely the point of sanctification and our walk with Christ: the old man – the vile, stinking, sinful, flesh – is utterly wiped out – or, at the very least, mostly so – by the new man that we put on in Christ. Our daily goal as we attend church, read and study our Bible, and get on our knees every day to talk to God, slowly but surely erases ALL remnants of our old identity. That is the primary work of the Holy Spirit which God places within every believer at the moment of salvation. Just how much progress He makes every day is up to us. As long as we continually strive for holiness by staying faithful in our walk with Christ and remaining rooted in Him (Colossians 2:7), the less and less we will see of the old flesh. That most especially includes our deviant desire of sodomy and same sex attraction!
            For as long as we live on this earth, we will never be as perfect and pure as a blank, clean sheet of white paper. But that is the goal we should be striving for! When those of us who have been saved from the homosexual lifestyle continue to call ourselves “gay Christians”, we are most certainly not striving for holiness! Quite the opposite, in fact. What we are saying to God is, in effect, “You are not enough for me, Lord. You are not my paramount identity. I want to keep one foot in the world and one in the church. I can still serve you just fine that way. I promise.” To that, there is only one response: Matthew 6:24. “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”
            Becket Cook, author of A Change Of A Change Of Affection: A Gay Man’s Incredible Story Of Redemption, states it this way: “…I would never call myself a gay Christian, because the label ‘gay’ is part of my old self, which the apostle Paul told us to get rid of…I don’t identify with that old lifestyle anymore. I am now a new creation in Christ. That old man has passed away…Other Christians may struggle with all kinds of sin: gossip, greed, anger, pride, and so on. But I seriously doubt that they would identify themselves as a ‘greedy’ Christian or a ‘gossiping’ Christian. So why would I identify as a ‘gay’ Christian?”
            Becket is absolutely, one hundred percent correct! By clinging to the term “gay Christian” so many homosexuals are clinging to their sin and their old life while trying to “serve” God and claiming to be good Christians. To state it bluntly, they are not! They are living in the world, believing one of Satan’s biggest and most deceptive lies, and, what’s worse, they are a rapidly growing cancer among the congregations of hundreds of thousands of churches in our nation today!
 
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            For the last two years I have been a member of the Young Heretics: an online community created by Spencer Klavan when he launched his podcast of the same name in spring of 2020. Spencer is the only son of Andrew Klavan, a Christian author and speaker and a prominent member of the Daily Wire. The Daily Wire, for those of who aren’t familiar with the names Matt Walsh or Ben Shapiro, is a conservative news media conglomerate that was officially launched in September of 2015 as a way to combat the politically left biases of the mainstream news outlets, or the “legacy media”, as TDW’s team calls it. Shapiro, an orthodox Jew, and Walsh, a devout Catholic, along with Andrew Klavan, Michael Knowles and Jeremy Boreing, have spent the last seven years building a genuinely conservative media empire that has successfully provided a sound and logical voice against the growing nonsense and truly ridiculous propaganda of the radical left and their “woke” ideology.
            Spencer Klavan’s podcast, the Young Heretics, focuses on the great works of western literature, i.e. Plato’s Republic, the plays of Shakespeare, Machiavelli’s The Prince, the letters of Seneca, the confession of Saint Augustine, the lectures of Cicero, to name a few. Spencer is fond of summing up his show with the following slogan: “The classical education you deserved but never received.” He’s referring to the once great public universities such as Princeton and Yale and Harvard that have, in the last 2 years, caved to the politically left and the “woke” agenda by erasing from their curriculum most of those great works of western lit because they are now considered “too racist”, or promote “toxic masculinity”, or are “anti-socialist by promoting traditional values that demean or denigrate specific classes of people”, blah, blah, blah. Spencer created his podcast as a way to fight back and preserve these great works of the west upon which our great country – and western civilization as a whole – was founded.
            Spencer Klavan is also a “gay Christian”.
            That is partly what drew me to his podcast in the first place. I had only been saved for about five months, and I was struggling with reconciling my new life in Christ with my old identity as a homosexual. As I researched Spencer and his biography online, I discovered that he, too, was from the same background as me: born and raised in a Christian home, realized very early in his teens that he was gay, and struggled to come to terms with his faith and his sexuality throughout high school. Spencer went on to become a student at Oxford University in England where he (presumably) finally came to terms with his identity as a “gay Christian”. (The man has yet to publish his autobiography, so I had to glean all of this background information from his various podcasts, articles that he has written for The American Mind as well as other literary publications and blogs, and his numerous interviews for sites such as the Daily Wire.)
            Last year, Spencer launched a community on the new social media app, Locals, where members such as myself pay a monthly or annual subscription in order to get exclusive content such as the new Young Heretics podcasts a week early and commercial free, or exclusive articles from Spencer on a myriad of political, literary and social topics (including his video game hobby), or participation in a weekly segment that Spencer calls “office hours”. For one hour every Friday evening at 6 p.m. eastern time, Spencer goes live from his home office in Nashville, TN, to answer question from the members of his Young Heretics community. These questions and their answers have covered a wide range of topics on just about everything: video games, classic/modern art, opera, literature, religion, politics, music, etc. (As I am usually working a double shift on Fridays, I have never been able to participate in these weekly office hours, but I have occasionally logged into the app to view the recorded session later.)
            The Young Heretics podcast has been a refreshingly pleasant escape for me for one hour every week for the last year and a half. It’s been nice to get reacquainted with classical works of literature that I haven’t thought about or read since college. And, for the most part, Spencer has been the consummate professor: he’s stayed on point with his lectures and commentary, discussing only the works themselves and leaving out any talk or revelation of his personal life. For that, Spencer reveals himself more on Twitter and Instagram, which is where I’ve been following him up until about a month ago.
            Spencer met his now fiancé, Joshua Herrera, at a party hosted by the Los Angeles chapter of the Log Cabin Republicans in 2018. The two moved to Nashville in 2021 when Josh, a lawyer, was hired by the legal department of the Daily Wire. From all appearances on Twitter and Instagram, Spencer and Josh are quite happy with one another and live very successful lives. That includes pool parties with other good looking guys (presumably the Nashville chapter of the Log Cabin Republicans), dinner dates at fancy restaurants, flowers for each other on Valentine’s Day and other important anniversary dates, and holiday dinners at the houses of each other’s family. In August of 2021, Josh announced on his Twitter feed that Spencer was officially off the market. This caption was accompanied by a photo of a pool party in the background – complete with scantily clad, bare chested men – with Josh kneeling before Spencer, open box with ring in both hands. (Both are also wearing nothing but swim trunks.) Spencer is grinning from ear to ear, looking down at his boyfriend with pure love.
            The non-romantic setting and – in my gay opinion, complete tackiness of proposing at a pool party, of all places, aside – I thought the tweet was touching, and, to be honest, I was a little envious. But, in the year since that announcement, Spencer started to allow more and more of his personal life with Josh to seep into the YH community on Locals. When he asked for recommendations from the members on which book of the Bible to translate into English from Greek (yes, the man is actually fluent in 6 languages, not including English), many of us – myself included – suggested Romans. I was very curious to see how Spencer would handle verse 27 of chapter 1 which I quoted at the beginning of this sermon. Thankfully, Romans was the popular choice with everybody, and Spencer began posting translated passages of 5-10 verses on Monday of each week.
            In his post regarding verses 21-32 of chapter one, Spencer stated the following:
           “I will leave it to you to judge whether this (the “recompence” that Paul describes in verse 27) is the situation that I personally am in – that of a man defying his nature and his god, reaping the natural punishments for it in the form of shame and disease – or whether my own situation is closer to the way I see it – someone whose very nature is a bit different, though not unheard of, and whose fruits of the spirit point him in a different direction. But I’m not really so interested in resolving this question here, because it’s not really about me: everyone, no matter his or her sexuality, has something to gain from this passage, from observing the way that life itself and the world God made either fights back against us or works with us.”
            As I predicted, Spencer didn’t ignore the huge Christian elephant in the room, but neither did he directly and earnestly address it. He more or less looked at the elephant, said hello, scratched it lovingly behind one ear, and then blithely ignored the somber pachyderm for the rest of his commentary on the apostle Paul’s very clear condemnation of homosexuality. Spencer, like so many other “gay Christians” today, believes that God created him as he is, and that for him, the word “natural” as used by Paul in Romans 1:27 refers to one’s natural sexual inclinations, i.e. attraction to other men, rather than the definition that God – speaking through Paul – uses: the natural sexual attraction between a man and a woman.
            Spencer is wrong. Paul is correct. Spencer believes his SSA is natural because he’s never, ever been attracted to the opposite sex for as long as he can remember. Like me, he probably knew he was different in 5th or 6th grade, and then figured out he was gay as soon as puberty kicked in full force in Junior High or High School. So, of course, he’s interpreting the word “natural” as “natural to me for my whole life. I’ve never known anything different.” The apostle Paul, however, is referring back to the standard that God set for the definition of the word “natural” in Genesis 2: 24: “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” God made it clear from the very beginning, when he created Adam and Eve, that the ONLY acceptable, natural form of sexuality in mankind is between ONE man and ONE woman, within the holy bonds of matrimony, period! Everything else – whether heterosexual or homosexual – is sin! Period! That includes sodomy, adultery, bestiality, and every other perversion that erupts from the vile heart of man. (Jeremiah 17:9.)
            That commentary on that particular passage from Romans 1 was posted in the YH community back in February of this year. On Friday, June 30th, Spencer had a special guest on his office hours segment: his fiancé Josh. The two of them talked in more detail about how they met, gave advice to the YH members about online dating and long distance relationships, and, finally, came around to the subject of gay marriage. Ever since launching his podcast and, especially in the last year or so since creating the YH community on Locals, Spencer has been very good at attacking the political left and exposing the utter lack of sound logic and reason behind the “woke” ideologies of transgenderism, anti-racism, socialism, etc. The man is indeed whip-smart and knows how to create a sound and effective argument for conservative values and the traditional ideals that once made America great.
            But, in this particular segment of Office Hours, as both Spencer and Josh addressed the question from a member about the subject of gay marriage, these two intelligent, book-smart, and typically sharp-thinking young men, made an attempt to Biblically justify their upcoming wedding with a bit of convoluted, politically correct, roundabout, rambling reasoning that would make any leftist proud. Both men were vocal in their dislike for the term “civil union” because they believe that God is the author of marriage, and that God is in their current relationship, and He will be at the heart of their marriage as well, yet neither of them was willing to point out what God himself stated, speaking through Adam, in Genesis 2:24. The closest they came to that was when Josh grudgingly admitted that “heterosexual marriage”, as he called it, does make more sense in both “gender complementarity” (his term also) and the “act of reproduction.” Josh was willing to accept that the Biblical standard of marriage – one man and one woman – made a certain amount of sense as an ideal for a healthy and functioning and moral society, but he and Spencer were also quick to point out that that same society can’t – and shouldn’t – exclude a whole group of people, i.e. the gay community, from that ideal either.
       Only a few days earlier, Jordan Peterson, well known conservative author and speaker and newly signed to the Daily Wire as another public personality for their empire, sat down with Dave Rubin, a conservative political and social commentator and also friend of TDW as well as personal friend of Spencer and Josh. Dave and his husband had announced on their social media earlier this year that they had selected a surrogate mother, and she was pregnant with their babies. Jordan and Dave came to the same conclusion that Spencer and Josh tried to defend: yes, there should be – especially in the realm of public morality – and ideal. In this case, marriage should be defined as between one man and one woman. But, at the same time, we shouldn’t expect everyone to be held to that ideal because that would immediately exclude and ostracize anyone who didn’t meet that ideal standard. In other words, even though God laid out a clear and explicit definition for marriage and morality in general, we shouldn’t exclude the whole gay community just because God does. The gays should also be allowed to get married and adopt children in order to experience the same joys of romance and parenthood as the heterosexual community.
            In the month since these two video segments from these prominent gay conservatives have aired, I have noticed a growing trend in the commentary on social media from Matt Walsh, Spencer Klavan, Jordan Peterson and others at TDW. While all of them are more than happy to take a firm, godly, and moral stand against abortion and anti-racism and religious freedom and all the other topics and ideologies that the politically “woke” left loves to attack and tear down, no one at TDW is willing to take the same stand against homosexuality. That one subject is conspicuously absent from any tweets by Matt Walsh especially, TDW’s most vocal social media personality. Oh, he’s perfectly willing to attack child predators and sex offenders, but, as best I can tell, he – a devout Catholic – has not said one word about what God thinks of the sin of homosexuality.
            And, sadly, neither are a lot of pastors on Sunday morning. While almost all other religious denominations – most notably the Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, and Episcopalians – have long ago caved to the cultural and social pressure to accept and affirm openly proud and practicing sodomites in their congregations, the Baptist denomination has refused to do the same, even in the wake of the 2015 supreme court ruling. But, in just the last couple years, more and more Baptist churches are starting to buckle under worldly pressure. For example, Towne View Baptist Church in Kennesaw, Georgia, defied the Southern Baptist Convention in March of 2021 by formally approving the membership of seven openly proud and active homosexuals. In the year since then, more Baptist churches in the Bible Belt have not only done the same but have also begun to officiate same-sex marriages, even though they face expulsion from the Southern Baptist Convention, the governing body of almost all Baptist denominations in the southern states. Another long standing holdout, the USA Mennonites, just voted last month to allow their pastors to start officiating same-sex marriages.
            What changed? Even before the supreme court ruling in 2015, homosexuality was already being openly affirmed and celebrated in hundreds of thousands of churches across the nation. As far back as the mid 90s, many pastors, bishops and reverends were starting to adjust their preaching so as not to offend the sodomites who wanted to join their congregations. After all, God is love. It says so in John 3:16. God loved the whole world, didn’t he? There’s room for everyone in God’s house, right? No matter your skin color or your sexual orientation, you are welcome in the House of God, free to worship and love Him as you see fit. Blessed hallelujah, amen, and pass the offering plate!
            In 2 Timothy 3: 1-5, Paul writes, “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.”
He goes on to say in chapter 4: 3-4: “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.”
            Any of that sound familiar? Every single one of those sinful characteristics and adjectives that Paul uses in the first 5 verses in chapter 3 are not just speaking of the unsaved and the wicked in the world. Those same people are within the halls of the church today, flagrantly displaying their sin in the form of pride, boasting, selfishness, idolatry and fornication, just to name a few. Many “Christians” today, and, most especially, “gay Christians” are lovers of themselves, NOT lovers of God. Their itching ears have turned them to pastors and bishops, wolves in sheep’s clothing, who spew fables, NOT gospel truth, and who tell their hedonistic, prideful flock exactly what they want to hear.
            “Having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof.”
        “Gay Christians” believe God is perfectly okay with their deviant, perverse sexuality.
            “Gay Christians” believe God is nothing but love, and that He won’t send anyone to hell just because of who they sleep with or choose to love.
        “Gay Christians” do NOT believe in true repentance and obedience to God and His holy word.
            I’m going to make a stand that everyone at the Daily Wire is too chicken to do themselves:
 
God is not okay with you continuing to live in your sin!
 
I’m going to say that one more time:
 
GOD IS NOT OKAY WITH YOU STAYING IN YOUR SIN!
 
            Yes, God so loved the world. Yes, He gave His only begotten son to die for that sinful, wretched world. But that verse doesn’t end there. The reason that God sent His only son to the cross of calvary was so that the wretched, lost sinners that the apostle Paul described in his epistle to Timothy could REPENT, TURN FROM THEIR WICKEDNESS, AND BE SAVED! Yes, dear sinner, God loves you, and He wants you to come to him as you are! But that’s NOT where you stay! God, through the work of the Holy Spirit, begins changing you after salvation, and He convicts you of your sin. That includes the homosexual! God CAN and WILL change sexual desire in those that are truly repentant and truly want to serve Him!
        Following God is not something that can be done in half measures. It’s not enough to take a vow of celibacy. That’s only a half measure. It’s not enough to add the term “Christian” to your “gay” identity. That’s still only a half measure. And it is most definitely NOT acceptable to continue living in your sin by marrying your same-sex partner in the sacred walls of God’s House. The moment you gave your life to Christ and surrendered wholly to Him, the only identity that now matters is just “Christian”. Period!
 
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To Spencer Klavan, Joshua Hererra, Dave Rubin, and everyone else at the Daily Wire, as well as any “gay Christians” who might be reading this post, I beg you to re-read your King James Bible as I did. When I first grappled with this issue after being saved, I didn’t need a whole bunch of extra-curricular books written by modern “scholars” spouting man’s faulty wisdom to know whether or not I could keep having sex with other men and still serve God wholly and completely. All I needed was my Bible, prayer and the Holy Spirit. It took me all of a month to see the truth for myself. It was right there in those 3 passages I quoted at the beginning of this sermon. Here’s some more: 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, 18-20; Genesis 19:5; Galatians 5:19-21; Ephesians 5:5; 1 Timothy 1:9-11; and Jude 7. In every New Testament passage, anytime there’s a list of sins and immoral acts that God clearly condemns, homosexuality is included on that list.
           God is very clear in His word about what He accepts as morally good and right and just. We, as His children, are called to adopt the same standard, no matter what the world may say. IF we are truly saved, we will come out from the world, and we will “walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). One of the key traits of a new life in Christ is obedience. My dear friend, Collette, a faithful reader of my blog, sent me this response last week after reading my previous post:
         “Many do not even consider God’s command to obedience. The concept of obedience to God is foreign because they do not understand the concept of how God deals with sin. Obedience means taking away my rights, and Satan works that scheme to the hilt.”
          The very sin of homosexuality is right there in the title of its whole cultural movement: pride. June was gay pride month. Rainbows were everywhere. Gay rights were celebrated, as they are every year at that time. Pride is the sin that caused the fall of Lucifer. Pride is the sin that causes many to reject God and, thus, choose hell instead of heaven. Pride says, “I will do what I want, not what God chooses for me.”
         As Christians, if we are truly saved, we will surrender wholly and completely to God. For those of us who suffer from same sex attraction, that means that we don’t give in to our sin nature and its lusts of the flesh. Instead, we turn away, we ask God to change our sinful desire into something that glorifies Him instead, and we stay faithful to Him and His commandments. That means viewing our sin, our homosexuality, as God sees it: vile, perverse, disgusting, and filthy. We deny ourselves, we take up our cross, and we follow Jesus.
            No. Matter. What.
         Yes, it’s difficult sometimes. Yes, there are dark days when Satan pummels you with temptations of old lusts and old pleasures. He dredges up your past failures and accuses you of not really being a child of God because you gave into temptation more than a few times since getting saved.
           But it doesn’t matter. Once we are saved, we are always saved! (John 10:28.) Our reward is not here on earth. We will receive our crown of righteousness and our new, perfect bodies when we are resurrected with Christ in the last days. We will finally, blessedly, be utterly rid of our old flesh, and will be tempted by sin no more! We will finally achieve the pure holiness that we could never attain here on earth.
          In the meantime, we deny ourselves, we take up our cross, and we follow Jesus. We do not obey in half measures, but, rather, stand against the sin and the wickedness of this perverse generation as we preach the gospel of Christ. For me, personally, that means leaving the Young Heretics community and ending my financial support of that podcast. But I will be posting this blog entry and one final letter to Spencer before I exit. It’s my hope that God will use this as seed that might bring about the fruit of salvation for Spencer and Josh before it’s too late.
         For those of us who are truly, genuinely saved, there is no such thing as a “gay Christian.”