ObeyGC2 practitioners are known as those who love outcasts, not those who hate “gays”.
I don’t know how it happened. Somehow Christians, especially evangelical Christians, got a reputation for hating homosexuals. Perhaps some do. One thing is clear: Jesus didn’t. God clearly forbids homosexuality in the Bible, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. He also forbids pride. And lust. And lies. Etc.
Somehow, particularly since the nineteenth century, sexual sins have come to be considered more serious than other sins. They are bad…as bad as other sins…but not any worse. In fact, if I was forced to rank sins on their seriousness, I’d put pride at the top of the list. I’ll have to write on that another day.
The appropriate response to homosexual individuals is to love them and try to draw them to Jesus where they can receive the power and the will to change their lifestyle. This is how it works for people who are bound by other sins. This is how it needs to work with homosexuals as well. They are not the enemy of Christians. They are bound by the enemy of Christians and they need to be released…the same way those of us who are already Christians were formerly bound by the enemy and released by Christ.
Jude 22-23
22 Be merciful to those who doubt; 23 snatch others from the fire and save them; to others show mercy, mixed with fear-hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh.
John 8:1-11
8:1 But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. 2 At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. 3 The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group 4 and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5 In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6 They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.
But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
9 At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. 10 Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
11 “No one, sir,” she said.
“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”
Rom 6:16-23
16 Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey-whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. 18 You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.
19 I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. 20 When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. 21 What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! 22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.
Eph 6:11-13
12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
