“It is scandalous to suggest that one can enter the kingdom or promote its ends in society while rebelling against the standards of the King” -Greg L. Bahnsen.1
“In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes” (Jdg. 17:6; NASB).2
“The world…hates Me because I testify of it, that its deeds are evil” (John 7:7).
“Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment” (John 7:24).
INTRODUCTION:
In my last post I introduced the question posed by some as to whether or not there is such a thing as a “Gay Christian,” however, today I want to address another aspect that is a common occurrence surrounding this debate—the accusation of hate-mongering (i.e., homophobe).
A hatemonger is one who stirs up discontent spreading a message of hate and prejudicial bias. Ultimately, this is what is meant when a person accuses another of homophobia because they offer a message counter to that which our culture finds acceptable today. For instance, the propagation of Pride Month in June is believed to put forward speech that is normal, polite, accepting, tolerant, and an expression of love. Rather than allowing a counterargument that challenges this existential zeitgeist of our age, the dissenter is quickly chastised for being a speaker of hate speech. The assumption at play is that the Christian has no authority to offer a position that calls into question the ethical status of those who want the world to identify them in accordance with their professed sexual preference; what they call an “identity.”
Recently, a fellow believer shared how he was attacked for sharing the need of repentance to such individuals by a member of his own family. Further aggravating the situation by disowning him and prohibiting him from seeing his grandchildren until he recants. Yet, one key aspect of the Christian gospel, is the unmovable commitment to what the Word of God teaches. In light of this, one is reminded of Jesus’ statement to his followers,
“Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household” (Matt. 10:34-36).
A Clear Definition of Sin
Christians often speak of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and how sinners need to believe in it. The good news from God the Father in reference to the Son of God, the incarnated Word (i.e., the word made flesh; John 1:14). Gospel means good news, so what is so good about this message? How is it defined in the Bible?
In the New Testament books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John (often called the Gospels; a literary form and not the gospel proper) we find that the heart of the gospel message is two-fold. It speaks of repentance and the kingdom of God. Two terms that historically have held great significance with the visible Church/Christian faith.
On repentance…
A simplistic definition of repentance (to repent) means to turn from one’s former life. The imagery is of a person going in one direction, heading a particular way, but during their travels they have been motivated to switch their present course heading another way. In short, to repent or to practice repentance means to turn from your former life of sin embracing the way of righteousness.3
On the kingdom…
When we see the phrase “the kingdom of God” our minds are supposed to think of the rule of the king. To see the kingdom of God is to acknowledge not only the king of the kingdom, but the will of the king who rules. Thus, when we see Jesus declare, for example, in Mark’s gospel:
"The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel" (Mark 1:15).
We are to believe the truth that has been declared to us, made visible to us, in the God-Man Jesus Christ. We are to acknowledge His lordship over our lives, to turn from our former life of sin, believing in Him as our redemptive King, obeying His will (rule of life) in our lives. To be a disciple of Christ, His follower, and therefore, a citizen in His kingdom, then you must believe in Him as Lord and Savior repenting from your former life of sin, seeking to actively conform your new life in accordance with His will disclosed in His Word.
In order to do this, in order to truly grasp the significance of the biblical gospel of God in Christ Jesus in a meaningful fashion, you need to have a clear definition of sin. According to Scripture:
"sin is lawlessness...[and] everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness" (1 John 3:4; emphasis and ordering mine).
The Sinner’s Pretense as Kings of the Kingdom
Sin is described in the Bible in other ways; either directly or indirectly. Often you will hear teachers of the Word of God emphasizing sin as rebellion, as “missing the mark,” as transgression or disobedience, doubt or lacking faith, etc. All of which are true and accurate pictures of how people sin against God, and mistreat one another. But they all point to a singular standard, absolute and holy; a reflection of the mind (will and desire) of God.
An Uncompromising example…
Consider Joshua the successor of Moses (cf. Deut. 34:9; Josh. 1:1). He is described in Scripture as a man of great courage (cf. Josh. 1:2-9). He serves as the picture of a man who refuses to compromise from the Law-Word of God either to the right or to the left (cf. Josh. 11:15). He walked steadily down the narrow path that the Lord provided. In his witness we see what it looks like to be victorious in the Lord overcoming the world.
Israel’s Compromise: A Syncretized Spirit
In the book of Judges we witness the degradation of the cultural zeitgeist of Israel after the passing of Joshua and the elders who served with him. A few centuries prior to this Sodom and Gomorrah of Abraham’s day served as a witness and a warning to both the Israelites and the Canaanites dwelling the land.
The sons of Israel were instructed by the Lord to do away with all vestiges of Canaanite culture (cf. Lev. 18:1-5; 20:3; Exod. 23:24; Deut. 12:4, 30-31). This was not a suggestion but a direct command from their king; the God who delivered them from slavery and bondage in Egypt, the Creator of heaven and earth. But the attitude by the time you get to the end of judges reveals the syncretized spirit of the age. Rather than submit to God as king, acknowledging His will for their life and the life of their children, they chose to do what was right in their own eyes. They denied His lordship over them, and pretended to be their own “kings” of the kingdom. They did not complete the removal of the gods and the religious belief’s of the Canaanites, preferring instead to marry the elements of that belief system into what they liked about the Covenantal faith-system given to them through Moses.
The observation made of Israel at that time was “In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes” (Jdg. 17:6).Meaning the people of that era preferred to be the ruler of their own destiny. They thought of themselves as the kings of their own private (individualistic) kingdoms. Such a rejection of the rule of God is the epitome of sin. It reveals the vain, prideful imagination of every sinners heart. It also unveils the precise reason why we all need the gospel of hope found in none other than Jesus Christ.
Why Hatemongers Crucified Christ
Christians are not perfect specimens of humanity. But we do realize that our righteousness does not stem from our own wayward hearts. We fully acknowledge our own short comings, our own hypocrisy, our own sin. The only distinctive mark that separates a Christian from another in this world is the unmerited grace (undeserved favor) of God. We recognize that we are His creatures, made in His image, and that our lives are on lease from Him. Thus, we turn to the One to whom He directs all men and women everywhere to look—to Jesus Christ—in hope and repentance. We see Him as the King of the Kingdom, and as our King we dutifully obey His every Word, just as He demonstrated to us in obeying the Father even unto death—the death of the cross. He died a condemned man, not for sin that He committed, but for sin that we committed. We are the violators of God’s law, not He. We are the ones with the heavy hand of God’s furious judgment placed above us; not He. He suffered that wrath in order to redeem the household of faith—men, women, and children adopted into the family of God—from suffering eternal damnation.
That same Lord explained that the world hated Him (they crucified Him in cold-blood), because His goal in life, His ambition, His one desire was to fulfill all righteousness. In living a righteous life, He not only demonstrated righteousness through holy living, but He spoke righteously in condemning evil; calling on all men, women and children to repent of their sinful ways. For this reason, He was killed, because He dared call the culture of His age evil. People who claimed to serve God, to be in relation with God, but whose hearts were far from Him (cf. Mark 7:6-8; Jer. 5:30-31). His speech was deemed offensive and evil, because it called out the hypocrisy of a generation that professed to love God, but in their hearts they despised Him.
And the charge He gives to His disciples in all ages is to make righteous judgments, not just in terms of appearances, but in truth ( John 7: 27; cf. John 8:31-32). And what, is the appearance of today’s world? As Joseph Boot explains,
“It demands the radical privatization of all faith except its own.”4
The True Reality of the Situation…
We are told in our generation that to love is to be tolerant and accepting of a great number of things that God rightly condemns. He says unequivocally that all homosexual activity is sinful (cf. Lev. 18:22; 20:13).5 For a man to lay with another man, and a woman to lay with another woman as she would lay with a man is evidence of a depraved mind (cf. Rom. 1:26-27). Even the lustful thoughts in such a direction are noted as sinful, and proof of darkened reason, and condemned, not just for those who practice them, but for those who give hearty approval of them (cf. Rom. 1:28-32). There are some today that challenge the notion that Sodom and Gomorrah were judged for such sins, and yet a worse fate is in store for those who refuse to repent of such living.
Now this type of talk is deemed hateful. But according to what standard? If the standard is subjective in the sense of personal feelings, then what makes your feelings of more value than my own? If subjectivity is the norm, then relativity is the standard by which men appeal to, and so nothing is objectionable; all things are permissible under this notion, including my message that your message is the one that is truly hateful and misguided.
If my child were to run into the street into oncoming traffic, I would yell and grab them by the scruff of the neck. Would they then have a right to look at me and scorn my loving attempt to save their life for being too rough? If I warn them to not touch a hot stove, but then have to quickly grab their wrist—possibly bruising it in the process—to protect them from harm, do they have a right to cry foul?
A worse fate awaits those of the LGBTQ+ group today than getting hit by a car or having their hand burned on a hot stove. Their religious position says that all behaviors are acceptable, all positions are true, except the Christian faith based upon the Law-Word of God. From the position of my worldview, they are at risk of eternal fire, being cast into outer darkness, with no hope of parole. Alone they will be thrown bound to remain forever; how can I or any other Christian be silent?
If I see danger ahead, should I not warn them to turn lest the suffer? Isn’t that the definition of being loving? To willingly risk my own skin in order to shout the warning, and point them in the direction of my Savior and Lord? Now, if they do not want to hear this message that is fine. They don’t have to listen, but I have a right to challenge it. Love insists that I do regardless of how others might interpret it. Biases are plentiful, to be sure, but the truth must be declared.
Will there be consequences? Without a doubt. This brother in the Lord, whom I mentioned at the beginning, has already been dealt a harsh blow. It will cost him plenty, but he spoke the truth in love knowing this might be the reaction of those whom he spoke to. And in the end he will be rewarded for it (cf. Mark 10:29-30). But what of those who accused him of having a hate filled message (i.e., being a hatemonger)? They ostracized him. They cut ties with him. Isn’t that hateful? It is. But here is my final point in closing.
Closing Remarks…
Neutrality is impossible in terms of worldview (religious) commitments. That is the true reality we face. Members of the LGBTQ+ group and their supporters love spouting rhetoric intended to scare and silence their opposition.6 They don’t want healthy dialogue. They don’t want alternative positions. And the reason? They hate the Christian message. They hate Christians who teach biblical truth. A hypocritical position to be sure, for all the while they decry the Christian message as hateful, their message of self-love is in turn hateful towards God above and His servants who bear the name of Christ; whose faith is different than their own. They are in fact hatemongers, the supposed thing they decry in the name of pseudo-love.
Such is the reality we live in. Truth by its very nature is divisive. The world hates any who calls what they do as evil. And yet, that is the charge given to all Christians, and woe to them who fail to do it.
ENDNOTES:
1Greg L. Bahnsen, Homosexuality: A Biblical View (Nacogdoches, TX: Covenant Media Press, 2011), 9, PDF E-book.
2All Scripture unless otherwise noted shall be of the New American Standard Bible (NASB).
3It should be noted that true repentance is an expression of belief; an act of faith. To willingly turn from one’s sin towards Christ (repentance) requires belief that He is your Savior and Lord; a worthy substitute that has paid the full penalty of your sin.
4Joseph Boot, Ruler of Kings: Toward a Christian Vision of Government (London, Great Britain: Wilberforce Publications, 2022), 105.
5The idea that the alphabet soup community is more varianced than mere homosexuality does not mitigate against the prohibitions given by God regarding sexual ethics. Sex is a gift of the marital union, which is Biblically defined as between one man and one woman. Descriptive accounts do not condone perversions of the past, whether they are spoken of in biblical literature or other historical writings. Any form of sexual union outside the bonds of a husband and wife marriage is an aberration of what God prescribes and a perversion of the truth. All of which, depending on the circumstances, may warrant the death penalty (either in a temporal or eternal state). However, those practices enjoyed by members of the LGBTQ+ group are radical perversions going outside what is natural into the obscene from a biblical standpoint. Thus, the apostle Paul identifies such practices as that of a depraved mind.
6There is what Bahnsen draws attention to a form of “rhetorical terrorism…of certain polemicists for homosexuality and alleged homosexual rights” that occurs when a disagreement is voiced by the opposition to what is now formerly called the LGBTQ+ group. “[A] pontification, accusation, name-calling, attribution of evil motives to opponents, etc., [which] often contribute to fallacious reasoning and serve to browbeat the gullible into agreement with defenders of homosexuality. For instance,” continues Bahnsen, “contrary to a common retort disagreeing with homosexuals about their rights and disapproving of their behavior does not automatically make someone a bigot. [Personal] opposition is not necessarily a violent hatred or exaggerated fear, rooted in unfair and irrational attitudes based on blanket preconceptions; it is not an infallible evidence of ‘homophobia.’ Opposition to homosexuality need not be motivated by a prejudiced and insulting attitude toward a group of people as such. A fair and dispassionate examination of the evidence relevant to an ethical evaluation of homosexual acts and affections can very well support a negative moral conclusion held with principle conviction. Viewing something as immoral is not the same thing as being bigoted…” Bahnsen, Homosexuality, 3-4.
Kristafal's Musings 