Why exactly is homosexuality a sin? If no one is getting hurt, and if same-sex attraction feels so natural to the attracted, then why is it wrong? That’s a question worth exploring. If you’re reading this and you struggle with same-sex attraction, maybe you’ve desperately prayed like Megan, “Please, Lord, remove these overwhelming feelings I have toward other women. I don’t understand why I have to go through this agony! Why won’t my sexual temptations toward women just go away?” Our article What to Do With Same-Sex Attraction might also be helpful.
The Setup
Sexuality is not isolated from the rest of you. Social, emotional, and even spiritual needs can be involved in our sexual expression. It is integrated with your history, your sense of identity, and how you fit in or find approval. Listen to Megan observe, “I’ve also learned that my sexual attraction toward other women is not simply sexual. It’s really a measure of emotional insecurity in my life…I was grasping for some form of security and comfort. My heart told me that if I were in a lesbian relationship with a woman…I would feel better.”
Sexuality, in many ways, is a desire to know others and be known by others intimately. You hear that thread through the testimonies. For men, same-sex attraction or orientation often gets hardwired during their developmental years. Female sexuality proves to be more fluid and responsive to emotional and social environments. What all this means is that same-sex attraction is a sexualized response to a deep and legitimate need all of us have—approval and connectedness. So why is it wrong?
1. Homosexuality Fails Us – We Are Hurt.
“Something is missing.” That’s the phrase you often hear from those living in a homosexual lifestyle, which is confusing because they’ll also tell you how good it feels. Listen to Tammy, “That’s when I decided I was gay and started going to gay bars…I had finally found a bunch of women who loved and accepted me, and it felt good—really good!” Even still, Tammy went on to confess that none of her sexual relationships lasted. She expressed that even while she was living with a woman who liked the same interests she did, she was still constantly wondering if something was missing. “I should be happy.” Yet, she admitted she hadn’t found peace.
Homosexuality may feel really good at first. All desires do. It soothes the lonely or afflicted soul, but it’s a false solution. It leads us down a dead-end street and leaves us feeling empty. Listen to Andrew articulate his experience, “I loved being wanted and exchanged my marketable qualities with others…neither I nor [my partner] nor any other partner could satisfy the deep craving I had to love and be loved.” The homosexual identity is false because it expects our sexual expression to meet a need it was never designed to meet. God provided boundaries to protect us from confusing our emotional, spiritual, and physical needs. Ultimately, sin is a false solution that feels great temporarily but leads to greater bondage and emptiness. Homosexual behavior is a false fix that doesn’t work.
Same-sex attraction is also a symptom that something bigger is broken. Like when your car is out of alignment, and the wheels wear incorrectly. The wheels are an emerging symptom that there’s a more significant problem. Same-sex attraction is looking to the wrong people to satisfy the wrong needs. The deeper need is almost always spiritual and social, not sexual. Only Jesus can imprint your deepest identity and meet your deepest needs. Paul abandoned all the former scripts in his life that supplied his value and identity. He rediscovered that identity in Jesus, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). Anything that interferes or competes with your singular devotion and surrender to Christ is an idol. Anything that offers its own unaccredited solution to your lonely or afflicted soul is an idol. Jesus is your soul designer and wants to satisfy your soul’s desire. He is your life-giver and companion.
Same-sex strugglers begin to heal when they find comfort in Christ and in non-sexualized same-sex relationships that are life-giving. Amar’s story of discovering healing in God and community is illustrative: “I grew to understand where my desires and attractions came from and how to get deep emotional needs met in an appropriate and effective way.” Liz’s story also proves typical: “These days, same-sex attraction no longer drives me… I’m no longer in the painful cycle of trying to fulfill my needs through same-sex relationships with women.”
Same-sex attraction feels so natural. Yet, Ephesians 4:22 warns us not to blindly follow everything that feels natural, “You were taught with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; and to be made new in the attitude of your minds.” All of us experience “deceitful desires” corrupted by the old self. Those desires are powerful, natural, or sexual, but the Christian is called to surrender all desires to the purifying presence of Jesus Christ. He decides how we express ourselves and how our needs are appropriately met.
The Scriptures provide a unanimously negative verdict towards homosexual behavior. The same goes for any heterosexual activity outside of a monogamous covenant marriage. The sin is not in the attraction but in the action. Porn, lust, adultery, finding fulfillment in emotional adultery and flirtation, same-sex tendencies—these are all forbidden. Homosexuality is forbidden because it is a false medicine that doesn’t heal us and interferes with God’s deeper healing in Christ.
2. Homosexuality Fails Others – Others are hurt.
When we sin, we hurt the people around us; we diminish their value as we fail to express the pure and mature love of Christ to them. We also fail them as we enable them to remain in their destructive sin patterns. After Andrew came out of a homosexual lifestyle, he reflected, “The gay community had given me an identity and a support system. Over and against the straight scene and its often harsh and ignorant response to homosexuals, the gay community had provided a haven within which my inner conflict was eased, my homosexuality reinforced.” The point is not to pit the “gay” community against the “straight” community, but rather to notice how the homosexual community becomes a refuge from condemnation and conviction. It becomes a place where people aren’t challenged; they are only ever approved. When the gay community approves of what God disapproves, they willingly live in deception. And when the straight community condemns those whom God loves and wants to heal, they drive the struggler into exile.
Approval among like-minded people gives us a powerful sense of protection and normalcy. Christopher observed how his cycle of binging on homosexuality had its highs and devastating lows, “I learned to live from the affirmation I got from…male types who were attracted to me…[yet] my lowest point in life was a recurring experience that hit me every time I felt like I wasn’t pleasing or good enough, or when I felt like a failure.” The gay culture shielded Christopher from looking more deeply at his brokenness or stepping into any convicting truth God had spoken. Homosexuality, like all human sin, allows us to use people for our own need and advantage and prevents us from pursuing God’s deeper healing in Christ.
3. Homosexuality Fails God – God is hurt.
No one is more misunderstood than God. The rupture of sin produces shame, guilt, and fear, and these distort our perception of God and drive us away from our loving Father. We become afraid or outraged at the One who can heal us from our spiritual and sexual brokenness. Kevin’s scathing judgment of the church resounds with woundedness: “I hated Christians because all I’d ever been taught by the Church was that gay people were going to Hell and their punishment from God was to contract AIDs and die.” Yet, Kevin’s healing came when Jesus unraveled his misperceptions, “I did not come to Christ seeking change in my sexuality. I simply came to Him with the desire for a healthy life. He did the rest.”
Christopher also confessed, “Feeling like God didn’t like me was unbearable.” What was instrumental in his recovery was how God expressed His unconditional love for him before Christopher even changed his sexuality. “God enabled me to love myself exactly as I was before I experienced any change in my sexuality…God not only loved me, He liked me!”
After attending a gay-affirming church for a period of time, Andrew made this observation, “I still longed for tangible, masculine love. But something struck me in their stories that seemed inherently alien to the gospel. Little, if any, glory was given to the transforming power of Jesus…[Jesus] demanded [people] submit to Him all that they were, so that He might reorient their personhood and purpose…pro-gay Christians were expressing more of the glory of their gayness than the honor of Jesus. Their homosexuality was no longer submitted to His scrutiny but held fast as a kind of personal right.” When we cling to our definitions of truth, we elevate ourselves above the Creator and tarnish His truth. In elevating homosexuality above our Creator’s design, we listen to our instincts over God’s loving command. In so doing, we will never come to understand His deep love for us in the midst of our disobedience.
God suffers from our homosexuality. Homosexuality is a false witness that blocks God’s love and clouds the struggler with confusion or shame. The church has added confusion through rejection and condemnation. But it is God who loses the children He loves.
There are four cardinal reasons God created sex. When we fail to honor these truths, God’s holy character is slandered. One, sex is a metaphor, a metaphor of the Divine Groom, Jesus, uniting Himself with His earthly bride (see Ephesians 5:25–33). Two, sex is a union of two complementary but different people: male and female. The female was ezer kenegdo, “a complementary helper.” Together, the male and female make a marital team from two distinct but compatible persons. Three, sex has the power to create life; it is procreative. Infertility’s exception does not negate God’s design for reproduction through the union of the male and female bodies. Four, sex is an act of pleasure that unites husband and wife in a spirit of joy and play. When any sex becomes a toy detached from commitment and trust, it becomes abusive in the darkest ways.
When we disconnect sex from God’s design, it becomes humanistic and diminished. God’s image and presence is lost or maligned. The Creator’s life-giving power is neglected. The celebration of maleness and femaleness is forfeited. And what remains of the four reasons is a sexual gratification that doesn’t live up to the fullness of God’s intended blessings.
4. Homosexuality Fails the Community – The Community is Hurt.
As with all sin, the community languishes when I walk in bondage. “If my needs are still shrouded by old wounds and current addictions,” as Andrew says, “I will not be able to receive the pure love of Christ or give the pure love of Christ in community. The community cannot ‘grow and build itself up in love’ (Ephesians 4:16) if I continue to affirm lies or walk in bondage.” Christ came to set us free—not necessarily to remove temptation or same-sex attraction, but to empower us to prevail over it. Homosexuality deprives the community of the struggler’s potential.
When strugglers are free to receive genuine, non-erotic love from others, and also provide comforting non-erotic love to others, Christ flows through the community. Tony’s journey of healing was made possible because of another pilgrim who had previously struggled with homosexual identity. This mentor graciously prodded Tony to identify the deeper heart issues beneath his sexual attractions, “(he) helped me to understand why I was feeling the same-sex attraction, why I had always felt different as a boy and as a man than the other normal guys.” Through true godly acceptance, unconditional love, and a journey of exploration, Tony’s mentor helped Tony experience healing and freedom.
“It surprised me,” Tony remarked, “to discover whole men who could love another man freely, even affectionately, without erotic intent…I experienced an unparalleled sense of wholeness. I was one of the guys, and I loved it. I realized I was finally enjoying true same-sex love as God had intended it to be.”
Conclusion:
Homosexuality is a sexualized response to a deep and legitimate need all of us have—approval and connectedness. But in the end, it fails us. When we participate in homosexual behavior, we get hurt. The people around us are hurt. God gets hurt. And the community can’t receive the gift of us walking in fullness and freedom. Jesus loves the homosexual struggler and wants to set them free from false solutions to their soul’s needs. In Jesus, we find our true identity, and in selfless and non-sexualized relationships, we find healing in community.
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