by Steven Chan
On June 26, 2015, the US Supreme Court of the USA made a landmark decision when it ruled 5-4 that it is legal for all Americans, no matter their gender or sexual orientation, to marry the people they love. The majority decision argued that the right to marriage is an inherent aspect of individual autonomy, since “decisions about marriage are among the most intimate that an individual can make” and that Americans have a right to “intimate association”.
For years now, gay advocates within the bible-believing community, have been contending that marriage as conceived in the Bible is to be understood or interpreted in a way similar to the idea that “the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27); i.e. that marriage is for man and not man for marriage. The contention is that the passages that condemned homosexual or same-sex marriages should be understood in the cultural context where such relationships were not characterised by “love” but by “lust” and therefore they were sinful. They argue that under the new covenant, “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.”(Gal 5:22, 23). So they contend that in the same-sex marriages of today, the fruit of the Spirit is evident in that the parties engaged in the same-sex marriage exhibit the fruit of “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” and therefore there is no law prohibiting such allegedly Spirit-led relationships. These advocates also contend that love is the paramount thing in all relationships and that nothing “shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:39).
The sad truth is that these are they who are “always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. 8 Now as Jannes and Jambres resisted Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, disapproved concerning the faith” (2 Tim 3:7-8). In like manner the serpent deceived Eve in Gen 3:4-6, when “the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.”
God’s teachings both in the Old Testament and the New Testament are clear and unequivocal in condemning the practice of homosexuality:-
Lev 18:22: “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination.” This prohibition by God was followed by His prohibition of bestiality: “Nor shall you mate with any animal, to defile yourself with it. Nor shall any woman stand before an animal to mate with it. Itis perversion.”(Lev 18:23)
Rom 1:24-28:” Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves… For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. 27 Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due. 28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting…”
I Cor 6: 9-10: “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, 10 nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.”
When God observed that it was not good for a man to be alone, He did not make another man to be his help-meet; God made a woman. According to Gen 1:27-8, the Bible recorded thus: “So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. 28 Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” The purpose of the “male and female” relationship was that of procreation, as well as companionship and for avoidance of immorality (I Cor 7:2). After recording that Adam said that “She shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man”, the Bible goes on to say: “24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”(Gen 2:23-24).
Jesus referred to the Genesis record to reiterate the unchanging design of God for marriage in Matt 19:4-6:
“ And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?[c] 6 So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.”
In spite of the clear and unequivocal teaching of God that marriage as designed by God is one that is between a man and a woman, and also God’s explicit disapproval for same-sex marriages, some bible believers still choose to believe and teach that there is no divine law against same-sex marriages. The Bible warns against the attempt to “twist” scriptures to teach what it prohibits, as that would lead to the destruction of the perpetrators (2 Pet 3:16). If one professes to love God then one is obliged to keep His Commandments (John 14:15); one does not have the license to commit licentiousness under the system of grace (Rom 6:1-5, 16-18; 8:13)
