Am I doomed to hell? Is it a sin to be gay?

Question:

I am 20 years old. I am have been a sinner most of my life. I want to change my evil ways. Sometimes I feel my soul is doomed to hell to burn with Satan. I pray sometimes, but I still feel lost. I have one? I am bisexual. Is it a sin to be gay?

Answer:

There were several things about this note that makes me wonder whether it is for real or a gag. I always wonder when the note comes from one address but then asks me to reply to a different one. I also pay attention to people's choices of email addresses because that sometimes tells me a bit about them. This one has me concerned as well. However, I'm going to answer this as if it was legitimate.

The only person doomed for hell is the person who will not leave his sinful ways. God wants to save people. "'But if a wicked man turns from all his sins which he has committed, keeps all My statutes, and does what is lawful and right, he shall surely live; he shall not die. None of the transgressions which he has committed shall be remembered against him; because of the righteousness which he has done, he shall live. Do I have any pleasure at all that the wicked should die?' says the Lord GOD, 'and not that he should turn from his ways and live?'" (Ezekiel 18:21-23). Prayer alone is not enough. You have to change your life.

Can it be done? Oh, yes. You are not the first to face these sins. "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, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God" (I Corinthians 6:9-11).

It not a matter of who you were, but who you are. I've noticed this tendency among practitioners of homosexuality to describe themselves as if homosexuality was a part of who they were. It would be no different than someone saying "I'm a thief" or "I'm a murderer." A person is a thief while they remain guilty of stealing and continue to practice it. But if a person wants to change, we understand that stealing doesn't define the person. Stealing was what a person did, but it is something that can be left behind.

When you tell me you are bisexual, what I see is a young man who has been committing both fornication and homosexual sins. It is sad that you messed up your young life, but you don't have to stay wallowing in filth. You can leave it behind and start out on a brand new life.

"What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?

Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin.

Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God" (Romans 6:1-13).

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