Can homosexuals have a godly marriage?
Question:
I just have to say that after stumbling upon La Vista Church of Christ's sermon on "Who Are You Going To Marry?" while searching for something similar, I found it quite terrifying.
As a Christian who is engaged to be married, I am for the first time having second thoughts about marriage at all. By your pastor's account of what God expects of a marriage, it hardly seems possible that any of us can be content and without sin in a godly marriage.
Can you tell me your church's view on gay relationships? After having reviewed the "do's and don't's" of heterosexual marriage, that seems to be a more viable option to me, even though at present I prefer the company of my same-sex fiance.
Answer:
Imagine that, a woman "terrified" of the thought of marrying one man for life, even though that is the way God made the world. "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh" (Genesis 2:24).
The Bible is quite clear that sex between members of the same sex is sinful.
"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" (I Corinthians 6:9-10).
"For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. 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" (Romans 1:26-27).
Your claim that a happy marriage cannot be obtained by following God's teachings is false. The millions of people who have followed God's laws are quite happy and content. For myself, I've been married 28 years to a wonderful woman. But if you are expecting happiness by calling yourself a Christian while ignoring the teachings of God, you are deluding yourself. You won't have happiness in a pretend marriage to another woman.
"I wrote to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner--not even to eat with such a person" (I Corinthians 5:9-11).
