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I have been an Elder at the Community Bible Church in Minneapolis Kansas. For 35+ years.  During that time I have been writing these thought...

Friday, December 9, 2016

"Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin"




Victory Can Be Yours!
Article #76 – “Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin”
               Last week’s article mentioned the county clerk from Kentucky being incarcerated for taking a stand and refusing to issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple.  She stated that it violated her Christian belief and in good conscience could not issue the license or allow one of her deputies to issue one.  Why was that a problem for her and why should it be a problem for all Christians?  Let us look at what God says about marriage.
               In the first chapter of the first book of the Bible it states, “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.  God blessed them; and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it;’.” (Gen. 1:27, 28a) “The man gave names to all of the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.  So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place.  The Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.  The man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man.’  For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and become one flesh.” (Gen. 2:20-24)  You can easily see that from the beginning, God’s design was to be marriage between one man and one woman.  The two of them were to be fruitful and multiply. 
               This is so important that Jesus repeated it in Matthew 19:4-6 where He added to the Genesis passage by saying, “So they are no longer two, but one flesh.  What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.” (Matt. 19:6) God intended for marriage to be between one man and one woman and it was to last until they were divided by death.  The words joined together is like being glued or welded together.  If you take two pieces of pine wood and glue it together then try to pry them apart, they will splinter apart but will not separate at the place they were bonded together.  The same is true with a properly welding of two pieces of metal.  You can bend or twist or pull the welded metal pieces apart but they will not break at the point where they were joined.  The same was intended for the man and woman who were joined together in matrimony.  They were not to be separated one from the other, they were now one body.
               This was God’s institution of marriage.  It was between one man and one woman, not man to man or woman to woman.  For one thing, the union between same-sex individuals cannot become one and cannot be fruitful and multiply.  It is not physically possible.  Not only that but God calls homosexuality un-natural and an abomination.  “For their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.” (Rom. 1:26, 27) And, “You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination. (Lev. 18:22)  It is easy to see why every Christian should be opposed to assisting the marriage of a same-sex couple.  We can love them but should not support their sin against God.  Don’t question the clerk and her actions, question God, it is His perfect design.
               You, too, can have victory in Jesus!  More to follow.
Lowell Parrish

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