Sodomy: Should Celibacy Be Recommended for Individuals Who Are Tempted Towards Abominable Sexual ...

Warning, the following message may be offensive to some audiences. These audiences may include but are not limited to professing Christians who never read their Bible, sissies, sodomites, men with man buns, those who approve of men with man buns, man bun enablers, white knights for men with man buns, homemakers who have finished Netflix but don't know how to meal plan, and people who refer to their pets as fur babies.

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The Gospel of Salvation and Coming Judgment

People are tired of hearing nothing but doom and despair on the radio. The message of Christianity is that salvation is found in Christ alone, and any who reject Christ therefore forfeit any hope of salvation, any hope of heaven.

The issue is that humanity is in sin and the wrath of almighty God is hanging over our heads.

They will hear his words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come, they will be consumed and they will perish.

God wrapped himself in flesh, condescended and became a man, died on the cross for sin, was resurrected on the third day, has ascended to the right hand of the Father, where he sits now to make intercession for us.

Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear his words, they will act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment come in that final day, their house will stand.

Welcome to Bible Bashed, where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask. Listen and enjoy this installment of Iron Sharpening Iron as Pastor Tim answers your sincere questions.

Here's Pastor Tim.

Whether Celibacy Should Be Recommended for Same-Sex Attraction

On this episode of Iron Sharpening Iron, we're going to be answering the question, should celibacy be recommended for individuals who are tempted towards abominable sexual practices? Now, this is a follow-up to our podcast, Should Christians Council Gays to Straighten Up and Marry a Member of the Opposite Sex?

In response to that episode, we had the following post.

No.

So, should Christians Council Gays to Straighten Up and Marry a Member of the Opposite Sex? This commenter says no.

No.

First and foremost, Christians should admonish those that deal with SSA. Notice deal with SSA. Notice the therapeutic victim language that's present in the way that that's phrased. Christians should admonish those that deal with SSA to follow Christ, as this is the main imperative of the Christian faith.

Jesus was not married, but he was holy. So, note what's being said there. The admonition essentially is to say that, and this is part of what's happening in the celibate gay Christian movement, the standard SSA tropes that are being presented to us in evangelicalism today.

And this is the kind of thing that Rosario Butterfield is noted for saying, that heterosexuality is not godliness, and individuals should not be. It's a heresy to teach them to mortify this set of sinful desires and attractions, but essentially they should be taught to follow Christ.

The end period, end of discussion. And part of the issue with that is that it is our contention, and the Bible speaks to this very issue, that if you are to follow Christ, then one of the things that you would want to do is follow his teaching.

And one of the things that he teaches is that for the vast majority of people alive on the earth, the normal expectation for humanity is that God's design for mankind is that men and women come together in the union of marriage and to procreate and have offspring in order to fill the earth and subdue it and be fruitful and multiply.

One of the first commands that man has given in the garden, after man's single state is described as not good, the Bible says it's not good for man to be alone, one of the first commands that man is given is the command to be fruitful and to multiply and to fill the earth and subdue it.

For this reason, man will leave his father and mother, hold fast to his wife, the two shall become one flesh. Marriage is designed uniquely by God as a fix for sexual temptation and it's designed to accomplish God's purposes of filling this world up full of people who will exercise dominion over all creation.

One of the things you'll notice about that be fruitful and multiply is that it comes to us in the imperative mood. It's a command. There's a command given to us to be fruitful and multiply. And it's a command that God has given to the human race.

It's what I would describe as a corporate command, just like the Great Commission is a corporate command. It's a command that's given to the entire human race and it's the command that we should be encouraging other people to pursue.

And if an individual has a certain set of deviant sexual temptations that are coming from his sinful heart, the primary counsel that would be biblical to give would be to mortify those sinful temptations and to put on godly attractions and godly affections as you would do with any other sin in life.

Now, part of the reason why this is so offensive, as we said in our podcast, is because in part what's happening is that we have certain sets of unshared assumptions. Now, one of those assumptions is that this homosexual orientation is somehow a fixed, unmovable feature of an individual's life that has little to no hope of changing.

We challenge that assumption in our podcast, that this orientation is a fixed, unmovable characteristic of certain individuals that created, feature, anything else. It is a deviant set of pulls that is able to be, by God's grace, to be mortified just like any other set of deviant pulls.

Another part of the problem, though, is that you're living in a society that's post-sexual revolution with easy access to birth control. In a society like that, two of the things that have happened in that sort of society is that marriage and children are seen in this kind of society, and there's great cultural pressure to view them that way as evidenced by the fact that marriage rates are on the rise and the birth rates are plummeting, that marriage and children are viewed as purely optional pursuits that an individual may engage in if, in the charismatic language, they feel led, or in a more crass secular sense, if they desire to pursue those things.

But then part of the problem with that is it's just it doesn't pass the exegesis text of the opening chapters of the Bible. We're looking at something that's obviously written to us in an imperative mood as a command, and so we need to do something with it.

That's the problem. So the Bible tells the human race be fruitful and multiply. We need to do something with that. That's actually a command. So if we're going to follow Christ, we need to follow his commands in the scripture, and one of his commands seems to be, or corporate commands seems to be, that for men and women to come together in marriage and have some babies.

That's what it says. So now the problem there is the parent, and this is the problem that's brought up. Since Christ was single, and Paul, in some sense, encourages singleness, wouldn't if following Christ mean following Christ's example?

Well, obviously, if everyone followed Christ's example, here's the thing, then we would have no new people, and essentially the human race would die off. So in order to follow Christ's example, it seems to me that we need to follow his commands that we find in the Old Testament and the opening chapters of the Bible is designed for humanity, but then there seems to be that there is this gift of singleness that we have to figure out what to do with, and so is that a contradiction?

Is the gift of singleness a contradiction with the command in the Old Testament?

What do we do?

Do we become red-letter Christians, ignore everything in the Old Testament? Do we make silly arguments to say, well, it's in the Old Testament, and Christ came to overturn the Old Testament, knowing that the Bible says Jesus didn't come to overturn the law, but to abolish the law, but to fulfill it?

What do we do?

Well, if you do not wish to engage in the Marcionite heresy, where you cut the Bible in two and obey one to the detriment of the other, one of the things you might want to do is attempt to harmonize this corporate command that you find in Genesis with the gift of singleness.

Now, when you attempt to do that, Christians have always had an explanation readily available in order to give single people who are discouraged because they're unable to find a spouse, we've always had counsel to give that sort of individual to determine whether or not they have the gift of singleness.

I can't tell you how many people, particularly in a time where the age of first-time marriages is so dramatically on the rise due to a variety of factors, I can't tell you how many times I've had individuals who come to me and say, I think it just is impossible for me to find a spouse.

I must have the gift of singleness. And the problem is, we've always had counsel to give that sort of individual. But when it comes to the individual with the deviant sexual temptations, we overlook everything we say in the one area and give the person struggling with sodomy a completely different answer.

So how would we normally counsel individuals who are asking that sort of question? That's the question we'll ask. How would we normally counsel the kind of individual who is wondering, do I have the gift of singleness?

Well, here's how we would normally counsel them. There's two passages that we typically go to if we're going to try to answer this kind of question for the individual in question. 1 Corinthians 7 is one of the passages in Matthew 19.

Now, after Jesus gave his strong stance on the permanence of marriage in Matthew 19, the disciples basically said to them, as such is the case with the man and his wife, it's better not to marry. You know, if divorce is not permissible for any reason, including the burning of the toast in the discussion that the rabbis were having at that time, if marriage is not permissible for any reason, but only permissible on account of sexual immorality, the disciples look at him in verse 11, Matthew 19, 11, 10, and say, if such is the case of a man with his wife, it's better not to marry.

But he said to them, not everyone can receive this thing, but only those whom it is given. For there have been eunuchs who have been so from birth. So eunuch is being used in the standard sense of an individual who is missing certain parts at that point.

There have been eunuchs who have been so from birth. There have been eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men. Typically in the ancient world, if you wanted to have one cruel former punishment, was to turn a man into a eunuch.

If you wanted men who were going to guard your harem for you, you would typically castrate them if you were a king in order to keep them from expressing their sexual desires. He says there have been eunuchs who have been so from birth.

Their eunuchs have been made eunuchs by men and their eunuchs have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom. Now that's the only instance in the passage that's being used in a figurative sense, meaning not that men have castrated themselves for the kingdom, although some have in the course of church history.

But there are those who have intentionally pursued singleness or the absence of offspring for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He says, let the one who is able to receive it, receive it. So in this passage, one of the things that you find is that if an individual is going to have the gift of singleness, this is going to be the kind of individual who is intentionally pursuing the advancement of God's kingdom and believes that he can better pursue the advancement of God's kingdom on this earth by not being bound to a particular wife over and against pursuing marriage.

And so there are opportunities that are available to a person through marriage to advance God's kingdom, and there's opportunities that are available to singleness. Paul was able to evangelize the known world at the time because he intentionally did not pursue marriage, but then pursued the advance of the gospel.

He was constantly in danger of imprisonment, in danger by robbers, in danger by toil, in danger by snares. He's in danger from the Romans, in danger from the Jews. Like he's constantly being beaten and whipped and tormented and stoned and shipwrecked and everything else.

But then if you had to care for a wife and drag along a family and make the kind of travels that he made, they would have been a liability to him and advanced in gospel. So the first question we typically tell individuals who are wondering, do they have a gift of singleness, is we ask them the question, are you attempting to, do you have a desire to pursue full-time vocational ministry in some sense?

Are you wanting to be a missionary? Are you wanting to be a pastor? Are you wanting to advance the gospel to areas of unreached people groups? You don't ask him, hey, do you want to spend your life building a secular corporation or something like that?

Now that's where they work and that's fine, but that's not the kind of person this has in mind. The kind of person that has in mind is the one who wants to give all of their time and all their attention to the spread of the gospel and in a very intentional way.

So if you look at the person who's wondering, do they have the gift of singleness? Because no one seems to be taking them up on marriage. First thing you ask is, are you wanting to give your life to the advancement of the gospel and the spread of the gospel and need more time to be devoted to it?

And typically the answer is no. Now, the second kind of question that you normally ask a person in that kind of scenario is, you ask them, are you free from sexual temptation? Are you free from sexual temptation?

So here's the thing. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7, he says, now concerning the matters about which you wrote, it is good for a man not to have sexual relationships with a woman. That's the question that they're asking him.

Essentially, is it good for a man to avoid sexual contact with a woman? Does that defile individuals? As the Greeks are saying, does that defile a person to have sex with a woman? Is it better to not?

Now, Paul says, but because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. In other words, God created man and he gave them men and women's sexual desires.

And he did not intend for man to sit there and sit on those sexual desires forever to delay the fulfillment of those desires until their late twenties and basically spend a good 10 to 15 years post-puberty frustrated with no lawful outlet for sexual expression.

One of the things that God has designed is he's designed to give us these overpowering at times, sexual desires, but then he's given us a healthy outlet for them. And the more that you sit there and try to suppress them and try to pretend like that you're there, the more that you feel cursed.

I can't tell you how many single people who have come to me and basically told me that they feel cursed and they wish God would just take their sexual desires away and remove them because they're tired of burying him and they would like to get married and they can't and they don't know what to do.

And they're just praying, Lord, just take it all away. Just take it all away. That's the kind of individual that God has not given the gift of singleness. Now the person who is the SSA attracted Christian to use the neutral therapeutic language who is struggling with SSA.

The issue there is that we have had counsel we give to single people for a long time. And let me suggest in the nicest possible tone that we should apply that same counsel to individuals who have temptations that are coming from their own sinful heart towards abominable sexual practices.

The same thing that's true of every other sin you would tell them to do. There's a put on dynamic. You put off the evil desires. You put on righteousness, holiness, faithfulness, goodness, truth. Far from telling...

One of the things to realize is if you look at that person with those desires and you say, hey, you're going to be cursed forever and ever and ever to basically burn. And the Bible says it's better to marry than to burn.

You're going to be cursed forever and ever to burn because God has no hope for you with changing these illicit, unlawful, abominable temptations. You're basically consigning that person to a life that is going to be filled with substantial amounts of frustration.

And not only that, they're not going to be faithful to God's created design for them. They're obviously an individual who desires sexual... They have sexual desires that are able to be lawfully pursued and there's no reason not to pursue them.

And if you adopt some sort of hopeless framework there that basically says that there's no hope for you, that will become a self-fulfilling prophecy if you tell them, hey, this will never change and there's no hope for you and you're just going to have to pursue celibacy forever.

Many people will throw their hands up in despair. Now, obviously, here's the thing, not everyone who has sexual desires that are unmet is guaranteed or promised marriage from God. For some people, that truly is their cross to bear, meaning the kind of individual who have lawful sexual attractions that they're not able to do anything with.

That may be their cross to bear and there's all sorts of counsel that you would give that kind of person. It's better to live as Christ and to die as gain. There's many people who died in faith, not receiving the promises.

And sometimes the Christian life costs you something. Sometimes faithfulness costs you something. However, to tell an individual that they are barred from marriage or they discourage them from pursuing marriage at all would be a gross mishandling of the scripture.

One of the things that we need to do as it relates to this topic is stop treating this deviant sexual desire as if it's some fixed immutable part of a person's character that is either neutral, across the bear, some sort of temptation that they can't help, anything else.

If you consider it what it is, it's a wicked pull from a wicked heart. That may sound mean, but there's great hope in that because if it's a wicked pull from a wicked heart, Christ is able to cleanse you to the other most.

And it's my hope for those who have fed those abominable desires, who have fed those, who have grown those sets of temptations in their mind. It's my hope that they find true another deliverance from that, not only put off the evil desires, but learn to put on the good desires.

And I can just tell you from my own life that God has helped me do that with a great many sins. And that's my hope for you as well.

Closing Exhortation and Show Sign-Off

This has been another installment of Iron Sharpening Iron. As always, if you would like to have your question included in one of these midweek episodes, email us at biblebashedpodcast at gmail .com. Don't forget to subscribe and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Gab.

Now, go boldly and obey the truth in the midst of a biblically illiterate world who will be perpetually offended by your every move.