Very good points.

That is the point. If it is a punishment, then it is not innocent in and of itself, and is sin. God does not give people over to things that are innocent. He gives them over to things that ........ their souls and are deeper sins. Homosexuality was a damning activity and lifestyle. So, God saw idolaters and gave them over to the activity and lifestyle that others were already involved with that were damning their souls.

It is the same as follows:

Homosexuality is dishonouring their own bodies. That activity in and of itself is so. Whether a person says they love God or not, they are dishonouring their own bodies. That is sin. It is disgracing their own bodies between themselves. It is degradation of sexuality. Perversion, in other words. Sin! It is taking God's creation -- our very bodies -- and snuffing out all dignity in them.

Paul spoke of this as well in listing sexual sins when he mentioned fornication. He said it is SINNING AGAINST YOUR OWN BODY.

1Co 6:18 KJV Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.

Fornication is all sexual sins. If dishonouring your body and snuffing out all dignity in it is not sexual sin, then what is it? If something that God gave people over to was not damnable, then why did He give them over to it?

In 2 Thess 2, God saw that people chose not to honour Him by loving the truth, just as Romans 1 noted, and took that and gave them over to what was worse... not what was innocent. When God gives someone over to to something, it is something that in and of itself is damnable. Homosexuality was damnable in and of itself, aside from anything to do with idolatry. You are proving my point by admitting it is what God gave people over to as punishment. Like I said, he never gives people over to caring for puppy dogs as a punishment.

You said that idolatry mingled with homosexuality was not the case with homosexuals who "love" God. Paul never said that was the case. He said that idolatry was grounds for God to give people over to extreme sins that they might be damned. This means that homosexuality in and of itself is damnable. This makes your argument that says homosexuals who love God are hardly comparable to idolaters who are given over to homosexuality entirely moot.

Excellent Post.

Is God's love unconditional? Is his love conditioned on believing in Him? Does God let unrepentent mass murderers in heaven so long as they grew up in Sunday School? :cool:

Brad, New Testament grace is not a license to live any way that you would like to simply because of grace. Jesus died to save us FROM our sins, not IN our sins. You think that something that was once an abomination to God (who does not change) would no longer be an abomination to Him? You misunderstand the cross; and you grossly alter the application of grace. What was an abomination to Him remains an abomination to Him - He does not change His views regarding sin. When Jesus died, He TOOK OUR PUNISHMENT. In fact, He received the wrath of God reserved for us (whosoever will). Grace is not the result of God changing His views toward particular sins (homosexuality is regarded as sin in both Testaments), but rather-it is the result of Him taking the penalty for our sin upon the cross. He hated sin so much that He was willing to DIE to erradicate it!


From the English Standard Version:

Romans 1:22-32 ESV
(22) Claiming to be wise, they became fools,
(23) and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
(24) Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves,(25) because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
(26) For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature;
(27) and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
(28) And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.
(29) They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips,
(30) slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents,
(31) foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.
(32) Though they know God's decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

Luke 13:3 ESV
(3) No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.


Romans 6:1-2 ESV
(1) What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?
(2) By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?

Romans 6:11-15 ESV
(11) So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
(12) Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions.
(13) Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.
(14) For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
(15) What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!

Rom 6:15 KJV What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid.

Let's look at his list.

"Why did God inflict blindness? Why did God inflict dumbness? Why did God create the division of races? Why did God confound his original created language? Why did God inflict barrenness? God pronounced and inflicted all sorts of judgements on people for their disobedience but that does not mean are all of His judgements/curses are eternally and inherently sinful."

Did God inflict blindness or dumbness or barrenness on humanity or are they simply further consequences of Adam's sin in the sense that all of Creation was corrupted by Adam's sin? The so-called "division of the races" (there's really only one "race," the human race) is a natural consequence of the confounding of the languages, which God did because of sin - specifically the sin of a people who refused to obey God's command to scatter abroad, and who wanted to make God take notice of them. The judgments that God inflicted were for their disobedience and, of course, disobeying God is sin.

There is nothing sinful about God's judgements/curses but I think I know where Brad is going with this line of questioning. He seemingly wants to say that homosexual attraction or "orientation" is not something he chose (and it's true that he did not choose to have that unnatural attraction but, instead, that it developed during childhood) and, therefore, it is not sinful (since sin is the choice to disobey God). Fine, let's give him that argument and respond this way: God created male and female and designed them so that mating would occur between male and female and not between males or between females. Homosexual attraction is an attraction that is contrary to God's created design for male and female. By embracing that attraction and trying to say the attraction is natural, normal, etc., one is rejecting God's created design, rejecting God's purpose for male and female (at least as that purpose applies to this particular individual). Such rejection of God's created design constitutes sin because it is, in effect, saying to God that "In this particular instance, what You created is not good and my homosexual attraction is good even though it isn't what you originally created."

Of course, we must separate the unnatural homosexual attraction (which is unnatural because it is contrary to God's created design) from homosexual sin (defined as embracing and/or acting on the unnatural homosexual attraction). The attraction is something for God to heal. The sin is something to be repented of and forsaken.

Want to be Fair.
 

Homosexuality was something I never heard about as a child. When I did hear about it, an instant repulsion occurred in my heart about it. I think this betrays the unnatural and ungodly nature of the act. What we are repulsed by at the start of learning about a thing indicates what is right or wrong. I really believe this.[/QUOTE]


To respond to MfBlume quote above.
I am from the same side of the fence that you are. I am a Heterosexual looking into the pastures of homosexuality. I can't help but see that the statement you made was not thought out and tried and rather one sided. It leaves too many questions unanswered.
First you said that you had never heard of it at that time.
We are always wary of what we have never heard of. But I do know that you had heard of a man and woman being married and having children and this was just all you knew. This was natural and known.
Secondly you said that when you heard about the act of homosexuality, that it repulsed you. I have spoken to homosexuals and you know what the thought of having intercourse with the opposite sex does to them, it repulses them. It goes against there nature. What is natural to them.
I just think that we can't stand and call it fact if there are too many questions unanswered.
so your hypothesis that Homosexuality, because it is not natural to you and repulses you, is unproven and incorrect. Or else the fact that when a homosexual thinks of Heterosexual intercourse repulses them would mean that heterosexual intercourse is Wrong, unnatural and ungodly.

Brad,

You already know this but your mind and conscience has been seared...for us to post here to try to convince you otherwise is useless.

Only the truly repentant can be changed and saved. It doesn't matter what any of us think or feel...the word of God is the final say.

Living in sin will send one to hell. End of story.

Rhoni

I would suggest that our doctrines are not based on mere "emotional appeals" but on objective truth.

Humans are emotional creatures but we are not to be controlled by our emotions. The heart (seat of emotions) is, according to Jeremiah, deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.

What we're disagreeing with here is with a specific set of beliefs that one might call "gay theology," the claim that God does not consider homosexuality an abomination (keep in mind that lying is also an abomination, I didn't want it to appear that I was somehow making homosexuality out to be worse than other abominations) and that God blesses homosexual relationships (despite the Biblical truth that God created male and female and established opposite-sex marriage as the biological norm for male and female). It doesn't really matter whether individual homosexuals are like the ones so often presented in the media or whether they're Mother Theresa, the issue here is twofold: 1) a sexual/romantic attraction ("orientation") that is contrary to God's created design and; 2) the sin of embracing and/or acting on that attraction in thoughts and behaviors.

All sexual activity outside of opposite-sex marriage is sin. It really doesn't matter how you further classify it.

I would argue that pedophilia is a separate unnatural "sexual orientation." But, again, it isn't really relevant because acting on it is still sexual activity that is outside of opposite-sex marriage and, thus, it is sin. Sexual "orientation" is not "natural" when it is contrary to God's created design, as is the case with homosexuality and all other non-heterosexual orientations.