What Does the Bible Say About Sex Before Marriage?
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What Does the Bible Say About Sex Before Marriage?

Loving Our LGBTQ Neighbors

Posted June 5, 2024
Homosexuality

Our culture is saturated with conversations and questions about LGBTQ+ issues, and Christians are grappling with how to meet this moment. As we consider what to do and how to be faithful in this age, we must remember to “do to others what you would have them do to you” (Matt. 7:12, NIV) and to “love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matt. 22:39) Too often, we get swept up in our dismay or anger at what we see happening in the world, and we address issues of sexuality with a kind of fervor that neglects these important commands.

It’s right to lament how the diversity and beauty of our God-given humanity has been flattened and reduced to our sexual identification. While human sexuality is a significant dimension of how God made us, it’s a tragic lie that the most important thing about a person is the sum of their sexual desires and activities. But perhaps we Christians also embrace a reductive mindset more often than we realize. How many Christians find out someone is a member of the LGBTQ+ community and immediately wall them off, unable to see that person or their need for Christ through any lens other than their sexual identification? Fear of an agenda often leads to fear of and disdain toward individual image bearers. Sadly, we live in a time where it’s easier than ever to chuck the nuance, dump people in broad categories, and stand a comfortable distance away with our tribe.

But does that response reflect the love and care for our neighbors that we are commanded to have? Does it resemble the description of love in 1 Corinthians 13:4–6—a love that is patient, kind, does not dishonor others, always hopes, and always perseveres? And do we recognize that we are helpless to display that kind of love unless we receive it from God first (1 John 4:19)?

Here are three aspects of our lives that can remind us to love others as we are loved by our gracious Savior.

  1. Our sin. It’s easy to call out the transgressions of others and miss the ways we do the same. We are alarmed that certain sexual sins have become normalized and celebrated, but are there not plenty of sins we Christians normalize and celebrate when it suits us? Greed and materialism, gossip, self-righteousness, and spiritual laziness (to name a few) are often dressed up and worn just as proudly as any LGBTQ+ identity. Sin blinds and dulls us all to the truth. Thankfully, we are not beyond redemption and neither are our LGBTQ+ neighbors. We all need the Holy Spirit’s patient love to humble us, convict us, and transform us.
  2. Our complexity. We don’t like it when people make snap judgments about us—deciding that since they know one thing about us, they know “everything.” So let’s treat our LGBTQ+ neighbors as we’d want to be treated, taking time to listen and get to know them as complex, multifaceted people with their own griefs, hopes, fears, shame, and joys. If we overly fixate on the issues of sexuality, we can reduce people to projects, and we might miss opportunities to plant seeds by simply being a good listener and a good friend. “The purposes of a person’s heart are deep waters, but one who has insight draws them out.” (Prov. 20:5)
  3. Our need. Our LGBTQ+ neighbors need Jesus in the same way all of fallen humanity needs him. We all need a new identity and new life, and a return to a right relationship with our loving Creator. Dutch priest and theologian Henri Nouwen sums us all up: “I have fled the hands of blessing and run off to faraway places searching for love! . . . Somehow I have become deaf to the voice that calls me the Beloved, have left the only place where I can hear that voice, and have gone off desperately hoping that I would find somewhere else what I could no longer find at home.”

Of course, even with the right mindset, loving others is not always simple or easy. Discerning what to do and say in our families, friendships, and culture is complicated, and even the gentlest and kindest attempts to articulate biblical truths about sex and gender are often not read as such. But we can build on a foundation of love, the kind that does not crush our neighbor but “rejoices with the truth.” (1 Cor. 13:6)

I’m still learning, but I’ve been challenged to practice these things via a few LGBTQ+ friends and my younger brother, who is gay. Growing up, he was my close friend and sidekick, and over the years we’ve talked about many things—anxieties and identity, faith, the church, being adopted (we’re both Korean adoptees), our parents and other siblings, relationships, work, what we’re reading and watching—all the important and mundane stuff of life. If his being gay was the only thing I could see about him, I would’ve missed these opportunities and our relationship would’ve withered and died. Whatever disagreements we may have, he knows that I’ll always listen to him, pray for him, and love him.

God knows what each of us needs, and we can faithfully love LGBTQ+ people in our lives (and even those on social media!) only by his grace. So when we see that rainbow emblem adopted by the LGBTQ+ community, let it remind us to ask for God’s help, wisdom, and power to reflect his radiant, light-filled love to others.


Footnotes

  • Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 39.

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Cheryl Moore

Cheryl Moore is a former grant writer and aspiring editor with a bachelor's degree in international studies from the University of California, Irvine. She lives in California with her husband and two children.