Yesterday was the 239th birthday of our nation. On this occasion, I, and no doubt you together with me, are feeling a variety of emotions. I am profoundly grateful for the United States of America, for our Puritan forebears that graced our shores early on in our history, for the eighteenth and nineteenth century revivals that took place in our land, for the liberties that our wisely-written Constitution has protected for more than two centuries, and for a thousand good and happy things that our God and Creator has graciously poured upon us as undeserving benefits in terms of religious freedoms, family and church bonds, and material prosperity. Yet this time, our dear nation’s birthday, which should be a celebration, felt more like a funeral because of the grave injustice committed by the majority of justices on the United States Supreme Court in legalizing so-called “gay marriage” in all fifty states as a constitutional right. When I heard this tragic news while ministering in Kentucky, deep sorrow, righteous anger, instant fear, confusing numbness, and heartfelt love for our country swept through me. Immediately, much like the Roe v. Wade date of January 22, 1973, the date of June 26, 2015 was stamped on my mind as one of a handful of tragically sad dates in our nation’s history.
It is breathtaking that the Supreme Court would unilaterally impose the so-called marriage of homosexuals upon our nation. This appears to be an astonishing abuse of power, with no grounds in the United States Constitution. Who gave the Supreme Court the authority to redefine something it did not create? Marriage was created long before the United States and our Constitution came into existence by the Almighty Creator of man and woman. Moreover, it appears that the Supreme Court failed to exercise its proper role in rendering decisions about cases arising from existing law, and overstepped the bounds of its authority to create a new law in such an important institution as marriage—the foundational building-block of all human society. Without a vote from the people or their elected representatives, the Justices took to themselves the authority belonging to the people and to lawmakers. Indeed, they nullified the will of the people expressed in countless laws created by the proper democratic process in many states.
The news of this decision was in many ways like the news of the death of a loved one who has long been ill. It was not entirely unexpected, and yet it was a shock. In some respects we have seen this coming as we observed the rising waves of wickedness and immorality in our nation, as sinners not only commit sins but give their public approval to them. Yet the speed with which this change has come to our nation is astonishing. Just one generation ago such a legal decision would have been inconceivable, and now it is lauded in the highest levels of our government. A few days after this decision was made, my wife happened to run into a well-known former Judge in our area, who just shook his head in disbelief and said, “It wasn’t that long ago when I sent people to jail for committing the crime of homosexuality.”
We need to remember several things about the Supreme Court’s decision.
First, it is a decision against the Bible. We are not just speaking here about a political decision. The church and preaching distances itself from politics, and rightly so. But when the powers that be cross the line into areas of unbiblical morality such as condoning baby-killing in the womb and redefining God’s understanding of marriage to embrace what God strongly and thoroughly condemns, the church must speak up. We would be guilty if we did not, no matter what the consequences might be. Martin Luther said, “Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved.”
Genesis 2:24 gives us the foundational definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman: “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” In Matthew 19:4–5, the Lord Jesus quoted these words and said that they are the words of the Creator God.
From cover to cover, the Word of God contains not a single positive reference to homosexuality, but consistently condemns it as an abomination. That is true in Genesis 19 where God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, of which Jude 7 says that we are not to be “even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for [as] an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.” Then in Leviticus 18:22 the Lord expressly says that a man shall not lie together with another man as he does with his wife for that is an abomination to him. That is repeated in Leviticus 20:13 where the Lord commands that under Israel’s civil laws both homosexual fornicating partners must surely be put to death. Today, of course, we don’t follow the details of the civil laws assigned to Israel because Israel was a theocracy, but this text certainly shows how great God’s wrath is against this sin.
In the Roman world of the New Testament writers, homosexuality was widely practiced, and yet the apostle Paul wrote in Romans 1:26–27 that homosexual desires are “vile affections” and “against nature.” In 1 Corinthians 6:9, the apostle wrote, “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God?” and then includes those who practice homosexuality among the sinners who will be damned. He then writes in verse 11, “And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.”
Therefore the Bible’s message to homosexuals is not, “God accepts your lifestyle so long as you love each other,” but, “God condemns your lifestyle, yet He loves unworthy sinners like all of us and He can change you just as He is changing us from our sinful ways.” To permit and promote marriage among homosexuals is totally contrary to the Word of God.
Second, this decision by the Supreme Court is an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. There is no such thing as gay marriage, even when two men or two women live together for a period of time. Marriage is by definition the union of one man and one woman, and has been so for millennia. The effect of the decision will not be to broaden the view of marriage in our culture, but to demean marriage into cultural nonsense, so that it means little to nothing in our culture to get married. We see effects of this kind of thinking already in some places like France where people are debating what it even means to call someone a husband or wife, a father or mother; some are even agitating to remove these words from the French vocabulary so as to use only the genderless word “parent.” If this Supreme Court decision is allowed to go forward, the result might be that fewer people of any gender will get married, as has been happening in the Netherlands since it approved so-called same sex marriage in 2001.
Third, this decision opens a floodgate of disastrous consequences. It will impact the church, as congregations and denominations will face the choice between conforming to the wickedness of this world, or being the objects of persecution under the false accusation of violating someone’s civil rights. It will have massive implications for Christian adoption agencies seeking to place children in homes where children can have a father and a mother according to God’s design. Perhaps most frightening of all, as our Chief Supreme Court Justice pointed out in his dissent, the arguments used to justify this decision can be equally applied to so-called marriages between three or more people, and other sexual perversions. In fact, already, at least one man in Montana has come forward to demand permission to exercise government-approved polygamy.
Fourth, this is an unloving decision. Love is not the unconditional acceptance of all lifestyles. Love cannot be separated from righteousness and moral standards. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13:6, love “rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth.” There is no real love without loving what it true, right, pure, holy, and good. Love is likeness to God, and Psalm 33:5 says, “He loveth righteousness.” Thus 1 John 5:2 says, “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep his commandments.” The most loving thing in the world is to teach people what is right, and to call them to do it.
Though carried out in the name of love and tolerance, it is no act of love. It is no act of love to encourage people to take a pathway that will ruin their lives, confuse and harm future generations, and ultimately, if unrepented of, bring men and women under the eternal judgment of God.
Christians love, or at least ought to love, homosexuals more than anyone else, because we love their souls, and we love them enough to tell them the truth about themselves and to urge them to repent and flee to Christ and love righteousness. Robert Murray M`Cheyne once said that our best friends who love us the most are the ones who tell us the most truth about ourselves. That can be difficult for all of us to see, no matter what our sexual desires are, but it is still the truth.
Fifth, it is an audacious decision. It smacks of audacious boldness not only because of its blatant disregard for and rejection of the Bible, but also for its despising of the history of mankind, for the basic institution of natural marriage has held the glue of society together for 6000 years. It is also bold and audacious in its presumption that five justices have assumed power to themselves to make such a radical decision for 300,000,000+ people when they know full well that the majority of those people who have voted on this issue in various states have voted against it.
Finally, all of this leads us to conclude what too few have been speaking about in the last ten days, namely, it is a decision that lacks the fear of God.
Reprinted with permission from Dr. Joel R. Beeke.
