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thewayapologetics
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The second issue is homosexuality. In Revelations chapter 21 verse 27, the Bible speaks about the heavenly Jerusalem and says, but there shall by no means enter it anything that defiles or causes an abomination. We read that homosexuality is a kind of abomination which in the Old Testament was punishable by death.
In Leviticus chapter 18 verse 22, God says, you shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination. In his epistle, Saint Jude, in verse 7, says, As Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.
In Genesis chapter 19, the men of Sodom attempted to gang rape Lot’s male visitors. They were often involved in homosexual behaviour. And God punished the people of Sodom, who were unclean, by burning them with fire because they practiced homosexuality.
Another passage from Saint Paul’s epistle to the Romans, that makes him seem like a journalist, who reports 21st-century events. In Romans chapter 1, Paul says, For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. How is the wrath of God revealed? In verse 24 he says, Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonour their bodies among themselves. Gave them up, means that the grace of God has left them, that they were forsaken to their own uncleanness to dishonour their bodies.
In verses 26 and 27, Paul continues and says, for this reason, God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise, also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due. Exchanged the natural use for what is against nature, means that homosexuality is against nature. God says it’s wrong to use man for the same kind of sex God gave the woman for. According to this, homosexuality is considered an act of uncleanness, an act that dishonours the body and that is worthy of punishment.
In the first epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 6 verse 9, the Apostle Paul says, do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, will inherit the kingdom of God. He also says in verse 18, Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body, but he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. Then Paul continues saying, do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? Our bodies are not our own, they are the temples of the Holy Spirit. That is why none of these categories will inherit the kingdom of God because their behaviours defile God’s temple.
In 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 verse 3 through 8, Paul says, for this is the will of God, your sanctification, that you should abstain from sexual immorality, that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honour, not in passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God. He stresses on the fact that we should be different from the rest of the crowd, avoiding sexual immorality, that is, staying away from any kind of sex that distorts God’s perfect plan. The thing that makes homosexuality bad is the same thing that makes any sexual behaviour outside of marriage bad.
In 1 Timothy chapter 1 verses 9 and 10, Paul says, knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, for fornicators, for sodomites. Notice, he includes, sodomites, or homosexuals, among the murderers, the lawless and the ungodly.
From all these, we conclude that homosexuality, along with other sexual misbehaviours, are just other ways of denying the natural function. God indeed made the man for woman and the woman for man sexually, in the holy sacrament of marriage that he blessed himself.