We are now entering a phase in public life where we are allowed and even encouraged to be proud of things which decades ago we did in the dark.
We celebrate our hate for the others who don’t look, act, or think like we do. What was acceptable with those who don’t know Christ has now been fully embraced by those who claim Christ.
To be honest, church going people have always and continue to do horrible things. Claiming Christ has always been fashionable in most of America. However, living as Christ in holiness has always seemed an option for most, though it is not optional in the Bible. We used to do much of our sin in the dark.
The KKK hid under hoods. The adulterers met in motels and parking lots. The drunkards and drug addicts hid their habits. Gay, lesbian and other lifestyles were kept secret. But now the hoods are off, the lights are on and we now openly and proudly profess our sin.
We openly display our hatred, our perversions our unhealthy and unholy lifestyles, claiming God accepts and endorses the very things He calls sin.
The apostle Paul says it this way;
Don’t you realize that this is not the way to live? Unjust people who don’t care about God will not be joining in his kingdom. Those who use and abuse each other, use and abuse sex, use and abuse the earth and everything in it, don’t qualify as citizens in God’s kingdom.
A number of you know from experience what I’m talking about, for not so long ago you were on that list. Since then, you’ve been cleaned up and given a fresh start by Jesus, our Master, our Messiah, and by our God present in us, the Spirit.
1 Corinthians 6:9-11 MSG
If you claim Christ as Lord, you cannot take pride in your sin.
Paul goes on:
There’s more to sex than mere skin on skin. Sex is as much spiritual mystery as physical fact. As written in Scripture, “The two become one.” Since we want to become spiritually one with the Master, we must not pursue the kind of sex that avoids commitment and intimacy, leaving us more lonely than ever—the kind of sex that can never “become one.”
There is a sense in which sexual sins are different from all others. In sexual sin we violate the sacredness of our own bodies, these bodies that were made for God-given and God-modeled love, for “becoming one” with another.
Or didn’t you realize that your body is a sacred place, the place of the Holy Spirit? Don’t you see that you can’t live however you please, squandering what God paid such a high price for? The physical part of you is not some piece of property belonging to the spiritual part of you. God owns the whole works. So let people see God in and through your body.
1 Corinthians 6:16-20 MSG
We dare not take pride in what God calls sin. Those who are genuine in their faith must accept this.
Being Christian needs no adjectives. Gay Christian is an impossible thing. A Christian who struggles with sinful and worldly desires is part of all who claim the name. But we dare not make our habits and our lifestyles define us. We can only be proud of being His and following Him. Anything else is sin.
Our responsibility is to love. Only God judges and only the Holy Spirit convicts. Our responsibility is to love.
Again the apostle Paul writes:
Worse followed. Refusing to know God, they soon didn’t know how to be human either—women didn’t know how to be women, men didn’t know how to be men. Sexually confused, they abused and defiled one another, women with women, men with men—all lust, no love. And then they paid for it, oh, how they paid for it—emptied of God and love, godless and loveless wretches.
Romans 1:26-27 MSG
Whatever you are proud of, make sure that pride is not an affront to a holy God. Get out of the public parade and enter into private prayer. Glory in Christ Jesus alone.