“Whoever pursues righteousness and kindness will find life, righteousness, and honor.” (Proverbs 21:21)
So pursuing righteousness gets me righteousness and life. Pursuing kindness gets me honor? Interesting.
The Church today has a hard time pursuing both righteousness and kindness. The devil fights us because either one isn’t enough. We need both to find life righteousness, and honor. So all he has to do is keep us from being one or the other–and we can be more easily tricked into thinking we’re following Jesus properly in either half way state.
The devil also likes to get us focused on the opposite problem than the one we really have. So if you’re focused on being kind to sinners, there’s a good chance you lean towards not taking the sin seriously enough. If you’re focused on the evil of the sin, you’re probably not being kind enough.
For example, lets consider that we live in a world where, even among Christians, the majority of the generation under forty, and super-majority of the generation under twenty, are honestly perplexed why two men or two women who love each other can’t have sex together inside the confines of a committed relationship. The rest of us simply cite the “thou shalt not” and expect that to be enough. It’s not. Too many false teachers are available to explain to itching ears why the Bible doesn’t really say “thou shalt not.”
So why don’t we answer the question? Some of us are plain afraid of confrontation and debate. Quite a few of us don’t know what to say because we haven’t asked that question. We stopped at “don’t,” but the bible does not. It does answer, and the answer explains quite a bit about why the devil is promoting sexual deviancy of all sorts and attacking marriage on every side.
For those of us who have been to a seminar or class on marriage and biblical roles, we’ll find the answer has been right smack under our noses the whole time. The answer is found in Ephesians 5:21-33.
You know, that same passage the American Feminist dreads and loathes when it actually says both spouses should submit to each other, since the husband is obliged by Christ’s example to wash his wife’s feet and be the servant of all.
God designed marriage as the oldest and original passion play, starring the wife as the Church and the husband as Christ. Any deviation from that design corrupts the play and turns it into blasphemy, especially in the case of the husband’s failures. Whenever a man has sex outside of marriage, cheats on his wife, leaves his wife when she has been faithful to him, has sex with another man, beats his wife, treats her like an object, belittles her, walks on her, or selfishly seeks his own interests above hers, or is plain passive and unresponsive, he is depicting God as being that way and hence blaspheming. That is why Christian men, and male Christian leaders especially, so often find themselves fighting fierce spiritual battles.
Whenever a woman takes part in, encourages, or enables such blasphemous behavior in a man, she is guilty for that. It is also a sin for the woman to depict the Church as straying from Christ by committing the evils listed above. And all homosexual relationships distort marriage’s passion play and mock God. That is why the devil seeks to legitimize and increase that behavior. That is why God said no one can live that way and enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
Ladies, difficult as our role is, especially when our men fail, it is absolutely nothing compared to the responsibilities our godly men labor under! I would not want to trade with them for the world.
God’s design for sex, spouses’ roles in marriage, and the structure of the family are all under vicious assault because they all derive from God’s nature and His relationship with His people. This spiritual battle ultimately isn’t about sex, but the gospel. And all of these things are equally important.
Before God, homosexual relationships are no more detestable than adultery, wives dominating their husbands, or husbands mistreating their wives. Each sin should be responded to the same, with reproof that seeks to gently restore the believer caught in such deception and bondage. Those outside should also all receive the same measures of truth and loving kindness. We should not be discriminating at all against our celibate brothers and sisters in Christ who silently suffer same sex attractions. They should not have to hide in fear of their weakness being discovered.
We need righteousness and kindness. We need truth and love.