Unfortunately many evangelicals have capitulated to the culture’s pressure and to the culture’s definition of love and understanding of God. As a result, there are many who have been swayed by the culture to join the campaign of pursuing marriage equality on behalf of gay friends, family members, or simply because they think it’s the right thing to do. We should love others and that includes gay people. Right? Right. The question however is not should we love our homosexual friends, neighbors, and family members, but what is the nature of how we are to love them?

The logic of the culture that has infiltrated the evangelical mind goes something like this: We are commanded to love our neighbors. Homosexuals are our neighbors. Therefore we must love them, and one way to love them is to help them achieve the same rights we enjoy. Therefore, I am going to show the love of Christ by standing for marriage equality.

In that line of reasoning, the definition of loving our neighbor is reduced to simply helping them get what they want or helping them achieve what they feel they need. To love someone is to help them accomplish his/her goal in life. Now that certainly is one way to express love, but is that what Scripture calls us to do? Is fighting for marriage equality truly loving our homosexual neighbors?

The Scripture is clear that we are to love our neighbors and that alongside the greatest commandment to love God, this is the sum of all of God’s commands. Love Him and love others. That’s the nuts and bolts, the heart of Christianity, the simplest definition of true salvation. See Matthew 22:34-40. So, is standing for marriage equality a good application of Jesus’ teaching to “love your neighbor as yourself”?

The answer to that question comes from carefully answering two other questions. What is the Bible’s teaching regarding a homosexual lifestyle? And, what does it mean to love your neighbor AS YOURSELF?

First question. What is the Bible’s teaching regarding a homosexual lifestyle? The New Testament is abundantly clear that homosexual practice is a deviation from God’s design and will for man and woman, marriage, and sexual experience, meaning it is a sin against God. It is to denounce God’s will as inferior and less satisfying. Therefore, it is a direct rejection of God (as is all other dominating, habitual sin). Because the sinner, whether he be a habitual adulterer or a habitual homosexual, firmly refuses God in this life, he will not have God in the next life either. The Bible’s answer for the homosexual is the hope, forgiveness, newness of life, and eternal life found only in Jesus Christ. This is clearly the teaching of Romans 1:26-27, 1 Cor 6:9-11, Galatians 5:19-24, 1 Timothy 1:8-11, and Jude 5-7.

Two caveats must be entered here and read carefully!!

***Let it be stated clearly from the outset, the Bible does not condemn homosexual desire or having been lured into a homosexual act or having fallen into homosexual temptation. Many true believers fight against this sinful desire just as many true believers fight against other sinful desires. The Bible only condemns the willing embrace of homosexuality as your way of life.

***How does the one struggling with homosexuality or the one who has come to accept homosexuality as his/her identity respond to the Scriptures above? Realize that desire for homosexual relationship or pleasure in homosexual relationship does not define who you are. Desires can either be good for us and glorifying to God or wrong for us and sinful against God. In both cases, acting on those desires can bring pleasure. The desire and the pleasure received from an adulterous affair do not necessitate the conclusion that the adulterer should spend the rest of his/her life engaging in adulterous relationships. True joy and satisfaction will only be found in Christ, not in pursuing any one particular desire or pleasure apart from Him (John 10:10).

Second question. What does it mean to love your neighbor as yourself? Well ask yourself, “How do I want people to love me? Do I want them simply to help me get what I want? Or do I want them to help me get what is best for me?” Isn’t it true that if we simply help our neighbor achieve what they want to achieve while ignoring what is in their best interest, that is not true, biblical, self-denying, sacrificial, costly love? Would we really want our “friend” to help us acquire something only to find out later that our “friend” knew there was something better or, even worse, that he knew the something he helped us acquire would eventually harm us infinitely? Would we think our “friend” loved us in either of those two scenarios?

That is our situation as evangelicals with homosexual neighbors. Their best is Christ, and if they continue to embrace homosexuality, they will miss Christ. He alone is their infinite joy and salvation (Psalm 16:11). To follow through with their desires and pleasures for homosexual relationship will end in infinite consequence apart from Christ.

So as evangelical we must answer this question. What is in the best interest of our homosexual neighbor? To continue to pursue fulfillment in pursuing homosexuality? Or to find ultimate, eternal fulfillment in Christ? What is best for the homosexual? To live life with homosexuality as its end or to live life with Christ as its end?

If we support marriage equality, we send a clear message to our homosexual neighbors that homosexual behavior is in their best interest, both now and eternally. Given the Bible’s repeated, clear teaching that homosexual lifestyle will require the judgment of a holy, eternal, righteous God, that would not be the loving thing for us to do. Will their greatest happiness, their highest good, be found in being wedded to their partner or being wedded to Christ?