“Jesus was this loving individual, he didn’t exclude people because they’re different…”

As a pastor, I feel compelled to say to every person I meet no matter what their lifestyle is. “Who you are is not how you’re supposed to be. Just because it is natural for you does not mean that it is holy for you. You are a sinner.” Yes, this is offensive and explains why Christ and Christians are scorned even killed.

The offense extends not just to one category of people, but to many categories of people. On the issue of sexual activity, I fact, I find it incredibly offensive when a guy keeps impregnating women with no intention of caring for the child they create.

Personally, I understand what it is like to have desires out of line with Scripture. I was sexually active with my teenage girlfriend prior to becoming a Christian. I won’t even pretend to be someone who has never done wrong. Upon my conversion, I started reading the Bible and taking part in Sunday church services and midweek classes and Bible studies at a solid church. I learned that I was not acting in accordance with God’s Word. Loving leaders explained that in obedience to God I needed to change my mind and my behavior. And, by God’s grace I did. I was given the truth in love. I did not feel hated, despised, rejected, or anything of the sort. Eventually, we were married and recently celebrated twenty-five years of faithful marriage by God’s grace.

As a new Christian, I started looking to Jesus, who lived the perfect and most impactful life in the history of the world without ever having sex. For some people to follow him faithfully means they must do the same. That news shocks our system. As pastor and scholar John Piper pointed out in an interview I conducted with him for this project, “Sex is so much a part of what it means for us to be satisfied and happy that putting any restraints on it feels like comprising our very humanity. But that premise contradicts the greatest person who ever existed. Jesus Christ was the fullest human that has ever lived. Nobody was a more beautiful human being. No one was more fully human than Jesus. And Jesus never had sex.”

For me as a spiritual leader there would be nothing easier than to say, “Go ahead and take your pants off whenever, wherever, with whomever you want.” But Christianity is about love that changes people. We should in love accept people wherever they are at—just as God accepted me when I started considering Christianity. We should in love invite all people, starting with ourselves, to turn from sin and turn to God.  If at any point God’s people fail to echo God by turning from their own sin and lovingly inviting others to do the same, then we are in fact simply no longer living as Christians. There is no real Christianity without practicing and preaching loving repentance. This includes Christians repenting of being unloving in our attitude when we echo what the Bible says, something I have been guilty of.