Why Can't We Just Agree That Love Is Love?

Last week we talked about how we’re made in God’s image and that isn’t about how we look but about how humans are. One of the ways we bare his image is by being relational and loving. We did not design or create love, it’s something put into us by God. But also like we said last week, humanity likes to take the good gifts God has given us and find ways to use them for sin, for evil.

Saying that love is love is kind of like if I ordered the grilled boneless chicken breast at a restaurant and they brought me a fried chicken leg and said, “chicken is chicken”. I’d be really glad for the mistake and I’d eat it, but it’s clearly not the same!

God is love so He gets to decide how love should and should not be expressed in human relationships.

PRAY

What is love?

Have y’all ever heard this song? Have y’all ever heard the of the movie Night at the Roxbury? It’s about these two brothers who just want to get into this club and be one of the cool people in the club so everyone will think they’re cool. They think that’s the love they’re looking for, but like many people, they’re misunderstanding what love is.

1 John 4:16 ESV

So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

What should marriage be

Genesis 2:24 ESV

Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

Man… wife

hold fast

Eph 5.22-33 “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refer…”

In the Bible, human marriage is a picture of Jesus’s relationship with his people. This is a faithful, exclusive, life-creating, never-ending love, and it is a love across difference. So human marriage is designed to be faithful, exclusive, life-creating, never-ending, and across the difference of male and female.

What sex should be

Who likes smores? Have you ever built a camp fire in your living room to make smores?

A good thing in the wrong place can be very harmful.

Hebrews 13:4 ESV

Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.

Research shows that people who are sexually active with several people tend to be less happy than those who are in a committed relationship with one person.

Exodus 20:14 ESV

“You shall not commit adultery.

Matthew 5:27–28 ESV

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

Romans 1:26–27 ESV

For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

God designed sex

for

a man and a woman

married

humble

intimacy

pleasure

having children

not for

people of the same gender

outside of marriage

in real life or on a screen

selfish or hurtful

How Christians should be

We love God…

love his Word and truth

believe his Word and truth

even if we don’t understand it

we don’t compromise his truth for other people, we defend it

We love people…

all people

it is loving to share truth

it is not loving to pronounce judgement but withhold hope

1 Corinthians 6:9 ESV

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality,

Same sex attraction and activity is not in a different class of sin from other sexual sin.

1 Corinthians 6:10 ESV

nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

Sexual sin is not in another class of sins most people commit!

Every sin needs to be repented of. Every sin can be forgiven. Every person needs to acknowledge their sin and “go and sin no more”, as Jesus told the woman at the well who was caught in adultery.

So we treat everyone well and show them love. We lovingly call sin what it is and invite sinners to turn to God for forgiveness. We remember that we are sinners too and if not for God we would still be guilty and under condemnation for our sins.

But there is hope!

Romans 5:8 ESV

but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.