Sexual Identity part 2

Introduction

Welcome back, NXT! Its going to be a good evening as we dive into God’s word and continue with part 2 of our conversation about sexual identity. If you weren’t here last week I would really encourage you to go on our Youtube channel and check out that message. The conversation was split into 2 parts, the first about homosexuality and what the Bible actually says, the other about identity.

This week we are going to do something similar, I’m going to take the first part of the message to talk about gender and what the Bible actually says about it, and the second will be talking further about identity.

Next week we will be wrapping up this series with a Q&A featuring the whole NXT teaching team, I’ll be moderating it so you’ll be able to hear from Zane, Jake, and LB. Reminder, if you have questions please go to grace.church/nxtquestion and submit yours! We will be having an extended message portion next week to make room for as many questions as possible!

With that being said, lets get started by opening up to Genesis 1:26-28

Content

Genesis 1:26–28 ESV

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

A quick note on God creating us in His own image. This is known as imago dei, the fact that we bear the image of God. What does that mean? It does not mean we look like, that is physically, God. One of the many implications of our imago dei is that we wield the ability to love, and pursue relational intimacy. That is obviously not the exhaustive list of implications of our imago dei.

We are standing in the midst of a culture that has a lot to say about gender & sexuality. In many cases culture has gotten its prints on things that the Bible makes pretty simple and has complicated it immensely. Now, how is that possible? you might ask. It is simply the intended result of sin. Of course culture is going to corrupt whatever it touches, because culture is inherently sinful and lost. That is why culture should never be your God, only Jesus should and can be a good God!

With that being said, we do need to do our due diligence as intelligent Christ followers to seek to understand the questions being asked by culture, and some Christians. If you recall, a month or two ago I preached a message about the Word of God and talked about how it is essential for us, for Christians, to be intellectually engaged with culture and scripture.

So, what are some things that culture is asking?

Is “gender” a social construct?

Should male or female be a matter of choice?

Are there more than 2 genders?

These are all questions that culture is asking and answering. So, how do we intellectually engage with them as Christians?

What is fascinating though not surprising is that 10 years ago those questions would have been unheard of with the exception of within english & women’s studies departments at secular universities, now, however, many of you probably know someone who is raising or has been raised gender neutral, who has changed their pronouns, you’ve probably seen a “gender neutral” bathroom at a coffee shop in Downtown Minneapolis and (I know for a fact) some of you have family members or friends who are transitioning.

For the most part, some inside & outside of the Church have begun to answer all three of those questions with a resounding “yes!” and, clearly according to scripture, the answer is “no.”

I want to take a moment and ask for grace and love. I want to ask for it in two ways, first I want to ask for it for myself. That you would offer me grace and love as I attempt to help you understand a fairly complex issue and how we can think about it as Christians. I may say some things that offend or cause you to disagree, but I want to encourage you to embrace the stance of having a willingness to disagree and yet still listen. Second, that you would offer people who would answer those questions with a “yes!” grace and love. We have to keep in mind that we do not know everyone’s story, we don’t know their sin or sin done to them, and we don’t know what has led to decisions that have been made. While we may disagree with them, we can still love them and offer them grace.

Truly, I think this topic is very complex culturally but very simple Biblically. God makes it clear, He created them male and female. He has prescribed to humanity a binary sex structure. Determined by the male and female reproductive organs.

Now where this gets complicated is when you distinguish between “sex” (i.e., male and female. Binary) and “gender.” Gender is actually a pretty recent invention and is more difficult to examine. One professor out of Moody Bible Institute, Christopher Yuan says this,

Unlike sex, gender is a category that exists objectively only in the realm of linguistics. It doesn’t point to anything tangible. Instead, “gender” now is being used to refer to a psychological reality independent from biological sex. It’s the subjective self-perception of being male or female.

This is where things like preferred pronouns and gender neutral bathrooms start to be introduced. According to culture, sex is physical, gender is mental and/or emotional. Things like, “I just don’t feel male” start being said and God’s intention for creation gets lost in the mess of culture.

So where does the complication come in? Yuan says that Culture views sex as objective and gender as subjective. Sex is objective because people claim “sex is ‘assigned’ at birth” rather than observed at birth according to the physical evidence and genetic DNA.

So, you can see where in a culture that defines “sex” objectively and “gender” subjectively (according to a psychological reality independent from biological sex) things would get complicated.

Yuan continues and says this,

Given that sex is objective and gender is subjective, you would think we would value conforming one’s subjective ideas to objective truth. Instead, the opposite is true: our culture now values altering the objective, physical reality of our bodies to accommodate the subjective impression of ourselves.

And this is where identity comes in. We live in a culture that says you determine your own identity. But we know that identity in anything other than Jesus is too small and minimizes what Jesus has for us in the Gospel.

I believe the biggest issue in all of this, these past two weeks, is that we are trying to take into our hands what God never intended for us to have control over. Whether it is our sexual identity as straight or gay, or our sexual identity as male or female. God calls us to holiness in a world that is broken from Genesis 3 and onward.

If we attempt to find out identity in any way that culture tells us to then we will always come up short to what God and the Gospel wants for us.

In essence, we see in Genesis a clear order to creation: God created them male and female. Culture has taken the “very good” of God’s creation of man and woman and perverted it.

I have three quick points I want to make before we go into small group,

1. God is Holy, and our sexual identity is ultimately a call to holiness before a holy God.

Because of this, its not about saving yourself for something, its not about “not” going too far, or being straight. God’s best for us is outlined in His word: Because God is Holy, we desire Holiness.

I think about the book of Leviticus. The whole point of the book is to say this: God is holy, you are not. But, I will make a way for you towards holiness.

In fact, Leviticus 11 says this, after listing all of the various animals the Israelites could and could not eat-

Leviticus 11:44 ESV

For I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy. You shall not defile yourselves with any swarming thing that crawls on the ground.

While our conversation obviously is not about purification rights and clean vs. unclean animals this still has an application for us. We are to turn from anything that defiles and run with perseverance towards Christ & holiness.

While I don’t want to stretch scripture to fit our moment in culture, I do want to apply it like this: Any time we elevate anything above Christ it defiles us, and we are to turn away from whatever that thing is and pursue holiness.

2. We are broken from Genesis 3 and on.

Our fallen nature causes our desires to be perverted. We should not be surprised when culture distorts God’s order of creation or perverts his intentions. Sinners are gonna sin, corruption is gonna corrupt, the lost are gonna be lost.

Paul tells us what happened because of the fall,

Romans 5:12 ESV

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—

And then tells us the effects of that sin in Romans 6:23

Romans 6:23 ESV

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

But, God provided a way for humankind to atone for their sin through sacrifice;

Genesis 3:21 ESV

And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.

God killed an animal and made clothes to cover their nakedness which brought them shame, this serves as a foretelling of the practice of animal sacrifice that God would command from Israel. But, He also painted a picture of what He would do thousands of years later on the Cross,

John 1:29 ESV

The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!

Revelation 13:8 ESV

and all who dwell on earth will worship it, everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain.

Jesus became the lamb of God who was slain once to cover the sins of all the believing,

John 3:16 ESV

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

So, its because of this that,

3. We ought to pursue holiness in all areas, specifically sexuality because of Christ’s sacrifice for us.

The only identity we are called to as Christians is our identity in Christ. And that call demands us to pursue holiness. Christ died so that we could be with Him, he has made us righteous so we can be in His presence and has given us the Holy Spirit so we can pursue Holiness.

Any time you pursue an identity outside of this (particularly one the Bible calls sinful) you are perverting God’s plans.

Conclusion

My hope is that you’ve noticed a few things these past two weeks.

First, that our identity in anything other than Jesus is too small.

We can sit down and really unpack and scrutinize these topics and get into the muck and the mire of terminology, theological implications, christian ethic, apologetics, esc and really discuss these topics. But, when it really comes down to it the issues are simple: culture tells us our identity is in our own hands, when it was never meant to be. We were meant, all human-beings, to have our identity in the relational creator God who looked at Adam & Eve and said “Very good!”

Second, the result of the fall was sin entering the world. And sin mixing with the world meant God’s creation was perverted.

As we look out into our fallen world 100% of the brokenness that we see can be explained with the fall and sin entering into the world. When we have this perspective, we no longer view it as us vs. them. Insiders vs. outsiders. But we are able to view it as lost people acting out their reality…they’re lost. This understanding should reorient us towards love. That even though we recognize they are wrong, that they have perverted the truth, we know they are still imago dei and are in need of the Gospel just like you once were. Our response should always be love!

Third, Christians are meant to pursue holiness.

The ministry strategy of Jesus was brilliant and simple. Eat with the sinners. We have gotten so far away from this strategy in today’s day and age. We’ve separated ourselves as if we are the survivors and the sinners are the zombies. We put up barricades to prevent them from getting into “our space” and don’t even entertain them. Jesus did the opposite. Jesus went to them, into their home, into their reality, and loved them. He didn’t shy away from condemning their sin, but he was loving. Isn’t it interesting that no one ever doubted Jesus’ love? Despite the sermon on the mount, despite his ministry, they doubted who He was- thats what put Him on the cross. But they never doubted that He was loving.

We are living in a cultural moment in Christian culture where “love” equates to support. To “love” someone who is transgender or same-sex attracted means you support them and the lifestyle they are living. But friends, if this were true then Jesus could not have been God. If choosing to love people means you support everything they do, then Jesus supported the pharisees’ hypocrisy and he supported the tax collector’s blatant theft from their own people. Or, could it be, that choosing to love has nothing to do with approval and everything to do with recognizing humanity’s imago dei?

I wonder, do people say that you are loving?

Last thing I want to say is this:

Your sexuality needs to be about holiness before a righteous God. Put THAT filter on it as you consider anything. Whether it is gender, or kissing. Your pursuit should always be holiness.