Home Christian News ‘Love the Sinner, Hate Our Sin’: Church Responds to LGBTQ Nightclub Mass...

‘Love the Sinner, Hate Our Sin’: Church Responds to LGBTQ Nightclub Mass Shooting

“Our job as believers is to always be willing to identify with the universal language that every human being speaks, and it’s pain,” Williams said. “I’ve asked thousands of people on multiple continents, ‘Hey, I’ve got a question for you. Do you have pain in your life?’ I’ve not met one person yet that says no.

“So that’s the starting point. If we can’t all start there, there’s no hope, because that’s where Christ started. He was a suffering servant. That’s our passion. That’s our heartbeat.”

Before Lillian accepted Jesus, she asked Williams what he thought of her lesbianism. He pointed her instead to what God thinks of lesbianism. She read the New Testament Scriptures Williams recommended.

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“She said, ‘It says it’s a sin,’” Williams said. “I learned a valuable lesson very early on, that it only matters what God’s Word says. It doesn’t matter what I think.

“My job is to love people and at the appointed time, to share the Gospel, the Good News, and to get them God’s Word. And until people are willing to read God’s Word, I don’t have any power to change anybody.”

Vanguard has worked to establish itself as a loving church ready to share God’s Word.

“Our community of unbelievers and the people in our city that are aware of Vanguard know that we love them. My prayer is that when they drive by Vanguard, they say that’s a church that cares about our community,” he said. “But also, I don’t want them to think we’re a community that just changes what God’s Word says, because that’s unnecessary.

“Most of the unbelieving people that I meet, especially in this community, whether we’re talking about transgender, homosexual, bisexual, I don’t think they are expecting me to change my understanding of the Bible. I think that they would like for me to hear their story and how they got to where they are.”

He points to the Great Commission as the church’s commandment to share the Gospel with all unbelievers.

“Whenever we put an issue of sin before the Gospel, we are missing the priority. The main thing should always be the main thing, and that is the communication of the Gospel,” he said. “And it’s for anyone who’s willing to believe that Jesus came, Jesus is God, Jesus died for our sins and He rose from the grave; that He is our only way to eternal life.

“And I think it’s really important in the complexity of a political situation like this—and it is political, it’s highly political—I think it’s important that we always look for ways to take it back to the Gospel.”

In the current climate of amplifying personal pronouns, Williams is focused on possessive pronouns.

“Whose are you? Not who are you, whose are you? Because until you know whose you are, it doesn’t matter who you are.”

This article originally appeared at Baptist Press.