Instead, we have an opportunity to develop a deeper understanding of the nature of sin.
Yes, the sinful heart is active, making choices based on deceitful desires. But we’re distorted and deformed even at the level of our basic instincts.
Did you choose to be a proud person? Was it a conscious decision that made defensiveness your default response to correction? Did you select “fearful” from a drop-down menu of available temptations? Of course not.
Sin has so deeply damaged us that, apart from Christ, we are incapable of not sinning.
Oh, wretched men and women that we are! Who shall deliver us from this body of death? Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord! A deeper understanding of sin will lead us to a deeper understanding of our Redeemer.
That’s an opportunity, not a threat.
3. This is an opportunity to grow in our understanding of the Christian life.
Does God promise that if you “just trust Christ” all your same-sex desires will go away? Does he promise that if you “just trust Christ” you’ll never battle anxiety again? No.
Scripture gives us a much different view of the Christian life. It is entirely possible that God will call a believer to a life-long struggle with same-sex attraction—or anxiety, or depression, or loneliness, or any number of battles.
Now let me be clear: It’s not that change isn’t possible for the Christian. We do change. We are called to growing Christ-likeness all our lives.
But too often we reduce that to a basic formula: “Just remember (your identity in Christ, your justification, your experience of the Spirit, etc.), and your struggles will go away.” That’s a defunct view of the Christian life, making change superficial and unrelated to God and yielding shallow, plastic Christians.
Anything that destroys such a notion is an opportunity, not a threat.
4. This is an opportunity to love our enemies.
If you read the headlines, you’ve noticed that—surprise!—there are people who find any use of the word “sin,” any statements about our universal, heterosexual or homosexual need for Christ, deeply offensive. If we’re faithful to Scripture and to our Lord, such opposition will come.
But it brings with it an opportunity to respond as Jesus did: “When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly” (1 Peter 2:23).
In our terms: no raging editorials; no internet flaming; no personal attacks; no disdain—spoken or unspoken.
Instead: listening carefully before speaking; love for those made in the image of God; kindness in word and deed.
What a testimony to the power of the gospel such responses would be!
God is giving his church the opportunity to become a more pure and faithful bride of Christ, to shine brighter in the darkness, lovingly and truthfully proclaiming the excellencies of him who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light. May he give us grace to seize the opportunity!
