Fulton Church of Christ » Homosexuality and Homosexual Marriage

Biblical marriage and civil marriage are different.
- New Testament marriage had purposes
  - Ephesians 5:22 – 33 An illustration to unbelievers of the relationship between Christ and His church
  - 1 Corinthians 7 The appropriate context for sexual intercourse.
- Civil marriage is a comparatively recent invention
  - For raising tax revenues.
  - For defining property contracts.
- It is unfortunate that the two use the same word to describe them
  - Also impacted are actuarial tables.
    - The insurance industry has used the Biblical relationship in their statistics and offers lower rates to the married.
    - Homosexuals have higher rates of health problems and shorter life expectancies.
    - Heterosexual couples will pay higher premiums if the two types of couples are required by politics to be made statistically equal.
  - The church needs to start using a different word. Let the homosexuals and politicians keep the word “marriage.”
Obviously, homosexuality is defined in the Bible as bad behavior
- Romans 1:26 – 27
- 1 Corinthians 6:9 – 10
- 1 Timothy 1:9 – 10
- Leviticus 18:22, 20:13 (a capital crime)
Homosexuality is only one of many bad behaviors
- Christians are bought out of the right-and-wrong economy through the sacrifice of Jesus
- Early Christians obviously had difficulty with the transition
- We are being transformed
- Accepting bad behavior as inevitable is called self-deception
- Our motives for good behavior are not fear of Judgment but to please God and enable the progress of the gospel.