Greetings,
Today I am in Spain facilitating a week of prophetic training with hungry students in G42 Leadership Academy in Mijas, Spain. God was good today and life happened in the room and in the hearts of those there. I am looking forward to all that God is going to do here this week.
I am continuing to write concerning some of the tough questions presented to the church in this present time. God is working in His church and bringing life to issues that have once been swept under the rug and not dealt with in a spirit of life. As I have already written, if we address things like homosexuality, fornication, adultery and other accepted practices of the world according to what is written in the law, we could come up with some seemingly clear legalistic answers in how we deal with them. But we cannot just deal with issues we have to deal with people. God has never desired to simply fix issues, He desires to love people and to bring them the freedom of life and the freedom of becoming life-givers in their world. God doesn’t just want to get people into heaven when they die, He wants to get heaven into their lives while they live. This is not just a matter of controlling or judging things that seem to be wrong according to God’s word. It is a matter of getting the power of God’s grace into people’s lives that transforms them to be free from the consequences of things that are less than the life that God has for them.
As leaders and believers in Christ we have to realize that the law did not work. It could not accomplish what God wants to accomplish in human lives. What is it that God wanted to do? He has always desired to have an intimate relationship with people who would be flawed without Him in their lives. So, the Old Testament has some Scriptures that seem to be clear in how God deals with homosexuality, adultery, fornication, and other accepted worldly practices. In the law there are what appears to be clear judgments, but are those judgements what God desires? In the New Testament we could say that Jesus never said anything about homosexuality of other things that are accepted realities in the world. I have heard that rationalization, that reasoning, by people in the church. I addressed in an earlier blog that Jesus didn’t talk to the Jews about things that were already addressed in the law. He didn’t come to tell them what to do or how to act, He came to reveal to them who they were meant to be in Christ. Whether we conclude that homosexuality is wrong or not, Jesus never condemned homosexuals. He may make a judgment that homosexuality will not produce the fullness of life that God intends for people to have, but He never came to condemn those who wrestle with those things or even embrace them. He makes a judgment of a flaw, but He doesn’t condemn those to death who struggle with the issues that produce dysfunction or death. He wants to give to each and every one a fullness of life. He wants for each and every one to become givers of life in their world.
We have the example of the woman caught in adultery. Jesus could have condemned her. He was the only one in the room who could have condemned her because He was the only one in the room that was innocent. He did not condemn her, but He also told her to go and sin no more. He did not condone her lifestyle, nor did He condemn her in her present condition. He loved her, but then He expected His love to inspire change in her life. He expected her encounter with God to change her life in some way. I cannot just address this subject in a blog and come up with a clear conclusion. I have to look at this subject from some different perspectives.
Paul addressed the subject in Romans chapter 1 in the context of people bound to the way of the world. People in the world are confused people. They are people rejecting the voice of God in and around them and seeking to justify the desires of their own flesh as the way of life. They attempt to create a god in their own likeness and image and do not embrace a God who will transform them into something different than their own desires seem to mandate. The result is one of being given over to the lusts of their own flesh. This includes men lusting after men, women lusting after women, and other things that are like this.
Romans 1:22 Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. 24 Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, 25 who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. 26 For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. 27 Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due. 28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting; 29 being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers, 30 backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31 undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful; 32 who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them.
Paul words were given in the context of people living in the way of the world. He didn’t present it as a condemnation to those who live in those ways in the world, but as a challenge to believers to embrace a different way of life that brings hope and life to those bound to the consequences of the way of the world. It includes many things. It includes anything that can gratify personal needs but cannot produce a generational testimony of life to others. Paul did not write these things to those bound to them, but as an inspiration for all to be made free from them. Being free from them doesn’t make you better than those who are bound to them, it just gives you a power of grace to change the world around you for their sake. It gives you an inheritance in God’s kingdom to become a new and living way that can bring freedom to your world. Paul’s words were words to believers, not words to condemn unbelievers. The consequence of the world’s practice was already the condemnation of the world. God desires for them to be made free from them.
The issue is not whether God condemns or condones the ways of the world. The real issue is the way of the kingdom of heaven is powerful enough to free us from the ways of the world and it will affect the world around us for the sake of others. It is a matter of the inheritance of the kingdom of Heaven. God wants to invade our world with heaven’s grace and miraculously change our world for the sake of others. His life will always produce life in a generational and multigenerational way. It will do this both naturally and spiritually for the glory of His name.
Blessings,
Ted J. Hanson
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