Is God’s grace wide enough for homosexuals?

Of course, depending on how we define the term. We recently witnessed yet another erstwhile evangelical reject biblical sexual ethics. Richard Hays, professor at Duke Divinity School, whose work on ethics has been much appreciated among evangelicals, began arguing that God’s grace is “widening” to include unrepentant homosexuals.

No. God’s grace doesn’t widen, and it doesn’t encompass unrepentant homosexuals. Why then would I say “of course God’s grace is wide enough for homosexuals?” Because God’s grace is wide enough for any sin which by His grace is repented of, and too narrow to include any sin that is not repented of.

Which brings us back to the actual crux of the matter among professing Christians. The trope that Christians are mean-spirited, suicide-causing Pharisees with respect to the sexually confused is propaganda of the worst sort. Christians don’t condemn those who reject sexual perversity despite a temptation toward it. We don’t turn away from those in the midst of the battle. It is the quislings, the traitors that surrender that will suffer God’s wrath should they die in the midst of that rebellion.

In so doing we are right in line with God’s Word. Paul wrote:

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God (I Cor. 6: 9-11).

The sins listed here are not, of themselves, that which makes one miss out on eternal life. Were that the case, “such were some of you” makes no sense. Some of the Corinthians had been caught up in some or all of these sins before coming to faith. As with the rest of us, likely the temptation followed with them as they entered the kingdom. And so the battle raged on.

It is when the battle ceases, when repentance stops, that these sins become evidence that this person is not in the kingdom. No believer may identify as a “fornicating Christian,” a “thieving Christian,” a “drunkard Christian” and be an actual Christian. Which is precisely what progressive “Christians” are demanding of us, that we embrace the oxymoronic notion of the “gay Christian.”

No one can be in submission to this text and claim that fornication, idolatry, adultery and extortion are not evil and wicked sins. Which is precisely what progressive “Christians” are demanding of us, that we deny sexual perversion is wicked and evil.

While not all sins are equally egregious (despite the evangelical truism to the contrary), every one of them is rebellion against the living God. Every one of them is due the full wrath and fury of God. All those, however, who by the power of the Holy Spirit, turn and repent, resting in Christ, inherit eternal life. His grace is sufficient even for my own sins, to His everlasting praise.