Is the gospel good news for gay people?

Is the gospel good news for gay people? This is a question that affects me personally. 

When I’m attracted to somebody, it’s usually another woman. I might use words like ‘gay’ or ‘bi’ to describe my attractions. Does this mean I’m somehow wrong and cut off from God? Does God love me? Can I know him? 

Maybe you’re asking the same kind of questions. Perhaps your experience is similar to mine, or you have a friend, child or colleague who is gay.

Perhaps you’re apprehensive about telling people you’re a Christian, because you know the reaction will be: “Oh, so you hate gay people?” – and you just don’t know how to respond.

Bad news

Our culture believes that the Christian faith only has bad news for gay people. This is expressed in different ways, but it comes down to a belief that biblical teaching denies people things that they are legitimately entitled to, including family, intimacy and happiness. It seems that people are being asked to ignore, suppress or deny who they really are – to live a lie – which is unfair and mindlessly cruel. 

Whether I stay single or if I marry someday, I can tell the gospel story through my sexuality

Perhaps that’s how you feel about the Bible’s teaching on same-sex sexuality. It’s certainly how I used to feel, as a teenager growing up in church who was becoming aware that my sexual attractions were not usually heterosexual. I fell in love with another girl in my late teens and we dated for about three years. But all the while, I was aware that the Bible said ‘no’ to same-sex relationships for followers of Jesus. Back then, this really did not feel like good news to me.

But that is not how I feel any more. I now believe that the Bible has really good news for gay people – and for everyone else too. What the Bible says about sexuality is beautiful, life-giving and filled with hope. 

Let me show you what changed my mind.

For the sake of keeping within my word count (editor, you can thank me later), I’m going to assume that you know two things. Firstly, the Bible teaches that marriage is a lifelong, one-flesh union between one man and one woman, and this union is the only context for sex. Secondly (and therefore), the Bible prohibits sexual contact and activity between two people of the same sex. 

Even if we’re convinced about what the Bible says, we might not be sure why it says it – and so we come back to those beliefs that it’s unfair and mindlessly cruel. So why does God define marriage in this way? 

Gospel sexuality

Here’s the headline: human marriage and sexuality are about something bigger than themselves. They point to a bigger story – the love story at the heart of the universe.

This is the story of a God who deeply, passionately and faithfully loves his people forever. Marriage and sex are used all the way through the Bible as signposts to, or pictures of, this relationship between God and his people.

Often, the people of God are portrayed as an unfaithful wife. Think of Ezekiel 16 or the book of Hosea, where Israel’s idolatry is compared to a wife cheating on her husband.

What the Bible says about sexuality is beautiful, life-giving and filled with hope

The picture is also used in a positive way. Here’s an example from Isaiah 62:5: “As a young man marries a young woman, so will your Builder marry you; as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice over you.”

Picture yourself as a guest at a wedding. Suddenly, there’s a buzz at the back of the church; the bride has just arrived. The music swells, the guests stand, the bride starts walking down the aisle. Now imagine turning back to the front of the room and looking at the groom. Whenever I do this, the groom’s face is so full of joy that it makes me cry! Isaiah tells us that the joy of a groom over his bride is just a faint reflection of the way that God rejoices over his people.

Christ and the Church 

As we enter the New Testament, the marriage theme continues. John the Baptist calls Jesus the bridegroom, and Jesus also refers to himself in this way (John 3:29; Mark 2:19). This is a really odd thing for him to say as a single man. We’re meant to ask: “So who is his bride?” 

Just as in Isaiah, the people of God are the bride. Jesus is God in the flesh, walking around in human form, and he presents himself as a man waiting for his wedding day. 

Perhaps the place we see this most clearly is in Ephesians 5:30-32: “For we are members of [Christ’s] body. ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ This is a profound mystery – but I am talking about Christ and the church.”

In three sentences, Paul goes from talking about our relationship with Jesus, to the relationship between husband and wife, and then back to the relationship between Jesus and his people. He’s saying, this is actually about that. Human marriage between a man and a woman has always been about the ultimate marriage between Jesus and his people. The intimacy and unity of marriage and sex speak of a greater intimacy and unity that we can share with Jesus.

Human marriage is to this ultimate marriage what a trailer is to the full film

One final example – Revelation 19:7, where Jesus’ return and the renewal of all things is presented as a wedding feast: “Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready.”

Human marriage points to this ultimate marriage. Jesus taught us that human marriage will only exist as long as this world does (Matthew 22:30). Once he comes back, there will be no more marriage between human beings, because we’ll be living in the reality that human marriage was pointing us to all along – the eternal union of Jesus and the Church. We won’t need the signpost any more because we’ll have the full reality.

A reason for the ‘no’

Understanding this was helpful to me for several reasons. Firstly, it gives insight into why the Bible teaches that marriage should be male-female, and why it limits sexual contact and activity to that relationship. 

In a marriage between a man and a woman, there’s a unity in difference that reflects the greater unity in difference between God and his people. (Obviously, two people of the same sex are different people with different personalities, but it is the biological, sexual difference between a man and a woman that is crucial in marriage. That’s laid out for us in Genesis, and by Paul and Jesus when they quote Genesis in Ephesians 5 and Matthew 19. Marriage is a one-flesh union between one man and one woman – a union that is about more than sex, but that sex is certainly a crucial part of.)

A sexual relationship between two men or two women (or, indeed, between a man and a woman who aren’t married) doesn’t do what sex and marriage are designed to do. It doesn’t signpost us to the story of God and his people in the way that it is meant to. God’s ‘no’ to same-sex relationships isn’t some arbitrary or callous rule – it’s there for good reason.

God didn’t have to give us a reason behind his command about marriage. He could have simply asked us to obey it in confused resignation. But he chooses to explain, to give us a reason why. And what a beautiful reason it is – we are called to reflect something so much greater.

A better perspective

This big picture understanding of gospel sexuality also puts marriage and singleness in proper perspective.

Marriage is not ultimate, but it points to the ultimate reality of the marriage of Jesus and the Church. Human marriage is to this ultimate marriage what a trailer is to the full film. A trailer is meant to make you want to see the full film. Human marriage is meant to make you want to enjoy the ultimate marriage. And just as someone doesn’t miss out by skipping the trailer and watching the film, I’m not missing out by not being married now. All of us who follow Jesus will one day enjoy the real thing, married to him forever.

So, marriage tells the story of the gospel. It paints a picture of the full reality to come. If you’re married, you have the privilege of being a living picture of the loving union God offers to us. But as single people, we also get to express the goodness of God through our sexualities. Singleness declares that God himself is enough, and the future he promises is worth waiting for. Single people are telling the same story through our sexualities as married people are, just in a different way. As Sam Allberry puts it in his book 7 Myths about Singleness (Crossway): “If marriage shows us the shape of the gospel, singleness shows us its sufficiency.”

So, whether I stay single my whole life, or if I marry a man someday, I can tell the gospel story through my sexuality. That’s pretty good news.

A fulfilled life

The fear of our culture is that being single means missing out on family, intimacy and happiness. And often, that’s a message we’ve believed in the Church, too. We can believe that singleness is good in theory – but we can struggle to apply that to someone’s actual experience. Even if we can concede that singleness is a gift, we assume it’s the kind nobody actually wants.

Yet the Bible claims that singleness is a good gift. It is upheld as just as good as marriage – or dare I say, even better! In 1 Corinthians 7:7, Paul says he’d rather everyone were single!

As a single person, you can still experience family, intimacy and happiness. God gives all of his people access to these things, no matter their marital status. I experience intimacy – first and foremost with God himself, but also with other people in non-sexual friendships. I have brothers and sisters and children in the church family that God has adopted me into. I have the happiness of being deeply loved.

Singleness shouldn’t be bad or second best. It should be rich and life-giving. This doesn’t happen automatically, of course. We all have a part to play in making this a reality. But when we do, we can see that the single life does not mean missing out on something essential. It, too, is a good gift from our good God.

Good news

When my girlfriend and I finally broke up for good, I obeyed Jesus through gritted teeth. I chose to trust him but I couldn’t understand why he would say ‘no’ to me on this. I could only see bad news – a pointless, lonely life of unfilled desire. But in his grace, God has shown me how limited and incomplete that perspective was. In the biblical teaching on sexuality, I now see an invitation into the greatest love story ever told; a family I get to be a part of; a chance to enjoy deep, rich friendships; a gift in my singleness; the joy of knowing God himself, here and now; and hope for a future where all my deepest longings will be eternally satisfied.

This is the good news of the gospel. And it’s good news for gay people, just as it is for all people. It’s costly, yes – but as all lovers know, any cost is worth it to be with the one that you love.

And this is good news that we can share. Perhaps you’re that person I mentioned at the start, who’s terrified of someone saying to you: “Oh, so you hate gay people?” Now, your conversation could actually run like this:

“Oh, so you hate gay people?”

“No.”

“But you think they shouldn’t get married or have sex?”

“Well, yes, but that’s because of what I think marriage and sexuality are for.”

“OK, then, what are they for?”

“Let me tell you about this epic love story…”

In our conversations about sexuality, we have an opportunity to share Jesus and to help LGBT people who have felt hated, maligned and rejected by the Church to see something different. We have an opportunity to help young people in our church, those on the frontlines of these conversations, to see the good news that God has for them and their friends (and we at Living Out have just produced a new resource, Kaleidoscope, to help you with this!).

Let’s see conversations around sexuality not as a thing to fear, but as an opportunity. Because the gospel is good news for gay people, and it’s news that we need to hear just as much as anybody else.