Paul calls on us to love everyone. (Romans 12:10) Therefore, this passage isn’t taking a shot at the LGBTQ community or couples living together. Paul remembers how he and others in power confused the complete fulfillment of God’s love for being one with another they didn’t love, feeling so empty that drugs and alcohol wouldn’t take away the pain. He remembers killing Christians, being senseless, faithless, heartless, and ruthless.
Therefore, God gave them (Paul and others in power) over to the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator, who’s forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them (Paul +) over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion. Furthermore, since they didn’t think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, He gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what oughtn’t be done. They’ve become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity. They’re full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice. They’re gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey parents; they’re senseless, faithless, heartless, and ruthless. (Romans 1:24-31 contractions added).
Paul and his powerful friends didn’t want to retain knowledge of God. They worshiped money and power, not Him. When we negotiate life without God, He gives us over to the consequences of our mistakes. That is the wrath of God. He created us to live life in His presence, to have His power and love to better lives, our own and others.
What if the love between man and man and woman and woman is as pure and as good as heterosexual love. What if those interpreting God’s message into bible passages got it wrong because they were more focused on cultural and personal biases rather than focusing on the pure feelings of two individuals seeing the all encompassing beauty within one another. Life long compatibility is not gender specific. Love is love. God can see the beauty in unconditional love, but humans have struggled with the concept of love since the beginning of time.
There is no doubt that unconditional love between man and man and woman and woman is as pure as love between a man and a woman. Jesus has unconditional love for everyone. He lived his adult life with 12 men that he had unconditional love for. He was closer to his apostles than even his own family. Humans have struggled with the concept of love since the beginning of time because the main reason we are on Earth is to love one another and experience what love is and what love is not.
Paul, who wrote Romans and most of the New Testament, was a bad man before he met Jesus on the Road to Damascus and became a Christian. He broke every one of the Ten Commandments probably hundreds of time over and knew nothing about love. He probably had sexual encounters with both men and women because the Roman leaders of his day did. His gods were power and money. God/Jesus purposely took one of the baddest dudes alive to show how God’s power can change a person. Paul was a very artsy person who loved to sing and admits (I think in Galatians) that he has no sexual urge for women and says that is a good thing because he has more time to devote to Godly things. Paul is thought to have been married because of his high position in the Jewish Synagogue but was not married by the time he was on the Road to Damascus when he became a Christian. He knew nothing about unconditional love before He became a Christian and after he became a Christian he denies having sexual relations.
Most humans (yes, even Christians) have had sexual relations before marriage to one they are not married to. At an age, younger than an age where most get married, we lust for sex. It is usually at that time that we find out what love is not. We start craving sex as teenagers because our ancestors got married earlier. The sexual libido we have at a young age is meant for sexual reproduction. God commanded us to love one another and to populate the Earth. Paul talks about natural and unnatural sex. Natural sex is the kind of sex that can produce children and unnatural sex is the kind of sex that cannot reproduce. As we gain wisdom in life we learn more about unconditional love through marriage (whether to someone of the same sex or opposite sex). Our sexual lusts decrease and our unconditional love increases. God tells us that there is no marriage (sex) in heaven at all. God has known everyone who will be in heaven since before Adam and Eve, and He counts on us to have children so we can produce His people on Earth. The people and fetuses (the quick) that have been on earth will populate heaven and no one else.
It is not up to people to judge sex as being right or wrong, only to experience what love is and what love is not. God is the judge of everything, and if He thinks an individual as making a poor decision in regard to sex, it is up to Him to change that person. Unconditional love has nothing to do with sex.
I have read Day 3, Day 4 and Day 5. Some controversial topics are in these scriptures. There is a lot you can debate here. If there were 10 Biblical scholars sitting in a room together, they all may have a slightly different spin on this topic. Or there could be huge differences in opinions. I guess at the end of the day, that we are not the ones to be judging others. We all sin and it is up to God to pass judgement, not us. How does God pass judgement on the LGBTQ community? Natural sex is sex that can reproduce. This would not be the case in the gay community. Jesus/God has unconditional love for all his children. How do these two things fit together?
You are right, Pam. Not just Biblical scholars but all Christians have their take on God passing judgment on the LGBTQ community. The thing is we all do things the Bible says are wrong. I feel being gay is no worse or better than taking pens from work. It is no better or worse than having sex out of wedlock. Sin is sin. Reading between Biblical lines, I believe it is possible Paul had both heterosexual and homosexual relationships in and out of marriage. I believe Paul’s and God’s message is that true love is God’s love. God’s love is unconditional and always leads to peace. It is the love we will experience in heaven. It is the love God has for all of us who sin. Those of us who repent and believe in Jesus are forgiven no matter what our sin. I believe that at our judgment, when we meet Jesus all will have a chance to repent and believe. Many Biblical scholars disagree with me, but we won’t know for sure until we meet Jesus in heaven.