What could Jesus Christ possibly have to do with gay marriage? In this follow-up to the previous article, “Three ways God is being ignored in the gay-marriage debate,” we will see that not only has God the Father been ignored, but also how His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, is being ignored as well.
First, Jesus is being ignored in relation to His purpose. Once when publicly reading from a scroll where Isaiah 61:1-2 was found, Jesus said, “’The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,’ and after rolling up the scroll, he said, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:18-21). Jesus identified himself as the fulfillment to the prophet’s words because Jesus did not merely come to this earth to do good things, to heal people, and to teach about God; He is the Anointed One, the Messiah, that was to come to “proclaim liberty” not to captives in physical prisons, but to those enslaved in the spiritual prison of sin. Because of Adam and Eve and their sin in the Garden of Eden, we are all born enslaved to sin and oppressed by it, so we need someone to liberate us. Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:34-36, English Standard Version). To be a people, a country, and a culture on the brink of legalizing and legitimizing what God calls sin, we are ignoring what Jesus came to do for guilty sinners like you, I, and each person enslaved to any sin, including the sin of homosexuality. We are choosing enslavement to sin instead of the freedom that is only found in Jesus Christ.
Secondly, Jesus is being ignored in relation to His sacrifice. Just over a week ago, the world remembered the day in which the man Jesus of Nazareth was unjustly tried and sentenced to death. He was humiliated, spat upon, tortured, abandoned by His closest friends, betrayed by one of them, and eventually left to suffocate and die after being nailed to a Roman cross just outside of Jerusalem. Why? For what purpose did Jesus Christ, the Son of God, have to die such a horrible death? The Bible says that Jesus’ perfect sacrifice on the cross was necessary for any one of us to be saved from the just penalty and punishment for our sins. Jesus of Nazareth, who though He was God of very God, chose to humble Himself and endure not only the intense pain, agony, and humiliation of the cross, but He endured the very wrath of God so that all who would believe in Him would be forgiven, would be set free from the penalty, power, and eventual presence of sin, and would have the gift of eternal life. To continually live our lives in a way that ignores this sacrifice, you or I are left with no hope in this life or in the life to come when we must stand for judgment before a holy God. You and I either stand before God in Jesus' Christ's merit and righteousness, that is given to anyone who believes, or we must stand condemned because we have arrogantly refused the gift of Jesus’ sacrifice on our behalf. “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he had not believed in the name of the only Son of God” (John 3:18, ESV). To ignore Jesus and His sacrifice for sin is dangerous territory on which to embark for our country, our culture, and for the individual.
Finally, Jesus is being ignored in relation to His invitation. Just as when He walked this earth 2000 years ago, Jesus is still calling sinners like you and me to come and follow him. This invitation is a call to leave the life as you or I know it and to humbly live a life of faith and obedience to Jesus and His commands. This is a two-step process; you and I must first “come to Jesus,” and then we must “follow Him.” To “come to Him” is to believe in Jesus as Savior and repent of sin, for we cannot truly come to Him by remaining in our self-centered and sinful life. We must acknowledge the way we’ve lived is contrary to God’s good and perfect will, and then turn from our life of sin and turn to Jesus, who has taken our sin away. We then follow Jesus in His humble obedience to God the Father and His self-sacrifice for others. To live this life of righteousness that is pleasing to God is only possible because of Jesus, for the Bible says, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed” (1 Peter 2: 24, ESV). “For our sake (God) made (Jesus) to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Since Jesus became sin for you and me, we are able to live for not only God and His glory but for the sake of others. When we do, we will find the “abundant life” (John 10:10) Jesus came to bring. By giving in to the wants and desires of homosexuality and any other sinful desire contrary to God, we are ignoring Jesus’ gracious invitation to leave our lives of death and despair and to live lives full of hope, joy, and purpose.
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