"The monstrosity of sexual intercourse outside of marriage is that those who indulge in it are trying to isolate one kind of union (the sexual) from all the other kinds of union which were intended to go along with it and make up the total union."

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Many years ago, on my first day as a new staffer on Focus on the Family’s social issues research team, I noticed one of my colleagues had an interesting message taped across the top of his computer terminal, carefully positioned so his eyes would meet it many times a day. Its message was simple but powerful: "The homosexual is my neighbor." This short and cryptic message served as an ever-present reminder to him of his proper motivation in his work as the researcher and developer of strategies for combating the homosexual agenda. He was wise to put such an important message daily before his eyes as a minute-by-minute reminder, because our tendency, given the high pitch of the "culture wars" is to see homosexuals as the enemy.

How can Christians follow this delicate balance between a calling to love the homosexual as our neighbor and the moral necessity to condemn the practice of homosexuality? To get at this important question, there are two preliminary truths that we must understand: 1) the sacredness and dignity of the human person and 2) there is an eternal sanctity and nature to human sexuality and any deviance from that order is sin and detrimental, whether hetero- or homosexual.

The Nature of the Human Person

Humanity has its recorded beginning in Genesis 1:26 as God declares, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness." Man is the only part of creation that is created in the image and likeness of the Trinitarian God. As Ranald Macaulay and Jerram Barrs explain in their book, Being Human, "The sun and moon are not in his image, nor is the earth, nor are all the creatures that have been created in the air or on the land or in the sea. Only man is described this way."1  Humanity is unique for this very reason.

This gives humanity incredible value and dignity simply because of the nature of God's creation. Every person uniquely bears the imago Dei, the image of God, and thus must be treated with dignity and love. That applies to the unborn, the elderly, our coworkers, the homosexual and even our annoying neighbor. We are therefore called to love our neighbor as ourselves, not because of what they do or don’t do, but because of what they are: image bearers of God. Therefore, we are always to treat the homosexual, as well as the adulterer or anyone who is entangled in sexual sin, with love and dignity, just as Christ did when he encountered them. But we must also condemn the behavior because our love for the individual and an understanding of the sanctity of human sexuality compels us to.

The Nature and Sanctity of Human Sexuality

In order to understand the sanctity of human sexuality, we must understand the characteristics of the Trinitarian God, in whose image humanity is created. These traits, quite instructive in our understanding of sexuality, include the characteristics of their relationships with one another. The members of the Trinity exist in community together at the most intimate level, for while they are Three, they are One. They love one another passionately. Their relationship is exclusive and permanent, i.e., from eternity; there have always been three members and they don’t delete, exchange or add partners. Another important aspect of the Trinity’s relationship is that of "distinguishable peculiarity." This means that while the members of the Trinity are of the same essence, they are peculiar and distinguishable from one another in their primary characters, much like males and females at the human level. This means that humanity is uniquely fashioned out of these characteristics of the Trinity (relationship, love, intimacy, relational exclusivity, permanence and distinguishable peculiarity) for these things. It also means these things are not human constructs, but rather wholly sacred and eternal things!

So what does all this imply for human sexuality? The human is a sexual being, like no other creature, yearning desperately for intimacy and sexual relationship. Man’s desire is not a result of man’s sinful nature, although the fall has seriously polluted this desire. This desire finds its origin in humanity’s place as an image bearer of the Trinitarian God. Because relationship, love and intimacy are characteristics of God, they are unique characteristics of man also. Humanity pursues relationship, love, and intimacy with great energy. These relationships are most beneficial and satisfying when they are modeled after the ideal of the Trinity, for the mystery of human sexuality is a shadow of the mystery of the Trinity. Therefore, human sexual relationships should be monogamous (modeled after the Trinity’s relational exclusivity) and with members of the opposite sex (its distinguishable peculiarity).

This is precisely why, in the created order, lifelong, monogamous, heterosexual marriage is the intended domain and norm for human sexual experience. Anything outside of this ideal is harmful to our neighbor whom we are called to love as ourselves. This primary truth gives us the foundation for understanding what sexuality ought to be and an ideal against which to measure other competing sexual relationships like homosexuality.

Endnotes

1 Ranald Macaulay and Jerram Barrs, Being Human: The Nature of Spiritual Experience, (Downers Grove, InterVarsity Press, 1978), p. 14.

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