Greg and Amy explain that while Christians may initially be unaware of certain sins, persistent justification of clear, serious sin reflects a heart that is not submitted to God.
Transcript
Amy: Here’s a question from Damon: “Someone told me he believes a practicing homosexual can be born again as long as they sincerely believe their behavior is not sinful. He said, ‘We all probably have sin in our life that we do not consider sinful and will only learn about it when we get to Heaven.’ How would you respond to this claim?”
Greg: Well, I agree that there are people that are, maybe, not clear on their sinfulness or particulars of it. This is the role of the Holy Spirit, though.
It’s interesting. In David’s Psalm 51—great psalm of repentance about his behavior towards Bathsheba and Uriah—he says something in there that I reflect on a lot. It’s a feature of prayer for me. He says, “You desire truth in the innermost being, and in the hidden part you will make me know wisdom.” Now, given that this is a psalm of repentance, I think he is probably talking about truth regarding sin in his innermost being. He already knew that it was wrong to commit adultery and then to arrange for, essentially, the murder of Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, in battle—putting him on the front line in the heat of it so he’d get killed. He arranged that. But nevertheless, in this prayer for repentance, he’s asking for, I think, a sensitized conscience.
So, certainly there are times when we may be living in some kind of behavior that it’s not clear to us that we’re living sinfully in it, though this is what the Holy Spirit is supposed to do—convict of sin, righteousness, and judgment. Okay? And Jesus talks about that in the upper room discourse there in John 13–17.
But in this particular case, I’m not willing to buy this, because this is a serious moral failing that the Bible speaks about a number of times in very clear terms. Romans 1 is an example of that. And also, in 1 Corinthians 6:9, Paul says neither fornicators nor adulterers nor homosexuals will inherit. Now, he’s referring to behaviors. Those people who are going on in those behaviors, this is evidence that their claim that Jesus is their savior is not sound. They will not inherit. Then he says at the end, “Such were some of you, but you have been washed.” Okay? Persisting in serious sin is evidence that you’re not a Christian, regardless of what you happen to say.
So, I’m not willing to give, in a sense, the benefit of the doubt here to a person who loves Jesus, trusting in him for salvation, and is living a gay lifestyle and doesn’t realize that it’s actually wrong. That, to me, is at an extreme. You might be gossiping because it’s your habit, and you’re a Christian, and you’re not thinking of it being wrong—what you’re saying—because you’re just telling the truth in that circumstance or something like that. There might be some rationalization you have in your own mind. But I think, as time goes on, this is something the Holy Spirit’s going to work on, and other people might even say it. But when it comes to this, to me it’s like saying, “I’m a Christian, and I’ve had three adulterous relationships. Actually, they’re still going on right now, and I think they’re just fine because I’m loving them.” What Christian would take that as an authentic testimony to genuine faith in Christ? No one would, because the behavior is so inconsistent with the claim. So, I wouldn’t want to give any safe harbor, so to speak, to somebody in serious sin with this kind of justification.
Amy: And there’s a difference between falling into a sin over and over and then repenting and asking for forgiveness versus saying, “This is a good thing.” I think those are two different things. I don’t want people to hear, “Oh, if you’re still sinning, you’re not a Christian.”
Greg: The way the question was worded, though, this is a person who doesn’t know it’s a sin, and so he doesn’t have a repentant attitude.
Amy: Now, I will say anyone can be born again when they’re still in even an egregious sin. I mean, that’s how we are all saved. When we’re saved, we are in our sin. So, it’s not that someone can’t be saved if they’re living this lifestyle or whatever. That’s ridiculous. That’s the only kind of salvation there is—for people who are in their sin.
Think about the Corinthians. They had to have their sexual sin explained to them. They were not aware. They didn’t know what they were doing was wrong. So, it’s possible to be saved.
Greg: Well, these were Gentiles, too, in Corinth. They’re not Jews with the Law and all that.
Amy: Exactly. So, they weren’t aware. They were saved, and Paul had to say, “Look, here’s the reality.” But then you’ll notice that in 2 Corinthians, he says that they did repent. So, it’s possible for someone not to know something is sinful, but then once it’s explained, especially if it’s clear—and all these things have been revealed in Scripture—now, once it has been revealed to them, what is their posture? Do they have a posture of self-justification, or do they have a posture of submission to God? And do they trust that what God is telling them is good? Or are they rejecting him? So, all of these things, I think, play into this. And I agree, it’s hard to think that there’s anyone who has no idea what the Bible says about this or has no idea it’s wrong. It’s hard to believe that. But it doesn’t mean—like, at the beginning, that could be the situation.
Greg: When I became a Christian, I knew—actually, I knew this before because I’m reflecting on all of this stuff, that sexual behavior was sinful—I had to kind of get dialed down.
Amy: Outside of marriage?
Greg: Right. Of course. And I was outside of marriage at that time—actually for a long time after that, too—for another quarter of a century. But I realized that there’s a problem here. And when I actually became a Christian, there was a transition time before I, kind of, got it all under control. So, I guess one could say, well, I was regenerated and born again, but I was still in sexual sin of some sort. But I knew I was in sexual sin of some sort, and I was working on repenting and getting things squared away and whatever. And the first year was a lot of struggle, because I was 23 when I became a Christian, and so I’m coming out of a very worldly circumstance and then trying to get all my ducks in a row. That took some time. But I never justified it. I never had this sense, like, “Oh, this is good. There’s nothing wrong with this.” I knew it was wrong. So, that kind of situation does exist.
Paul talks in Galatians 2, I think, about those who are babes in Christ, who are carnal. Carnality or fleshliness is characteristic of a babe in Christ. You’re supposed to grow out of that. And if you continue living in this fleshliness, it’s certainly legitimate to question somebody’s regeneration.
Amy: And I want to emphasize, again, why this is the case. It doesn’t make me question their salvation because they’re not doing enough good things. That’s not the problem. The problem is their relationship with God. When it comes to our sin, do we love God more than our sin? Are we admitting that what God is saying is true and good? Are we submitting ourselves? Are we admitting when we’re wrong and repenting and asking forgiveness because we trust him? This all comes down to our relationship with God and how he is our Lord and how we believe him. We believe that he’s the Creator. We believe that he loves us. We believe that Jesus came and died for us. We believe that what he’s asking of us is not something to ruin our life but to make our life better. It’s funny, I say better, but it might be harder.
Greg: You mean better in the moral sense.
Amy: In the moral sense. Right. Which has its own rewards, but it might be harder for us. But we trust that it’s better to be obedient than to take things for ourselves that God hasn’t given us.
So, it all comes down to our relationship with God, how we respond to our own sin, and how we respond to information about ways we’ve been sinning that maybe we haven’t realized before. So, we’re not saying that, oh, they’re not being good enough, therefore they’re not saved. We’re saying that this is an indication of where they really are in relation to God.
And all of this—I mean, we all are sinners. And I just want to come back to that—that we are all in the same position. Right? We are all children of wrath before we are saved. We all will be with God by his grace alone.
We’re not saying that since we are not acting out in homosexual ways, that therefore we are going to be with God. So, some of these things, I think, have to be explicitly said because our culture has a very strange idea of what Christians believe about sexuality and why we would say homosexuality is wrong. All of these things are not understood, and you might have to say them explicitly. You just need to be clear that we are all sinners, we all need God’s grace, and we all need to submit ourselves and trust that what God wants for us is better than what we want for us.