John,
I have gay friends. I know they're gay, they know they are. Two of them are openly so and live with same sex partners. I love them. I am deeply hurt for their lostness. One couple goes to a local church that actually baptized them, right here in north Alabama. But, that is life in 2014.
Can I offer something that I hope is helpful? Because, lots of Christians are bound up in this knot about how to respond. And, I have no idea and never heard anything about King James being a homosexual or whatever, and frankly I do not care. He is dead and will stand in judgment for himself now, beyond our prayers. And, the notion that he manipulated the translation is a non-starter because many translations since then from the TR and the Septuagint and the many other manuscripts all support unequivocally what the KJV says 99% of the time, and 100% on anything related to this. (I know my KJV-phile brethren will disagree, but let's not here.)
I will give you this one statement, then I will support it.
The reason homosexuals can never marry, biblically, is that marriage between one man, one woman, for life is the oldest and the singular interpersonal, human expression of the image of the triune God. Marriage was designed to reflect the nature and image of God, and God's nature is only reflected in marriages that He designs, and He has designed the male-female marriage as the vehicle for the expression. Period. No statement about marriage in the Bible needs to expressly exclude homosexuals any more than it needs to expressly exclude marriages between humans and animals because the Bible clearly and thoroughly teaches that heterosexual, monogamous, lifelong marriage is the human expression of God's nature as triune. This is true across both Testaments. It remains true today.
Here's the support and reasoning:
"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Genesis 1:1.
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. ... And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth." John 1:1-3, 14.
"Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created." Rev. 4:11.
Anything that exists is because God sovereignly elected, through His Son, to cause it to be so for the sole reason of God's own pleasure and the counsel of His own will.
What did God sovereignly choose to do in the beginning? First, He chose to reveal Himself as Elohim. "In the beginning, God...". The source of all that is revealed Himself as a pluralistic name. This Elohim then created "man in his own image, in the image of Elohim created he him; male and female created he them." (Gen. 1:27).
Elohim created image bearers who were male and female. First, the male was alone, but Elohim, still creating in His image said, "it is not good that man should be alone. I will make a helper fit for him." Gen. 2:18. All else Elohim had created was "good" by His own pronouncement. It met His pleasure, as in Rev. 4:11. But, the image bearer male, alone, was not good. Elohim then completed the creation of His image bearing in the human race.
First, He revealed Himself to the man by contradistinction; that is, God showed to the man what He is not. He "brought [all animals and birds, etc.] them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. ... But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him." Genesis 2:18-20.
Then, He revealed Himself to the man by completion of His image bearers. "So, the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man." Gen. 2:21-22.
A meaningful naming happens here throughout Genesis chapter 2 that is not in chapter 1. The name "Lord God", or Yahweh Elohim, is introduced. The singular male noun and the pluralistic noun are combined to identify this God. And, this God, Elohim, is said in Genesis 1 to be the creator of male and female in his own image. When the presentation of the female image bearer to the male image bearer is made, it is Yahweh Elohim, the masculine God by name who is also the pluralistic God by name whose image is borne among humanity in two genders intended for union.
This intention is made explicit. "Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh." Gen. 2:24.
Now, anyone with eyes can count to two and see that a man and a woman are not physically, visibly one flesh. But, they, indeed are. God has said so. In a mysterious way that transcends the physical enumeration of persons, God has -- from the beginning -- elected to reveal His nature through His image bearers who are joined together as one flesh, male and female. In a manner similar to our inability to sufficiently comprehend Yahweh Elohim as "one God", plural in name, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, we are unable to sufficiently comprehend two persons made into one flesh. This mystery is compounded by the presence of God in the union of the two as one. "What God has joined together, let no man put asunder." A male, a female, made one, as a reflection of the image of God in the world, a personal testimony to His nature and personality, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, one God in three persons.
It is little wonder that the earliest Satanic device was aimed at the integrity of that union. He approached the woman singularly first, and questioned this image bearer of the nature of God on her relationship with her God and undermined her relationship with her husband. Gen. 3:1-7. He undermined the crown of creation, the man, by tempting the woman into her rebellion right in his sight, right in his presence because Adam was "with her" (v. 6). Ah, crafty serpent!!
The consequences were deadly, but the consequences did not divide what God had joined. The man and woman were evicted from the garden, but they were explicitly consigned to one another. Gen. 3:16. They were not disunited. Their unity with one another as one flesh remained.
From that time until now, the marriage relationship of one man, one woman for life has served as the singular expression of the triune nature of God in human flesh. And, while Christ Himself is the express image of God and the fullest expression of who God is, being God Himself, even Christ has a bride. This bonding together is intended not only for time (as the case of human marriage), but for everlasting to everlasting (as in the case of Christ and the Church). It is a continuing display in the temporal of what the eternal shall be.
When Jesus is asked by the Pharisees about divorce, it was far more than divorce at issue. It was the very nature of who God is that the Pharisees had rejected in the hardness of their own hearts. "From the beginning, it was not so," Jesus said. "Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female..?" Matthew 19:4. Jesus specifically cited Genesis 1:27 and the account in Genesis 2, complete with its revelation of God's nature in and through the creation of marriage. He specifically quoted "male and female". The very nature of God in the estimation of His covenant people was at issue.
Consider also that Jesus said in Matthew 19:9, "I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery." Why was this important to God? Because fornication is an assault on the relationship that bears His image above all other relationships. Paul said that this is "sin against one's own body" (1 Cor. 6:18). It is sin against one's own bearer of God's image! How is this sin unique in this regard?? Why is no other sin so labeled? Perhaps because it is the flesh of the male body and the female body that is united as one in God in marriage, for life. If I fornicate, I am assaulting the very nature of God in my own body so that I am physically denying the very God who made me! This is truly enormous.
And, it is truly the strategy of Satan still, is it not? That in justifying homosexual marriage, the deceived homosexual will reach to untold lengths to discredit the Word of God who made him or her? That they are blinded to the destruction of their ability to bear His image, and made to believe that their "compassionate loving commitments" really reflect Him?? Is it not HE who created marriage? Is it not HE who determines what His image bearers shall be?? The entire argument is designed by hell to insult and assault the one true holy God.
_________________ Tim
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