By: Mike Kelly
Retired Pastor
I so want to be a prophet today. While I’m at home writing this article, downtown Bryan is hosting a celebration of Gay Pride. That to me is strange…celebrating sin.
Don’t stop reading here regardless of where you are on this topic. You need to read the whole thing. Please!
1 Cor 6:9-10 calls their behavior sin. “Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men…will inherit the kingdom of God.”
So, first, let me put this verse in context. Paul is addressing the Corinthian church because they seem to approve of sin rather than be grieved by it. He’s just called them out because they not only allowed a man to live (read: sleep with) with his stepmother, they boasted of it. They were proud of their freedom and acceptance of sin.
Paul goes on in 1 Cor 5:9-11: “I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world.
But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler.
Do not even eat with such people.” In other words, we cannot judge the members of the world but we are called to judge those who claim to be believers and if they openly celebrate their sin, avoid them.
Those three little dots I inserted in verse 10 above broaden Paul’s list of people to avoid “nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers.”
He wasn’t calling out just sexually immoral but everyone who claims to have received the salvation only Christ offers, yet celebrates their sinful lifestyle.
And here is the important point: it is one thing to sin, it is yet another to celebrate it. Sin is part of the human condition but the response to sin should be grief, sorrow and repentance. Not Pride. Not celebrating it.
Let me clarify one thing. Those of us who are sinners (and that’s all of us), whether we sin privately or publicly, whether we repent of our sin or celebrate it, we are still believers going to Heaven.
Paul goes on to say that even though they were lost in sin, they are now alive in Christ, their sin covered by his blood. “And that is what some of you were.
But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” (1 Cor 6:11)
Like I started, I so want to be a prophet and call down fire from heaven, but I can’t because I am just as guilty of sin as those on the square. And, mercifully, I am just as saved as they are if they are Believers.
The proper response to sin is grief, sorrow, repentance. Ask yourself, how many of your sins have you just come to live with? How is ignoring any of my sins different from those who celebrate theirs? They are still unrepented sins.
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Mike Kelly is the founding pastor of Bryan’s Grace Community Church (retired) and Board Chairman of Bryan’s Sanctuary Homeless Shelter and Williams County’s Compassion (free) Medical Clinic.