Who Is to Blame for Homosexuality?
Rev. Angus Stewart
Some people perversely suggest that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is to "blame" for homosexuality. "Blame" requires transgression of the law and hence guilt, but the Almighty cannot sin or even be tempted to sin. All Jehovah’s ways are "just and right" for He is "a God of truth and without iniquity" (Deut. 32:4). Thus Scripture asks rhetorically and indignantly, "O man, who art thou that repliest against God?" (Rom. 9:20).
God created man holy and righteous and made all things "very good" in the beginning (Gen. 1:31), including the honourable creation institution of marriage between one man and one woman for life (Gen. 2:24; Matt. 19:4-6; Heb. 13:4). However, as Solomon says, "God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions" (Ecc. 7:29), including pornography, fornication, adultery, rape, bestiality, paedophilia, sodomy and lesbianism.
Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, speaks of the "vile affections" of lesbianism ("even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature") and sodomy ("likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet") (Rom. 1:26-27). Presbyterianism’s Westminster Larger Catechism cites these verses as proof that "sodomy and all unnatural lusts" are amongst those "sins forbidden in the seventh commandment" (Q. & A. 139).
So far is God from being to "blame" for homosexuality that He blames those guilty of these "vile affections" and unnatural activities (Rom. 1:26-27) and punishes them. However, it is not only homosexuals who will receive "the judgment of God;" idolaters, inventors of evil things, backbiters, boasters, whisperers, covenant breakers, those disobedient to parents, the proud, the deceitful, the covetous, the envious, the unmerciful, etc. are also under "the wrath of God" (Rom. 1:18-32).
Thankfully, the Scriptures reveal to us the perfect righteousness of another, the incarnate Son of God, which is reckoned to our account through faith. The gospel of Christ "is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth," including the repentant homosexual (Rom. 1:16-17).
(See also The Presbyterian Church in Ireland and Sodomy.)
Listen to a special lecture: Homosexuality: What Does the Bible Teach?