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“And Such Were Some Of You…Effeminate…Homosexuals”

by Micky Galloway & Chris Simmons

“Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God” (I Corinthians 6:9-10).

Based on what we hear and see around us today, we must ask the question, “Is homosexuality sinful or natural?” Let me begin to answer this question by saying, “YES,” homosexuality is sinful and “NO,” homosexuality is not natural! In fairness, please continue to study to learn why I give these answers.

Homosexuality is not new. Fourteen of the first fifteen Roman emperors practiced this sin. Nero had married in open ceremony a eunuch made so by surgery and lived with him (Barclay on I Corinthians, page 60). Barclay further states, “From the highest to the lowest society was riddled with homosexuality. This was the vice which Rome learned from Greece. J.J. Dollinger calls it ‘the great national disease of Greece’” (Barclay, Flesh and Spirit, page 26).

Both homosexuality (men with men) and lesbianism (women with women) are condemned as sinful in the Bible. “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination … Defile not ye yourselves in any of these things: for in all these the nations are defiled which I cast out before you” (Leviticus 18:22, 24). “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: They shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them” (Leviticus 20:13). In Genesis 19:24-25 we see the judgment of God upon the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah for their practice of homosexuality.

In the New Testament Paul said, “women did change the natural use into that which is against nature and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another, men with men working unseemliness, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was due” (Romans 1:26-27). The apostle Paul further said some of the Corinthians had been before conversion “effeminate” and “abusers of themselves with mankind” (I Corinthians 6:9; cf I Timothy 1:9-10). As long as they continued these practices they were “unrighteous” and “shall not inherit the kingdom of God.”

In the beginning God decreed, “a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife” (Genesis 2:24; cf Matthew 19:5). In the beginning, God made man a woman, not another man.

Homosexuality or lesbianism is not a sickness. It is not an alternate lifestyle. It is, rather, a sin against nature one chooses to commit. Those guilty cannot be saved unless they repent (I Corinthians 6:9-11; Galatians 5:19-21). Just like the adulterer can not continue in an adulterous relationship and be pleasing to God, neither can the homosexual continue in a homosexual relationship.

The other sin to be discussed in this article is stated as “effeminate.” This comes from the Greek word “malakos” which, according to Vine's Expository Dictionary of Biblical Words, literally means “soft, soft to the touch.” Vine’s goes on to add, “…not simply of a male who practices forms of lewdness, but persons in general, who are guilty of addiction to sins of the flesh, voluptuous.” William Barclay adds that this is a sin which describes men who have “lost their manhood and who live for the luxuries of recondite pleasures; the word describes what we can only call a kind of wallowing in luxury in which a man has lost all resistance power to pleasure.” Christians are to be those who have “crucified the flesh with it’s passions and desires” and who “walk by the Spirit” (cf Galatians 5:16-23). Some of the Corinthians had been “effeminate” before they had been “washed…sanctified…(and) justified,” now it was time for them to “stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong (I Corinthians 16:13).

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