Is Homosexuality a Choice?
There is a strong, clear message in the Bible from beginning to end: we are responsible for what we do. Our society is bent on denying this simple fact. Other people make us act the way we do. Conditions in our body determine how we behave. We are just products of heredity and environment.
God cuts through all of these rationalizations. He gives us free will and we decide what we do with it. It’s strange that we agree yet disagree with this. If we do something great, we want to be recognized. We say, “I did it.” But when we do something wrong, we blame someone or something else.
The question in this episode is a hotly debated issue. Instead of asking people what they think, we will ask what God says about it.
Read about this subject
- Scripture: I Corinthians 6:9-11; 10:13
- Right From the Beginning in a World of Wrong, chapter four: “Gender.”
Listen to more on this subject
Transcript
Kerry Duke: Hi, I’m Kerry Duke, host of My God and My Neighbor podcast from Tennessee Bible College, where we see the Bible as not just another book, but the Book. Join us in a study of the inspired Word to strengthen your faith and to share what you’ve learned with others.
Do homosexuals choose their lifestyle? For that matter, do heterosexuals choose their behavior? This question involves some of the most personal feelings a person can experience. The Bible says God created male and female. Genesis one, verse 27: “So God created man in his own image and the image of God created he him. Male and female created he them.”
God thought of the very concept of male and female. He made the male body. He designed the female body. And God placed in mankind the desire for intimacy, for sex. Sex is God’s creation, not man’s idea. There’s nothing wrong with the way that God made us. There’s nothing bad about the feelings and the desires that he placed within us.
Hebrews 13, verse four says, “Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled; but fornicators and adulterers God will judge.” In First Corinthians seven verses one through five, Paul explained that one of the reasons why God gave marriage to mankind is to prevent fornication. He said because of the problem of fornication, let each man have his own wife and let each woman have her own husband.
Notice what it says: that a man is to have a wife, that a woman is to have a husband—his own wife, her own husband. And what’s the purpose of this relationship? It is to keep fornication from happening. That’s why God gave us marriage—in order that we might have an opportunity and a channel for fulfilling these desires.
God didn’t create the human race and then say you can never fulfill these desires, you can never express these desires with someone else. God made marriage so that these desires could be fulfilled in the proper channel. The problem today is that people don’t have the respect for marriage that they should.
They complain about there being so many temptations. They say that the temptations are just too strong and that they really can’t handle those desires that are placed within them. The Bible says there is a right way to show those desires, and there is a wrong way to show those desires. If God had said you have all these feelings, I made you that way, but you can never express them, then it would be understandable that people would say that that’s just unfair. But that is not how God made the world.
That’s why we find these instructions in First Corinthians chapter seven. Remember when he writes this letter to the church at Corinth that Corinth at the time was one of the most immoral places on earth. Things like adultery and fornication and homosexuality and prostitution were rampant in the city of Corinth.
These Christians that Paul is writing to were living in that kind of environment. They came out of that kind of background, and so Paul explains to them that marriage is God’s design for mankind. In verse three of First Corinthians seven, he talks to the husbands and the wives about their duty in marriage in this matter. In verse three he said, “Let the husband render to his wife the affection do her. And likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another except with consent for a time that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer and come together again so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.”
So as Paul writes to Christians who’ve come out of a background where sex is viewed as something loose and dirty, he talks to them about God’s will for them in marriage. He talks about God’s idea of sex. He plainly teaches that sex belongs in marriage. And when he talks about marriage, he talks about the only kind of rightful marriage in the Bible, and that is marriage between a man and a woman.
Earlier in the book of First Corinthians, he talks about the lifestyle that some of these people had lived before they were converted. It’s found in First Corinthians chapter six verses nine through 11. This is one of the most important passages on this subject when people discuss God and this issue. In First Corinthians chapter six, beginning in verse nine: “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?” The unrighteous here are people who will not go to heaven. So we cannot do these things and die unforgiven of them and expect to go to heaven. What are these things? He says, “Do not be deceived, neither fornicators…” The word “fornication” in the Bible refers to unlawful sexual union in general.
Now that word is a broad word. It’s an inclusive word. It can mean premarital sex. It can mean adultery, it can mean incest, pedophilia, homosexuality, or bestiality. So the word fornication is the first word that he mentions, and that is your broader word for illicit sexual union. Then he says, “idolaters, adulterers, homosexuals, nor sodomites.”
The King James version says “effeminate” and then “abusers of themselves with mankind.” Now the latter one, which says “abusers of themselves with mankind” and in the New King James it says “sodomites,” is your more general word for homosexuality. The first word that he uses in the King James version is effeminate. In the New King James version, it says homosexuals. Now that is a specific word in the Greek for a certain kind of homosexual. It basically refers to a homosexual that’s being used in the more passive role, as some people would say, in the more female role. In that homosexual relationship, it’s usually defined as a boy or a man who allows himself to be used homosexually.
Now, that could refer to a prostitute or it could refer to someone who is not a prostitute, but it’s basically that kind of idea. So Paul uses two specific words here to talk about homosexuality. The second word in the Greek, which is translated in the new King James sodomites and in the King James version “abusers of themselves with mankind” comes from a compound word in the Greek.
Now, that simply means that there’s a combination of two different words. The first word that is in this compound form is the word for man—a male, not mankind in general involving males and females, but it is the specific Greek word for a male. And the second part of that compound Greek word is the word for bed. And sometimes in the New Testament, that word refers to a literal bed, and sometimes it is referring to what that bed is used for, as in Hebrews 13 verse four, when it says that the bed is undefiled. Here in First Corinthians chapter six, verse nine, you have in the last word in that verse a word,which in the original is literally referring to a male who goes to bed with a male.
Now if there’s a verse in the Bible that clearly points out that this is something that is sinful in the sight of God, this is one of those verses, but he continues. In verse 10, he says, “nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, will inherit the kingdom of God.” When people today say that God made people homosexuals, they’re saying that God made people sinful and then keeps them out of heaven for something that they cannot avoid.
That’s not true. We know that because of verse 11. Paul said, “And such were some of you.” He didn’t say that “you are.” And let’s go back to the list. He says that some of them had been fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, homosexuals, sodomites, thieves, covetous, drunkards, revilers, and extortioners. And he says, such were some of you.
What happened? What caused them to change? Why were some of them fornicators and they changed? Why were some of them idolaters? Why were some of them adulterers in the past? Why did they change? How could they change? The Bible says that they did, and if that applies to fornicators and idolaters and adulterers, then it applies to homosexuals and sodomites.
He says in verse 10 some of them had been thieves, some of them had been covetous, some of them had been drunkards, revilers and extortioners, and he says in verse 11 “and such were some of you.” He didn’t say, such “are” some of you, but such were some of you. They had lived this lifestyle. They had committed these sins.
This is who they were in the past, but it is not who they are now. How did they change? They changed because they chose to change. They decided to turn from that lifestyle. And here’s the flip side of that question. How did these people in verse nine and 10 become those sinners. Let’s start again in verse nine.
He says some were fornicators. How did they become fornicators? He says that some were idolaters. How did they become idolaters? He talks about adulterers. How did these people become fornicators, idolaters, and adulterers? Verse 10: some of them had been thieves. How did they become thieves to begin with? How did they become covetous? How did they become drunkards and revilers and extortioners? They became these sinners by choice. They decided to commit these sins. That’s how they became sinners in those ways. Now, in verse nine, the same thing applies to homosexuals and sodomites. If the other sinners became sinners by their choice in verses nine and 10, then that means that the homosexuals that he’s talking about became homosexuals by their choice.
And because they became homosexuals by their choice, they had the power, and some of them did, stop being homosexuals by their own choice. That’s what he says in verse 11. “And such were some of you, but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.”
When Paul went to the city of Corinth in Acts chapter 18 and preached the gospel, the Bible says many of the Corinthians hearing believed and were baptized (Acts chapter 18 verse eight). They changed. You see, repentance in the Bible means a change of mind. When a man repents, that means he turns from the life that he was living and he turns to God and he lives a better life.
He lives the right kind of life. He’s not perfect, but he does make that change in his mind. Repentance is a change of mind. That means it is a decision. And when they turned to God in faith and repentance and were baptized for the remission of their sins, then their sins were washed. They were sanctified, they were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.
Can homosexuals change their behavior? Yes. These people did, and that was almost 2000 years ago. So these verses answer two important questions that people are still raising and sometimes arguing about unnecessarily today. And that is, number one, does a person choose his sexual behavior, and number two, can he change his sexual lifestyle? And the answer to both questions is yes, but today, sometimes gays and lesbians say, “But how could God blame me for having these feelings? I didn’t choose to be this way.” One of the most common defenses of gay and lesbian behavior is that they are born with the same-sex nature.
They argue that it couldn’t be wrong because they don’t have a choice. They even say that God made them that way, and they should be accepted in their behavior. Now, it’s a very strange and odd thing to bring God into the picture when you’re trying to justify sin of any kind. Why would anybody who’s living this lifestyle bring the name of God into the discussion?
God is the one who made male and female. God is the one who gave us marriage for males and females. God is the one who said in First Corinthians six verses 9 and 10 that those who die unforgiven of this and other sins will not go to heaven. So why bring the name of God into the discussion and then not listen to what He says?
They’re obviously trying to talk themselves into believing something that they know deep down is against God’s creation, and they’re trying to gain, in a desperate way, some kind of acceptance or recognition from the public. But sometimes gays and lesbians say, “You just don’t understand. I’ve had these feelings since I was very young. I cannot help but have these feelings. How can you say that it’s wrong to express them?”
There’s one passage in the Bible that talks not just about the actions and the behavior of homosexuals, but it also talks about the feelings of homosexuals. It’s found in Romans chapter one. In Romans chapter one, verses 18 through 32, you have a section about God’s natural revelation.
This means that God shows Himself in nature, and because we can see God in nature, we can know that some things are right or wrong simply because of what nature teaches us (Romans one 18 through 20). The Bible shows that nature declares the existence and some of the nature of God. That is, we can have some understanding of God’s attributes or His nature simply by looking at the creation.
The Bible says in Romans one, verse 24, “Since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.” There is no excuse for a man being an atheist or an unbeliever, and there’s no excuse for a man turning away from the God that he should be able to see and can see in the creation itself.
In spite of that, Paul says that some turned away from God. Verse 21: “Because although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God.” Paul said in verse 23 that they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man and birds and four footed animals and creeping things.
So notice that after they turned away from the true God, the Creator, they turned to their own gods which they created. The Bible says that God created man in His own image. These people were creating their gods in their own image. That’s what we read in verse 23. In other words, he’s talking about idolatry.
That’s not all that happened. That’s not all that they did. They went from bad to worse. In verse 24, the Bible says, “Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness.” That’s obviously not physical uncleanness. That is moral uncleanness, and he begins to explain what he’s talking about here in that verse. Verse 24 says that God gave them up. That is, He let them go. He “gave them up to uncleanness in the lusts of their hearts to dishonor their bodies among themselves.” Notice two things here. He talks about their hearts. He talks about their bodies. He’s talking about the feelings and the desires in their hearts, and he’s talking about what they did with their bodies among themselves.
This sin, like any other sin, begins in the heart. Listen to James chapter one beginning in verse 13. “Let no one say when he is tempted. I am tempted by God. For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is full grown, brings forth death.” That’s why the Bible emphasizes keeping your heart right, keeping your feelings in line with what God tells us and teaches us in His Word. The Bible says in Proverbs 23, verse seven that as a man thinks in his heart, so is he. In Proverbs chapter four, verse 23, the Bible says, “Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life” (Proverbs four, verse 23). Here, the Bible says in Romans chapter one, verse 24 that the journey away from God into the sin of idolatry and into the sin of homosexuality began in the heart.
That’s what we find back in verse 21. These people did not glorify God. They were not thankful. They became futile in their thoughts. Their foolish heart was darkened. They professed themselves to be wise, and they became fools. They turned to idolatry, and now they’re turning to homosexuality. Let’s read again verse 24. “Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves; who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason, God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one for another, men with men committing what is shameful and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due.”
Notice that Paul is describing the feelings and the behavior of these homosexuals. In verse 24, he talks about the lusts of their hearts. In verse 26, he defines those lusts as vile passions. So did these gays and lesbians he’s talking about in Romans chapter one have feelings for each other. Did they have, as we would say today, same sex attraction? Yes, but those feelings were wrong. Those feelings, he says, were vile passions. Just because people feel something doesn’t make it’s right.
That’s part of the problem. That’s probably one of the bigger aspects of this problem today. People think as long as they feel something is right for them or they feel like doing it, then it’s right, that they ought to have the right to do it, and that society ought to approve of them and that God ought to approve of what they’re doing.
And of course it’s true, whether you’re talking about homosexuality or some other sin, feeling that a thing is right does not make it right. The Bible tells us in Proverbs 16, verse 25, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.” So that’s true whether you’re talking about homosexuality or adultery or drunkenness or any other sin in the sight of God.
Notice here in Romans chapter one that God talks about both the feelings and the actions. He says these are lusts in their hearts that are vile passions. He says what they do with their bodies is to dishonor their bodies. And he says it is shameful. Now, that’s verse 24 and verse 26 and 27, and since the Bible calls these feelings, these passions in Romans one, verse 26”vile,” that means that God did not put them there.
Sometimes today people say, “God gave me these feelings, so I can’t help but express them.” But God doesn’t give a man vile passions. God doesn’t give a woman vile passions, and if those vile passions didn’t come from God, they must have come from temptation—from the world around us and from our own imagination.
Even if a person is confused about his feelings, that doesn’t mean he has to act on them. Just because you get mad at somebody doesn’t mean you have to kill him. Just because it would make you feel good to have somebody else’s car doesn’t mean you have to steal it. We are not animals. God gave us a will to make choices and that will can override those feelings.
Think about another unnatural, uncomfortable subject: pedophilia. This is disgusting. It is an abomination, but pedophiles make the same excuse. They say they have these feelings and they can’t help it. Does that mean that pedophiles ought to be excused because they have these strong feelings? Obviously not.
And again, this is also true of a married woman or a married man who has feelings of lust for someone else outside that marriage, someone other than their husband or their wife. All of these people are responsible for having those feelings. They’re responsible for harboring those feelings and for feeding those feelings and for acting on those feelings because they have a will.
And with that will, any person can overcome these feelings. The temptations usually won’t go away. The devil will always use our weaknesses against us, but we have a promise. In First Corinthians chapter 10, verse 13, here’s what it says. “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man. But God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but will with the temptation also make the way of escape that you may be able to bear it.”
Notice the wording. He says “no temptation.” That means that this covers every temptation. Whatever the temptation is, Paul says that it is common to man, that is, common to mankind. He also says that God is faithful about this. That means God is trustworthy. God is reliable. He will keep his word about this. He will not lie. He is faithful and he will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able. You may think that you’re not able. You may think that it is beyond what you can resist, but the Bible says that God will not allow you to be put in a situation like that even though the pressure and the temptation may seem so great that you can’t bear it.
The Bible says with that temptation God will also make the way of escape. There is a way out of it, and remember who he’s talking to. Here he is writing this letter to the Christians in Corinth—a wicked place, a city with all kinds of temptations. And he’s also writing this to a church that had members in it who had been guilty of sins like fornication, adultery, homosexuality, and other sins.
Who knows how many of those memories and old feelings had come back to haunt them in their lives and tempt them in their Christian lives? Aside from the conflict that they may have had on the inside, we know that there were temptations all around these people on the outside, and yet Paul said none of these temptations are greater than you can bear.
Whatever the temptation is, whether feelings in your mind or feelings in your body or both, the Bible says you can resist (First Corinthians 10, verse 13). And the perfect example of this is Jesus himself. In Matthew chapter four, this is where Jesus was tempted by the devil. And the Bible says the first temptation was this in Matthew chapter four, verse two: “And when he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights, afterward he was hungry. Now when the tempter came to him, he said, ‘If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.’ But He answered and said, ‘It is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’”
Now when people today talk about intense feelings, when they talk about severe temptations that seem unbearable, they need to consider what Jesus went through here. The Bible says that he fasted 40 days and 40 nights. Now you don’t have to be a medical doctor to know that after a certain amount of time, your body just begins to give in. Your body gets to the point to where it’s craving food so badly that you’ll eat just about anything, and if you go much farther beyond a certain point, you will die. Your body has to have that sustenance, and yet here the Bible says that Jesus fasted 40 days and 40 nights, and He is tempted to turn these stones into bread.
You talk about a temptation. How long could we go without eating before we turn to food that was right before us, or the possibility of getting that food? Now, Jesus was the Son of God, but he was also in a human body. That means that he got tired like we do. That means that he slept. That means that he became hungry and he had to eat.
And the Bible says here that he was hungry. And this is after fasting 40 days and 40 nights. When we go 40 minutes without eating, we think that we’re starving to death. And yet Jesus fasted 40 days and 40 nights. He was hungry and the devil came to Him, tempting him to use his miraculous ability to turn those stones into bread.
You talk about a severe temptation. You talk about an intense bodily desire for food. Jesus experienced that, and yet he overcame that temptation. Here’s what the Bible later says about his temptations. In Hebrews chapter four, verse 15, the Bible says, “For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted like as we are yet without sin.”
When the Bible says that He was in all points tempted like we are yet without sin, that doesn’t mean that Jesus experienced every single individual sin or temptation that we are faced with today. Jesus was not tempted to take drugs. He was not tempted to do some of the things that people might do today.
But as far as the intensity and the severity of the temptation is concerned, Jesus was tempted and He was tempted to a point, actually to a level of intensity, that you and I have not reached. So my point in bringing up Matthew chapter four is not to say that this has anything specifically to do with any kind of sexual temptation.
It is to show how intense and how severe and how strong those feelings and those temptations can be regardless of whether they’re in the body or in the mind. And this is to show that Jesus felt those bodily desires to a degree that people today know nothing about. And so when people today say, “I can’t help these feelings that I have,” whether they’re same sex attraction or opposite sex attraction, or for drugs or alcohol or anything else, then they don’t realize that Jesus Christ felt a stronger temptation in his body than they have ever felt.
So today when people are struggling with addiction to alcohol and drugs, they need to look at Matthew chapter four. They need to think about what Jesus faced. And the same thing is true with regard to strong feelings of same sex attraction or for that matter, opposite sex attraction. In either case, right or wrong, the desire for sex is nowhere near as strong as Jesus’ desire for physical food for his physical body in the temptation in Matthew chapter four.
When anyone says today that the temptation is just too strong to bear, Jesus’ example shows that it is not, and since we’re talking about the life and the teaching of Jesus Christ, it’s good to look at another question about this. Many people say that Jesus never said anything about homosexuality, so we shouldn’t say anything about it.
Is that true? Did Jesus talk about this issue? Well, in the first place, Jesus never specifically said anything about pedophilia. He never specifically said anything about human sacrifices. He never specifically said anything about abortion, but Jesus did not have to specifically name every sin in order to condemn it.
Every time he talked about murder, he included abortion. He included human sacrifices. And every time that he used the word fornication, he included pedophilia. He included any kind of unlawful sexual union in general: premarital sex, adultery, incest, pedophilia, bestiality, and yes homosexuality. Remember that the Bible refers to homosexuality as fornication in the book of Jude, verse seven.
Is homosexuality a choice? Yes, it is. The Bible is very clear about that. The Bible shows that nature itself condemns homosexuality. The Bible itself in words condemns this as a sin. The Bible shows that this is a sin that will keep one out of heaven. The Bible furthermore shows that a person can and must repent of this sin and obey the gospel of Jesus Christ, and then his sins will be forgiven, and if he is faithful to God, then he can have a home in heaven when his life is over.
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