Latest / Pastor John Piper's answers / Should the Church ‘Bless’ Same-Sex Relationships?

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Should the Church ‘Bless’ Same-Sex Relationships? · Pastor John Piper's answers

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  Welcome back to this new week on the podcast on this Monday. Well back
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  in twenty twenty three. Last year ended with two huge declarations that got a
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  lot of attention online and led to a pile of emails for you. Pastor
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  John first and most talked about. The Pope said that Roman Catholic priests can
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  now bless so called same sex couples, which is a move that confused and
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  angered many Catholics and non Catholics alike. As you would expect, and according
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  to the Vatican statement, this blessing is quote for couples in irregular situations and
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  for couples of the same sex, the form of which should not be fixed
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  ritually by ecclesial authorities to avoid producing confusion with the blessing proper to the sacrament
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  of marriage end quote. This so called divine blessing is for those who,
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  they say, quote, recognizing themselves to be destitute and in need of God's
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  help, do not claim a legitimization of their own status, but who beg
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  that all that is true, good, and humanly valid in their lives and
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  their relationships be enriched, healed, and elevated by the presence of the Holy
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  Spirit. End quote you can see the pope you're trying very hard to thread
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  a needle. But more bluntly, two weeks after this, Reuters reported that
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  Burundi president every Stay nadash Sheep I will not be able to say the last
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  name the Burundi president. He called on his citizens to respond in a different
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  way. Quote if you want to attract a curse to the country, accept
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  homosexuality, he told journalists. Then he said, quote I even think that
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  these people, if we find them in Burundi, it is better to lead
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  them to a stadium and stone them, and that cannot be a sin.
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  Quote that's a statement made to his predominantly Christian name, perhaps drawing from a
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  text like Leviticus twenty and verse thirteen. So, Pastor John, how would
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  you respond to the pope and to the president of Burundi. Well, let
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  me preface my thought with the fact that I've tried very hard to understand the
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  pope and that needle that you said he's trying to thread. I can't quite
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  make sense out of it. Seems contradictory, but let me take it for
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  what I do. Do. See, I think the New Testament directs us
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  away from the kind of blessing that the Pope is endorsing and directs us away
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  from the mob rule or the official capital punishment that the President of Burundi is
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  endorsing. In other words, the New Testament is pushing us away from both
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  of those steps. And I think the New Testament also gives Christians another way
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  to disapprove and another way to love those that we think are walking in behaviors
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  that are ultimately and denly destructive. So let's start with the Old Testament and
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  the threat of the President of Brundi to stone those who practice homosexuality. Do
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  the laws of capital punishment in the Old Testament for things like adultery, dishonoring
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  parents, having sex between two men or two women? Do those laws define
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  the way that the Christian Church is to deal with those sins? And the
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  answer is clearly no. We've had several podcasts in which we try to unpack
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  how the Old and the New Testament relate to each other. And I say
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  that without denying the authority of the Old Testament, with its validity for Israel
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  at the time and its ongoing authority for Christians. With an awareness of how
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  the coming of Jesus the Messiah has changed things. When the New Testament deals
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  with immorality like adultery or insist which would have been a capital crime under the
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  Old Covenant. The way the New Testament handles that sin, for example,
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  in first Grinstance five, is to excommunicate the sinner from the church rather than
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  execute the sinner in the Church the new people of God, which is not
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  a political or ethnic or civil body. Excommunication has replaced capital punishment in cases
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  like this. When we turn to the instructions of the Pope that faithful Catholic
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  priests may bless same sex unions, we need to be very careful how we
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  are understanding the nature of blessing. I've tried, like I said, to
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  understand the wording of the Pope's proposal, and I have listened to a Catholic
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  priest defend the Pope's proposal, and I cannot escape the impression that even though
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  the effort is being made not to consecrate the so called irregular situations as marriage,
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  nevertheless, the very effort to provide an official way for there to be
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  a blessing on a kind of same sex togetherness, which the Bible warns is
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  evil and eternally destructive inevitably communicates that the pope does not hold that Biblical view,
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  at least not with the same ultimate seriousness that the New Testament does.
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  And the reason I say that we need to be careful how we understand the
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  nature of blessing is that the New Testament does tell us several times very clearly,
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  bless those who curse you Luke six twenty eight, Bless those who persecute
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  you, Romans twelve fourteen for speed three nine. Don't pay evil for evil,
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  but on the contrary, bless for to this you were called, or
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  paul in one Cristian's four to twelve, when reviled, we bless. Now.
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  None of those uses of the word bless is intended to signify an official
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  or unofficial gathering in which you bring people together who, in their hearts are
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  celebrating sin. That's not what blessing means, whether it's two men having sex,
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  or people celebrating fraud or celebrating which craft, are celebrating slander or celebrating
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  devil worship, whatever the sin is, the Biblical commands to bless our adversars,
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  our opponents, our enemies are not a command to hold a service in
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  which you extend a hand a blessing over those who are celebrating behaviors that lead
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  to their own destruction, and which God calls an abomination. That gathering,
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  we will not communicate the biblical truth of heartbreak and danger and warning. If
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  you made those dangers and those warnings part of the service of blessing, we
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  know the so called couple would reject it. They would reject it if the
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  warning of hell were made part of the service of blessing, if the sin
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  were called an abomination in the service of blessing, the couple would not have
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  the service. The meaning of blessing in Luke six twenty seven, Romans twelve
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  fourteen, and the others is that we seek the temporal and everlasting good of
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  our enemies. That's what blessing means, or those we disagree with. They
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  don't have to be just enemies. We don't even think of people that are
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  not actively opposing us as enemies, but just anybody. We disagree with the
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  temporal and everlasting good of our adversaries, both with words and with deeds,
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  even if it costs us our lives. We're not eager for the destruction of
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  anyone blessing is the opposite of cursing. When you curse someone, you want
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  them destroyed. When you bless someone, you want them saved. We want
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  our words and our actions to count for their good. It's not a blessing
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  to give the impression of treating lightly something that God treats dreadfully. It feels
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  kind, it's not kind. It feels tender, But tenderness is not love,
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  where clarity and firmness are needed to save life. The form the blessing
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  takes in Romans twelve is this, if your enemy is hungry, feed him.
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  If he's thirsty, give him something to drink. For by so doing
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  you will heap burning coals on his head. In other words, the aim
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  is not affirmation, but contrition and repentance and salvation. We want them to
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  be our brothers or our sisters in the presence of God, forever forgiven and
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  transformed into the likeness of Christ. And before I go, I think I
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  should conclude by warning Roman Catholics that they need to be especially concerned about this
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  Pope Pope Francis, because this is not the first time he has gone astray.
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  He has espoused unbiblical thinking in other ways, not only on this matter.
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  I watched him in a video. I watched him counsel a child,
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  about a six or eight year old child who had lost his father in death.
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  And the child said that his father was an atheist, never went to
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  church, didn't believe in God, and ask where he was, and the
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  Pope said that his father was in heaven. Wow, and the Pope said
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  that that was the case. Now, that's very contrary to what the Roman
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  Catholic Church and all other Christian churches have taught. I doubt that this pope
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  believes anyone will suffer eternally in hell. I could be wrong about that,
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  but if so, then the warnings of First Corinthians six that those who practice
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  homosexuality will not enter the Kingdom of God lose their ultimate seriousness for him.
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  That's the direction our culture has moved for decades, and that's where the Pope
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  appears to be moving as well. So, by all means, let us
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  bless those who curse us, but not extend a blessing over a same sex
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  union. Yeah, thinks John. And speaking of those several episodes on how
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  the Old Testament and the New Testament relate, in that key difference between violations
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  of God's will that we're met with execution in the Old Testament being met now
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  with ex communication in the New Testament. See APJA sixteen thirty five, especially
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  along with apja's six thirty two, seventeen eighty two, and nineteen eighty two.
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  Those episodes are all at aspestor John dot com A's APJA sixteen thirty five,
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  six thirty two, seventeen eighty two in nineteen eighty two on that move
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  from execution to ex communication. So important God to understand that, well,
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  am I confident or am I just arrogant? And we get that question a
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  lot. Lion Hearted and humble are not contradiction in God's will for us nor
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  in the life of our Savior. We see that clearly in the Gospels.
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  So we must figure out when self confidence becomes pride, and that's where we
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  going to figure out next time see Thursday