The rise of LGBT+ movement in our world today has produced a growing debate within the church about the nature of sin and temptation in relation to internal desires.  The silver lining is that it has forced Christians to think more deeply and reflect more biblically on the nature of these questions.

In a very basic sort of way, I used to think that when ungodly desires arise, you simply avoid sin by resisting and not fulfilling them.  But as I have thought more about same-sex attraction, there is an important difference from other kinds of desires.  Not only is the fulfillment of same-sex desire wrong, the desire itself is something that ethicists call, “disordered.”  That is to say, the desire cuts directly against the grain of God’s original creation order and would never arise in a pre-fallen world.

Adam and Eve, for example, certainly desired one another sexually before the fall and were able to righteously fulfill those desires in the context of marriage, but pre-fall, they would never have experienced same-sex attraction.  That kind of desire can only arise after sin has entered the world.  Thus, the desire itself is misdirected and one of the many results of sin and evil coming into the world.  But here is where it’s easy to get confused.

Some Christians have assumed that same-sex attractions will (at least eventually) subside if we only continue to wrestle against them and repeatedly affirm and live out our new identity in Christ.  Thankfully, for some this does result in a profound and lasting transformation of these desires, especially over time.  For many others, however, disordered desires like these persist and continue to assert themselves in powerful and intrusive ways throughout their lives, even as they seek to forsake and resist them.

We therefore need to avoid the simplistic and judgmental attitude that suggests that mere repentance and resistance will inevitably and assuredly cause the desires to cease or be transformed into properly ordered (in this case, heterosexual) desires.  This can even suggest that one of the primary goals of Christian holiness is heterosexual attraction rather than godliness.  Again, merely practicing repentance and continual resistance and avoidance alongside affirmation of our new nature in Christ still may not fully resolve or eradicate all same-sex desires.

However, we should not be so quick to therefore dismiss these desires as neutral or nearly harmless, just so long as they remain unfulfilled in concrete practice.  Unlike desires that are appropriate to creation order so long as they are fulfilled within the parameters set up by God in His word, same-sex attraction is inherently opposed to God’s creation order.  In short, the desire itself is inherently rebellious and therefore dangerous and disordered.

This helps highlight the fact that avoiding sin and moving toward holiness involves much more than merely resisting certain behaviors.  It also involves resisting inappropriate attitudes and desires.  Jesus was very clear when he said in Matthew 5:28 that “everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”  The phrase “lustful intent” (ESV) captures the idea here well.  It is not the mere presence of a lustful thought, but the “lustful intent” and entertaining of that thought as well as a refusal to immediately take it captive and mortify it that results in sin.  Such sin is still very real even though it is only committed within the heart and mind of the one who lusts and is prior to any concrete action to fulfill it.

To take the idea further, in Ephesians 5:3, Paul not only talks about high standards of sexual purity: “there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity,” just before this in 4:31 he also lists “bitterness, rage and anger,” as problematic, and not merely their results: “brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.”  “Bitterness, rage, and anger” are not behaviors per se.  They are, at their root, emotional states of mind that can easily set us on a trajectory toward ungodly (re)actions.  And here Paul clearly demands that we should seek, by the power of His Spirit (5:18), to eliminate them from our lives.

Is same-sex attraction parallel to these kinds of sinful emotional states?  James 1:14-15 helps answer this questions when it says, “each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed.  Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.”  The progression here is that although the desire is described as “evil,” it only becomes sin after it “has conceived and gives birth” to a willful sinful mindset and not merely wrong actions leading to “death.”

It is still possible, for example, to be angry and yet not sin (see Ephesians 4:26).  If I refuse to entertain same-sex attractions each time they arise, must I still repent simply because I experienced a disordered desire?  Again, the desire to have sexual relations with someone of the same sex results from life in a sinful world and subverts God’s creation order.  It must never be entertained, embraced, or fulfilled.

This stands in stark contrast to “normal” and “ordered” desires like heterosexual attraction.  While these desires can be (and often are) badly abused and misapplied in very sinful ways, when fulfilled in their biblically-revealed (and therefore proper) contexts, they constitute the fulfillment of good and God-desired ends.  A disordered desire, on the other hand, should always be resisted and understood as opposed to the goal of godliness.  Thus, it is decidedly not a neutral desire.

Still, only when we let an evil desire fester and fail to take it captive does it actually become sin.  As Martin Luther quipped, you cannot keep the birds from flying overhead, but you can prevent them from making a nest in your hair.  The desires themselves might be wrong but having them does not automatically or inherently make me guilty of sin.

This has important implications for discipleship and how we characterize and deal with wrong and sinful desires.  We know, for example, that toward the end of His earthly ministry Jesus desperately wanted to follow His own will by escaping the suffering and horrors of the cross (Luke 22:40-44).  In short, He desired to do something other than God’s will.  Just like the temptations at the beginning of His public earthly ministry delineated in Luke 4:1-13, it was another time of profound testing.  But we also know that in the midst of that very human but clearly wrong desire to escape the cross and death, Jesus remained sinless (Hebrews 4:15).

It would be easy to simply say that every time I experience an evil desire or thought, I must repent.  But that can lead to a profound sense of shame that may be unnecessary since the mere presence of a wrong and evil desire may not itself constitute sin.  Yes, I might have to repent if I entertain or let that desire begin to move me away from devotion to Christ, but what I do at the moment of experiencing the desire, no matter how wrong, is what matters the most concerning whether I need to repent or simply resist and as quickly as possible find something—better, Someone—else to focus my heart and mind upon.

To briefly summarize, same-sex desire is disordered, pushing against God’s intended creation order.  And while having such a desire is one result of living in a sinful world, having such a desire is not, in and of itself, automatically sinful.  When desires like these come, we are called to actively resist and forsake them, taking them captive to the obedience of Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5).  This will often require accountability and encouragement (and perhaps rebuke at times) from other Christians also seeking to be holy, but it is a journey toward wholeness and holiness well worth taking.  Praise God, we also know the One who has gone before and walks that hard road of temptation with us, our battle-tested yet still perfect and sinless Savior and loving Lord, Jesus Christ.