Perfect love casts out fear

Anyone who dares to be less than enthusiatic about contemporary “hot issues” is nowadays immediately labeled as suffering from some kind of “phobia”. Anyone who has studied the progress of Islam for 1400 years and understands how their takeover of power in nation after nation regularly occurred, and who warns of this development in all European nations, is consequently called “Islamophobic”. Without discernment and without the slightest regard for the facts, such opinions are smeared like tar over anyone who says anything other than what is the new “value”. And the feathers follow immediately from the “opinion elite” on social media. Cold facts mean nothing at all.

A similar tarring applies if one is ignorant enough to have views on the “homosexualisation” that is increasingly being given more and more space. What was seen as illegal and socially destructive until just a few decades ago is hailed as a ” positive development away from the heteronorm.” If you dare to question the entire transgender trend, you are insulted in the most crude way with “genderphobia”, “homophobia” and “contempt of people” to use some of the milder slogans. The purpose of these insults and accusations is, of course, to prevent discussion, to prevent fact-based questioning, and to silence public opinion with the threat of the law’s most severe penalties for hate crimes. According to them,we must be deprived of our rights to voice any other opinion but theirs. Their demand for foisting their interpretation on the rest of the World is purely fascist and well known in the world. Many times over. A minority group which wants to lord it over all the rest. They are not even afraid to assign to other people what they actually think and fell. By opposing homosexuality, they say, we are merely suppressing our own lust after the same flesh as our own.

Ask us who deviate, are you afraid of us?

It’s like asking a mushroom connoisseur (a mycologist) if he is afraid of the white fly agaric. He simply answers: no I’m not afraid, because I know all the white mushrooms that are edible and since I can distinguish between the different white mushrooms I’m not afraid at all. But it’s not out of fear that I don’t pick them, but because they are deadly poisonous. You can refrain from approving something because you understand that it is dangerous. One has a capacity for discernment. And one may have a historical perspective on the 3000-year history of sexual experience and on how precisely homosexualization in civilization after civilization has been one of the factors that led to the downfall of entire societies. (Search the web for J D Unwin “Sex and Culture”)

You can be very right, so to speak, when you distance yourself from same-sex relationships. The most vulnerable are all the Christian opponents who with “that old book in hand” claim God’s involvement in the matter. Allergic reactions to the Bible’s overall message on the matter now occur with every other (free church) pastor, as well as in the Classic denominations, where that truth of the scriptures was abandoned long ago. I have corresponded with Lutheran bishops on the matter so I am used to their gliding away from the clear message of the Word. And in the present (October 2022), major congregations and churches have voted for an ” inclusive and more loving” stance toward people who do not conform to the heteronorm.

On a number of points, I therefore will quote and comment on the most relevant biblical contexts and draw the conclusions that the texts themselves allow to emerge. No doubt I will be told that that is just my interpretation of the texts. As if that somehow diminishes my conclusions, and those who argue that do not realize that their own interpretation falls to the same criterion. They have no more right to foist their interpretation on the sacred text than I.

” And God created man in his image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them and said “Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.”
“Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” Gen 1:27
See the parallels in the New Testament:
“He answered: “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator made them male and female and said: Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one meat ? Then they are no longer two but one flesh. What God has joined together, man must not put asunder.
And:
“So Christ also does with the church, because we are members of his body. Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great—I speak of Christ and the church. But as for you, each one must love his wife as himself, and the wife must respect her husband.”

Haven’t you read?
From the beginning, one and the same order applies to what can be called marriage. It is not genuine if it does not follow this original purpose of marriage, or if it is composed in a deviant way. When Jesus is challenged by the scribes and Pharisees and disciples about marriage, the Son refers to the original, and when the Spirit teaches through Paul, it is again exactly the same pattern that is referred to. Over 6,000 years up to the time of the apostles and the first church, this has been the position of the church . Over a further 2000 years that understanding had withstood the test of time. But in the last few decades this attitude towards what is reasonably the purpose of marriage according to the creator’s intention has been eroded to the point that this with cohabitation has been distorted beyond recognition. They claim that mankind has evolved and is now able to come to completely new and better conclusions. It is said that it is “going against time” not to understand that a changed view on the matter is necessary in order for the church not to lose ground.

A few points:
1 Man and woman are originally created as the full expression of “God’s image”.
2 Only man and woman together are “man created in the image of God”. True unity in these two is based on being different.
3 Only the biologically determined relationship between “husband and wife” is the prerequisite for “multiply yourselves and fill the earth”.
4 The sexual relationship makes them “one flesh” by wich what is joined is in God’s order. Sex outside that order is called fornication, sexual immorality, always.
5 As little as it is permissible to separate what God has joined together, it is permissible to join together what God does not join together. A same-sex marriage is therefore a “misnomer”, a false marketing.
6 Sexuality is one of man’s many components, but sex does not define man. Coming up with the notion of reducing man to his gender identity is an absurd notion. Sex is attribute of mankind, not a definition.

The Pride festivals, what do they celebrate?

The biological order that the Creator has laid down in the human race as well as in the other species, is such that reproduction is only possible in the meeting between a male and a female. (There are a few exceptions among the more advanced organisms, even a species of lizard that reproduces itself without the influence of males!) Reproduction ceases if that order is abandoned. To celebrate homosexuality is to celebrate a biological impasse. The theory of evolution presupposes a gigantic reproduction of the most virile kind because there must be thousands of offspring in order for favorable mutations to accumulate within the species towards the next possible variant. If homosexual relations are now the next step in the so-called development, then nature has obviously given up hope on man and indicates that his development is to resemble a vehicle that drives at full speed into a dead end with no way out. To celebrate such a defect seems to me an almost criminal absurdity. Would I applaud a “free speech” which in its logical extension brings about the end of the human race? Not at all. That is an expensive freedom.

The homosexuals appear in their own eyes as an oppressed crowd of martyrs. They are given or have taken a space that not only wants to claim the right to live out their so-called disposition, they also demand that everyone else legitimizes them. And every church fellowship is their target. And they want no one to have a different view on the matter. They want to ban freedom of opinion for everyone but themselves. Such people cannot even be pitied, they pose a mortal danger to the entire democratic society. They themselves have no qualms about labeling others as “haters” just for asserting the biologically vital heteronorm.

What does God think of sex between equals?

Already early in human history, uncontrollable sexual expression emerges as a significant problem. Genesis 6 describes a variant between the children of the earth and an extraterrestrial or extraterrestrial race whose offspring exhibited megalomaniac variants called “violent, mighty men of old.” Genesis 18 tells how God comes to Sodom and Gomorrah with the intention of dealing with the situation that arose there. How was it? ” Then the Lord said: “The cry against Sodom and Gomorrah is strong and their sin is very grievous. Therefore I intend to go down and see if they have done as in the cry that has reached me. If it isn’t, I want to know.” Ezekiel knows how to summarize the condition of Sodom: ” Behold, this was the sin of your sister Sodom: Pride, abundance of food and carefree security she and her daughters had, but she did not help the needy and poor. They became haughty and did things that were disgusting to me. Therefore, I wiped them out when I saw it.” What was the abomination besides the arrogance and recklessness? We know that from Leviticus 18:22 ” You shall not lie with a man as a man lies with a woman. It’s disgusting. You shall not lie with any animal, so that you become unclean through it. Nor should a woman mate with an animal. It is unnatural.” And to complete the picture ” You shall sanctify yourselves and be holy for I am the Lord your God. You shall keep my commandments and follow them. I am the Lord who sanctifies you.
Leviticus 20:13 “ If a man lies with another man as a man lies with a woman, they commit an abomination. They shall be punished with death. They carry blood guilt. ” And should you want to squirm away from the realization that free homosexual indulgence would be a trifle read on: “ Before they had gone to bed, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people without exception, surrounded the house. They called out to Lot and said to him: “Where are the men who came to you last night? Send them out to us so we can sleep with them.”

” The sun had risen over the earth when Lot came to Zoar. Then the Lord rained down brimstone and fire from heaven, from the Lord, upon Sodom and Gomorrah. He destroyed these cities, the whole plain, all who lived in the cities and what grew on the ground.”

Are they the worst among sinners?

God’s Word does not make homosexuality a different kind of sin than any other. It is neither more nor less than just another variant of the pride that lets the people reject God’s commandments and statutes. It is included in the practiced sins that prove that they are sinners. It is never the case that someone becomes a sinner because he commits a particular sin. They commit sin because they are fundamentally sinners. Thanks to their own pride, they themselves have exposed their true nature. They signal that they are haughty and they will take every step needed to defy anyone who opposes them. Their demand to be treated in any other manner than how all sinners are treated must not be given daylight. They are not remarkable. They are merely contemporary and certainly nothing new. They are just another group of people who want to rewrite theology to cover for their own preferred version of sin. In that they are by no means alone.

” From within, from the hearts of men, come the evil thoughts: sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, betrayal, orgies, envy, blasphemy, pride and foolishness. All this evil comes from within and makes man unclean.”

” You should know that in the last days there will be difficult times. The people will be self-righteous, money-loving, boastful, proud, mocking, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, godless, unloving, unforgiving, gossipy, unruly, cruel, hostile to good, false, reckless and haughty . They will love pleasure more than God and have a semblance of godliness but deny its power. Stay away from them!”

” Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Don’t deceive yourselves! Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor those who practice homosexuality, nor those who allow themselves to be exploited for such, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor slanderers, nor extortionists shall inherit the kingdom of God.  Some of you have been like that. But you have been washed clean, you have been sanctified, you have been declared righteous in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God. “

When sin is no longer called out, when we consider that we should help people to have their version of sin approved, by condoning their lifestyle under the seal of the Body of Christ, is a blasphemy. And the word of God makes it absolutely clear that those whom the congregation thus approves are at the same time withheld the knowledge that they can never ever inherit the kingdom of God. The whole gospel speaks of the former becoming a transformed now. ” Some of you have been like that!” A parish pastor who approves of what God forbids has forfeited his mission and lost his honor before God’s clear Word. A gospel that is not about people forsaking their sin and even accepting a continued life in some form of sin is a moral disaster.

Pride demands its rights but denies that it has obligations.
” Do not deceive yourselves, God is not deceived: what a man sows he shall also reap. Whoever sows to the flesh will reap destruction from the flesh, but whoever sows to the Spirit will reap eternal life from the Spirit. Let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due time we shall reap if we do not give up. Therefore let us do good to all while we have opportunity, and especially to those who belong to the family of faith.”
” What I want to say is this: walk in the Spirit, and you will not do what the flesh desires. The flesh seeks what is against the Spirit, and the Spirit seeks what is against the flesh. The two fight against each other so you can’t do what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. The works of the flesh are manifest: sexual immorality, impurity, orgies, idolatry, occultism, enmity, strife, envy, outbursts of anger, selfishness, divisions, heresies, malice, drunkenness, wild parties and the like. I tell you in advance what I have already said: those who live like that will not inherit the kingdom of God. “

But what about Love?

Regardless of what one cites from the entire Word of God on the subject at hand, a stormwind sweeps in with the word LOVE as a mantra. God is love, Love is the only thing that counts. The greatest of all is love. God loves all sinners. God loves the whole world, no one excepted. All these statements have one thing in common. They are no where near the whole Bible. But they don’t read that in any other way than how a flea jumps around on a dog to see where it can bite for some blood next. They jump into the word of God and despise all the basic rules for both reading and interpretation. They grab random phrases and pretend that they have thereby established an irrefutable truth. When you examine the most common texts that they cite, it becomes immediately apparent that they have no idea what they are mouthing in their defense of ignorance.

A key text often abused in the most heinous way is John’s Gospel chapter 3

 “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. God has not sent his Son into the world to judge the world, but so that the world may be saved through him. Whoever believes in him will not be condemned. But he who does not believe is condemned already, because he does not believe in the name of God’s only begotten Son.

And this is the judgment: the light came into the world, but men loved the darkness more than the light because their deeds were evil. He that doeth evil hateth the light, and cometh not to the light, lest his deeds be revealed. But he that liveth in the truth cometh to the light, that it may be manifest that his works are done in God.”

No single other text is as grossly abused and misquoted as this one. People treat this author as if all his individual sentences were disconnected. As if he had had a large board in front of him where he had put up a lot of sticky notes with single lines written on them, and then one fine day, in a gust of wind, they blew down and stuck haphazardly to some papyrus sheets. He is accused of not knowing what he wrote at all. Because their way of quoting him shows that they don’t think he was capable of maintaining a consistent line of thought where each sentence and its content built on the last. Nor do they believe that scripture should be explained by scripture and follow as closely as possible to what the author intended.

So tell me now what God’s love for the world is like!

John begins with a precise description of a situation. The whole world is already doomed. The light on “right and wrong” is in the world but people hate the light and do not want their own deeds revealed. Their salvation depends on a choice they make in relation to what God gives them to save them from this darkness. God’s gift is given to those who are lost, not to anyone else. It is to save them from themselves, their pride, their evil deeds that they are offered salvation in the Son of God. Those who refuse to accept that gift remain where they are. In that kingdom called the kingdom of darkness. And they cannot be freed from their sins until sin is eradicated from them. Takes no genius to read what is written in the entire text. No one can miss that those who receive the Son as God’s gift are saved and their previous deeds of darkness cease. All forms of sexual expression that are not in line with the creation of the creator are just such acts.

But God is Love!

Where do you get it from? Perhaps from another detached context?
” My beloved, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love has not come to know God, for God is love . Thus God’s love for us was revealed: he sent his only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through him.” ..
 ” This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”

To love God is also to see all people with God’s eyes. Everyone needs salvation from the sin that so tightly entangles them. But it is not love for them to withhold salvation from them. It is no love at all to let the unrighteous continue to create his misfortune. It is no love at all to hide the truth about the consequences of sin for the sake of the sinner’s feelings. No one who is born again hates another. It is a pure lie when it is used as an argument for homosexuality. I do not hate, I mourn their lostness and abhor their vulgarity. But mainly I have a message of love for them, as for all others who have chosen to live in unrighteousness. ” He answered: “Do you think that those Galileans were greater sinners than all the other Galileans, because they had to suffer like that? No, I tell you. But unless you repent, you will all perish like them. “

  The unrighteous shall continue to do wrong, and the impure shall continue to defile himself, and the righteous shall continue to do right, and the holy shall continue to sanctify himself. “

” Behold, I am coming soon, and I have my reward with me to give to each one according to his works. I am A and O, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Blessed are those who wash their clothes so that they may have the right to the tree of life and may enter through the gates of the city.
The usual offer of a “cheap grace without repentance and correction” is a fool’s cap, to offer God’s blessing over people who do not want to bow the knee to God first is blasphemy. Love without Righteousness is a travesty of both.

But what do you say about love overshadowing a multitude of sin?
” My brothers, if anyone among you strays from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that he who brings back a sinner from his error saves his soul from death and covers a multitude of sins.” I say what the word implies. To stop overlooking sin is to show love. The congregation is a constant and competent emergency room for sinners, not a conservatory for individual trending sins. That this particular sin is allowed in today is a result of so many other sins having long since been given free rein as the churches have adapted to the world. It’s just another stone in the basket.

1 Corinthians 13 finally.
The second, only to John 3:16, most misquoted of all Bible words. Starting at the low end:
” So faith, hope and love now exist,
these three,
and the greatest of them is love.”
The word love is transformed by those who misuse the word to mean ” everything that I call love” . Including everyone’s right to live in the variant of love that is only “my form of sexual orientation”. We have learned from Alice in Wonderland that there are those who believe that words mean what they want them to mean. If you point out that the way someone uses a certain word is not correct, we quickly get a high-pitched slap in the mouth.. “Words mean what I take them to mean.”
Therefore we now read on:

Love is patient and gentle.
Love does not envy,
it does not boast,
it is not puffed up.
It does not misbehave,
it does not seek its own,
it does not rage,
it does not think of evil.
It does not rejoice
in injustice
but rejoices in the truth.

Now read this section about the love that according to Paul is characteristic of the love called “agapä” in New Testament Greek. The impression made by that love is the exact opposite of the claims made by the gay lobby. Not a single homosexual individual ” seeks anything but his own” . Having said that, it should quickly be added that the same applies to everyone who puts their sexual identity above God’s word. Nor do they rejoice in the truth, for if they did they would know that their exercise of the pretended sexual orientation is not the truth of anything but that it is what they want. Love becomes a victim on the altar of selfcentered idolatry. The altar has three sides: “Me, My, Mine.” God has from the beginning of the world made his Majestic thumbs down sign.

Using the word love to legitimize all kinds of sins is obviously a serious mistake.
” Then we are no longer children tossed hither and thither and carried away by every gust of wind of doctrine, when men play their false game and craftily lead astray. No, we are to hold fast to the truth in love and in every way grow up to him who is the head, Christ. By him the whole body is joined together and held together by the support which each joint gives, with the power which is distributed to each individual part. This is how the body grows and builds itself up in love.”

And even worse is:
 ” The coming of the lawless one is the work of Satan who comes with great power and with lying signs and wonders. With all the arts of wickedness he deceives those who are lost, because they did not receive the love of the truth that they might be saved. Therefore, God sends the power of delusion over them so that they believe the lie”

And a final warning.
The word lets us know that the one who commits sexual sins mismanages his own body. Both thought and action affect people. And when it’s time for reckoning, everyone gets back what they’ve done to their bodies.

Therefore God gave them over to humiliating sufferings. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for that which is unnatural. In the same way, the men left the natural intercourse with the woman and were inflamed with desire for each other. Men did shameful things to men and themselves had to take the just punishment for their error.
 And because they did not value the knowledge of God, God gave them over to an unworthy disposition so that they did things that should not be done. They have become filled with all kinds of unrighteousness, wickedness, greed and wickedness, they are full of envy, murderousness, strife, deceit and malice. They gossip and slander, they hate God and use violence. They brag and brag, they are resourceful in evil and disobedient to their parents, senseless, faithless, loveless and heartless. They know very well the righteous judgment of God, that those who act thus deserve death. Yet they do such things, and they also consent to others doing it.

Is there then no place for sinners in God’s church?

It is only for sinners that the congregation exists ! But no, not if they persist in continuing to be willful sinners! God’s laws are not based on what people want to do with their lives. They are based on God being Holy, set apart, separated from all that is destructive to His creation. Therefore he says to us through his Spirit: Be ye holy as I am holy. The church can never again claim to be “a holy community” if it leaves the sins of sinners alone. The body of Christ is for “healing” not “preserving the disease.” The gospel is about being reconciled to God! We must be delivered from the enmity with God that was our lot while we belonged to the kingdom of darkness. Sexual sins are only a fraction of them, but they have received the most attention in modern times. The effort to become as similar as possible to the outside world on this level as well means a direct collision with the God that the congregation claims to represent. ” Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God.” No, they don’t want to hear that. Nor do they want to be reminded that: “How can you believe, when you receive honor from one another and do not seek the honor that comes from the one God.” But do not think that I will accuse you before the Father. The one who accuses you is Moses, the one in whom you have put your hope. “

The curse of the seeker-friendly gospel

It begins in the raging religiosity of unregenerate man. For man is cursed with a longing for the eternal. So mankind is the eternal seeker for “something or someone” who finally confirms it as she is , or has remade herself in her own image. In order for her to seek God in modern times God must be transformed, anthropomorphized, humanized and adapted to what homo sapiens can conceivably accept. It is not the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that it is encouraged to seek. It is not to the bright burning flame of righteousness to which she is drawn. To meet a God exalted and separated from all impurity where the meeting begins with a glowing coal being taken from the altar and touching the mouth to cleanse from all impurity would be unthinkable for the one who wants to be counted among the sheep while wearing goatskins. She wants heaven to be pulled down to her level, that righteousness gives her the upper hand over others, that the truth is never more definitive than that she always has the right of interpretation and that she is the one who decides which tunes the angels blow on their trumpets.

But, it doesn’t work that way. Never in time nor into eternity. ” Without faith it is impossible to please God, because whoever comes to God must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who seek him. ” But it is not what I believe about God that defines God. God is his own I Am. God has no reason to let you or me give a different description of Him than the one He Himself is familiar with. God is consistently intransigent on that point.
” Do not deceive yourselves, my beloved brothers.

” Every good thing we receive and every perfect gift is from above. It comes down from the Father of lights, who does not change or alternate between light and darkness. By virtue of his will he has begotten us again by the word of truth to be a firstfruits among those he has created.”

 It is the breaking of the first of all commandments that gives room and license for all other sins.
No wonder God sighs.

Thus says the Lord your redeemer,
the Holy One of Israel:
I am the Lord your God
who teaches you what is good,
who leads you in the way
you should walk.
What if you had listened
to my commands!
Then your peace would be like a river
and your justice
like the waves of the sea.

What was my question in the preamble? Are we afraid of the inclusion of homosexuals in the congregation? Do we hate those who are different? What do we stand for?
We stand up for the equal value of all people as possible members of a healing and saving community where God is respected and His word is allowed to stand above all other words. We affirm sexuality as God’s gift but realize and know from a thousand years of experience that that treasure,which is in clay vessels must be handled with care if the contents are not to leak out and wreak havoc. Homosexual practice has already resulted in over 40 million people dying from the effects of HIV and AIDS.

We also know that sexuality is a “Charisma”, a gift of grace that must be exercised under the order of grace. And that order is God’s commandment. Anyone who claims to love the Lord Jesus but at the same time clings to any lifestyle that God has condemned 4000 years ago should remember this: ” it is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

Warning it is the single most important act of love anyone can give them and anyone else who has an agenda of their own. “Let God be true, even though that makes every man a liar.”

“No we are not afraid, we are dismayed at the spread of blindness and rejection of the Word of God.”

Teddy Donobauer October 20, 2022