We believe this subject cuts to the heart of some of the larger questions about what it means to be a human person. As a Bible believing church, we are in pursuit of finding a way to live faithfully to scripture and to following Jesus as He redeems the whole of our identity, including our sexuality.
If you have taken the time to watch or listen to any of our worship services, you will already know that TVC is a community of faith and we consider ourselves “People of the Book.” For us, this means our deeply held religious convictions are based in the ancient scriptures–the Bible–which is our standard for belief and behavior. We look to the first book of the Bible, Genesis, to inform us about what it means to be created in the image of God by a loving and benevolent Creator. We learn from Genesis that in God’s original creation design, God chose to create human beings as male and female, in His image, a wonderful unity with beautiful distinctions (Genesis 1:27). Similarly, we find that God designed the sacred union of marriage to be between one male and one female, in a life-long, covenant love relationship, with the designed possibility of filling the earth through procreation (Genesis 1:28). That said, we also read in scripture how both Jesus and the Apostle Paul taught that Christian marriage reflects God’s covenant love relationship to the church (Matthew 19:1-12, Ephesians 5:21-33) and that both Jesus and Paul extolled and exemplified how a flourishing life of singleness with sexual abstinence can also bring glory to God (Matthew 19:1-12; 1 Corinthians 7:1-40; 2 Corinthians 11:1-2).
In our view, there has recently been an over-conflation of sexuality with identity, we agree with Christian believers of the ACNA who have said: “While questions pertaining to human identity are ancient, a certain vividness around personal identity has been introduced into our current cultural conversation. Our society has collapsed into a sexual world view which attempts to redefine the image of God in humanity as predominantly one of sexual orientation and behavior. To the contrary, the early chapters of the Bible reveal that the Lord made humans to be primarily doxological creatures, designed to worship the one true God forever. Humanity’s essential identity is found in communion with God and not in sexual activity. For this reason, even though God made humans with sexual capacity through the enjoyment of procreation in Biblical marriage, sexual activity is temporal and not eternal. Yet overall, we see this development of distorted worldview and culture as a God-given opportunity to share the Gospel truth that by God’s grace we may become new persons in Christ.”
Finally, we believe that we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23) and we agree with St. Augustine that this condition of sin has affected our lives in many destructive ways; ways that have distorted our viewpoints and disordered our affections, including as regards matters of sexuality. It follows then that we should humbly seek the will of God from the Word of God. It is there we find reassurance of the love, grace and mercy of God to forgive us from every act of sin through faith in Christ Jesus. We also pray for the power of the Holy Spirit to enable us to live our lives of holiness and faithfulness to God’s instructions regarding our sexuality. The Bible then teaches us we can rejoice that, because of Jesus’ resurrection, as we trust in Christ, He offers us victory over all the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil.