What Should I Do About My Same-Sex Attraction?
I had to ask this question as a teenager. When I found romantic and sexual desires emerging, as they do for most people in our early teens, they were consistently for other guys rather than for girls. That wasn’t something I chose, but it was a reality of my experience. That pattern didn’t change over my teenage years (and hasn’t changed since). I was already a follower of Jesus, so I had to ask: ‘What should I do about my same-sex attraction?’
As I entered my 20s, I thought I’d found an answer to that question: God calls me not to act on my same-sex sexual desires, either in my mind or in my actions. I decided that, to the best of my ability, that’s what I would do about my same-sex attraction.
But recently, I’ve heard people suggest other answers to the question for me and others like me. Some suggest we should repent of our same-sex attraction, regardless of whether we give in to the temptation it brings. Others suggest we should seek or expect change. Male friends who share my experience have even been told they should just marry a woman.
These suggestions have taken me back to my teenage question: What should I do about my same-sex attraction? As I’ve been thinking it through again, two New Testament passages have been particularly helpful. They reassure me that my original answer fits with the Bible’s teaching and that I’m just like anyone else – I’m a normal Christian living the normal Christian life. Let me tell you briefly about those two passages.1
The Spirit and the desires of the flesh
One of them is Galatians 5:16. In the preceding verses, Paul has been challenging the Galatians that the freedom they have received through the gospel doesn’t give them an excuse to sin. Instead, it gives them an opportunity to serve one another (Galatians 5:13-15). Against that background, he tells the Galatians:
‘Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh’ (Galatians 5:16).
Paul is talking about the normal Christian life, and he clearly believes that the normal Christian life includes experiencing the desires of the flesh. In this context, the flesh is the human self in opposition to God.2 Paul thinks that normal Christian life includes experiencing desires that are in opposition to God and his ways. He must think those desires are an ongoing reality for Christians or he wouldn’t give an exhortation about how Christians can avoid gratifying them.
Paul’s concern isn’t that the desires are there; his concern is that we don’t let them reach completion in our actions.
And that word ‘gratify’ is really important. Paul doesn’t call Christians to stop experiencing these desires, or to repent every time they become aware of them. He calls Christians to walk by the Spirit so that they don’t act on those desires. The word translated ‘gratify’ is a form of the verb teleō which means ‘to finish, complete, fulfil’. Paul’s concern isn’t that the desires are there – that’s just a normal part of Christian life – his concern is that we don’t let them reach completion in our actions.
The sexual attraction towards guys that I experience is just one example of ‘the desires of the flesh’ in my life. But I seek to walk by the Spirit and not to gratify those desires. I’m just a normal Christian.
Sin slavery and the passions of the body
The second passage is Romans 6. In Romans 6, Paul is addressing a misunderstanding he knows could emerge from teaching he’s laid out in the previous chapter. His concern is that his readers might think Christians can – or even should – continue to sin because more sin means more of God’s grace (Romans 6:1). He explains that such an attitude is a complete misunderstanding of the gospel and of what has happened to us when we trusted in Christ.
Paul tells us that Christian believers have been freed from slavery to sin: ‘We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin’ (Romans 6:6). Previously, we were slaves to sin and were powerless to resist its advances. But now, as those united with Christ in his death, we have been freed from that slavery. We now have the freedom not to sin.
But just because we’re freed from the controlling power of sin, doesn’t mean we don’t still experience desires that seek to lead us to sin. In fact, Paul assumes that we will still experience those desires, and he tells us what to do about that reality: ‘Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions’ (Romans 6:12). Passions (literally, ‘desires’) will be there. Our responsibility is to make sure we don’t obey them.
The key thing is what we do in response to the desires we experience.
The following verse explains what it looks like to not let sin reign, expressing it in both the negative and the positive: ‘Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness’ (Romans 6:13). The key thing is what we do in response to the desires we experience.
Paul’s teaching in Romans 6 makes the same basic point as Galatians 5:16.3 Desires that seek to lead us into sin are a normal part of Christian life this side of Jesus’s return. But, drawing on the work of the Spirit and the Son, we can choose not to fulfil or obey those desires.
So, what should I do about my same-sex attraction? The same as every Christian has to do with desires that seek to lead us away from what God says is right and good. When desires emerge that would try to cause me to misuse God’s good gift of sexuality, either in my mind or with my body, I am to remember what is true of me as one united with Christ and filled with the Spirit. I am to choose, empowered by the Son and Spirit, not to follow, indulge or act upon those desires. In short, I’m to live the normal Christian life just like everyone else.
- I’m aware that building a whole position on just two Bible passages is risky. We want to consider the whole of God’s word, not just specially selected passages. But I believe these two passages reflect the New Testament’s teaching about the Christian life more broadly and am yet to be convinced that there is biblical teaching that undermines the perspective I think they reveal.
- Douglas Moo, Galatians, BECNT (Baker, 2013), p.344.
- Douglas Moo notes this parallel. See The Epistle to the Romans, NICNT, (Eerdmans, 1996), p.384, n.163.
