[0:00:02]  Brenton Grimm: This is Further, a weekly show for.

[0:00:05]  Brenton Grimm: The People of Harmony Bible Church, where we seek to revisit and expand on Sunday sermons with the goal of growing deeper and biblical truth that transforms our lives. Welcome back, everyone, to another episode of Further. I'm Brenton Grimm and I'm here with Chris Carr and Clay Baker. Hey, guys.

[0:00:24]  Clay Baker: Hey, thanks for having us.

[0:00:25]  Chris Carr: Yeah, great to be here. Looking forward to it.

[0:00:28]  Brenton Grimm: There has been no lack of discussion around the topic of sexuality in our.

[0:00:32]  Brenton Grimm: Culture over the last few years.

[0:00:34]  Brenton Grimm: Typically, when these conversations come up, they are triggered by some sort of political change. And personally, I think that most of these discussions have been unhelpful at best. So today our goal is not to throw more fuel on the fire, but to help the people of Harmony think through these issues in our local context, in light of the gospel and move forward in truth and grace. And those two words will be key today.

[0:01:04]  Brenton Grimm: We refuse to capitulate on the truth, but we don't allow ourselves to forget the extent to which we've been forgiven for our own sin, and we extend that grace to others. There is no sin, no controversy that Jesus can't redeem and so in everything, we look to him.

[0:01:26]  Brenton Grimm: So with that, Clay, first of all, thank you for your message on Sunday, really enjoyed it. My twelve year old nephew came up to me afterwards and he said, man, that sermon was intense.

[0:01:39]  Clay Baker: I'm glad your twelve year old nephew was there to hear it. That's good. And it was in some ways that's the target audience.

[0:01:44]  Brenton Grimm: Yeah. And you hit a lot of maybe all the uncomfortable topics that we could have talked about. So I guess quickly, what was your prep like this week? What did you expect coming into it?

[0:01:56]  Clay Baker: It was a heavy week of prep. I knew the passage, I had a sense of unease about handling these topics because they are so sensitive and charged, and I wanted to do so in both truth and in grace and with these topics. That's a tall task. And I wanted to handle the text faithfully and come across in those ways. During the prep, though, I was surprised at how heavy it was as I contemplated the depths of our sin, the depths of our depravity. And there was a moment in my office where I wouldn't say I broke down, but I got close to it and the tears were welling up and I was just really sad for humanity, I was sad for our lostness, and this passage really brings that home and it's heavy. So, yeah, that's kind of what my prep was like.

[0:02:54]  Brenton Grimm: Yeah. How's it been received, do you think?

[0:02:59]  Clay Baker: I've had an overwhelmingly positive response, and I'm really thankful for that. I think our people, they're just very faithful people and they respond to the preaching of God's word and they see that God's word is true and right and God is gracious and God is loving while at the same time being holy and just. And so when by God's grace you're able to teach His Word in such a way that brings those things across, I think they receive that well, and they're glad to hear it and all that. Heaviness then, of course, is taught in light of and communicated against the backdrop of and ending with, of course, the Gospel.

[0:03:45]  Clay Baker: And that is good news. And so while there's a whole lot of bad news in Romans One and a whole lot of Heaviness, the answer is the Gospel. And when you bring that home the good news in light of the bad news, it makes the good news that much sweeter. And I think people are just that much more thankful for the grace of God in their lives and that they know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.

[0:04:08]  Brenton Grimm: Yeah, it's good to have a church full of people that want the truth.

[0:04:14]  Clay Baker: Amen.

[0:04:15]  Brenton Grimm: Okay, so first question, and this is one that I've struggled with myself, kind of gone back and forth as we've gone through Romans One. But who has God given up? Is this a specific group of people or is it mankind in general?

[0:04:34]  Clay Baker: I think it's mankind in general, and I think it's mankind apart from Christ, such that what we see described in Romans One is our condition before we come to know Him and before he is in us. And part of why I say that reminds me of Ephesians, chapter two. So this is a letter written to the church of Ephesus. These are believers Paul is writing to. And listen carefully how he writes to this church. He says, and you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.

[0:05:41]  Clay Baker: A lot of parallels there between that passage, those first few verses of Ephesians two and our passage the last couple of weeks in Romans one. And so I think it's pretty clear from that that these Christians whom Paul is writing to, they were in the same kind of state as the rest of mankind, and it wasn't good. And it's this kind of they too were given over in these ways in the lust of their own hearts to impurity and to dishonorable passions into a debased mind.

[0:06:15]  Clay Baker: And then that's where the sweet part comes in. Back in Ephesians, chapter two, verse four. But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ by grace. You have been saved and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. And so their situation, these Christian situation was really bleak. It was really bad. It was a lot like or was just like how Paul described the situation of mankind in Romans, chapter one.

[0:06:58]  Clay Baker: But God, but for the mercy of God, god's grace, mercy, the Gospel of Jesus Christ penetrating their hearts, drawing them to Himself, then responding in repentance and faith and then coming into a newness of life and a whole new situation in Christ. And that changes everything.

[0:07:15]  Chris Carr: Yeah.

[0:07:16]  Chris Carr: And I think what we're going to see in chapter two and chapter three makes it pretty clear. Chapter three, Paul quotes Psalm 14. He says, none is righteous. No, not one. No one understands, no one seeks for God. All have turned aside together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one. So everybody there. Of course, then he's going to go on. And maybe the greatest part of Romans and verses 21 through 26 is saying, but, but now a righteousness of God has been made known through faith in Jesus Christ. And we'll talk a lot more about that. So we'll get into that too much here today.

[0:07:57]  Brenton Grimm: So I guess just to sum that up, the people that are given up are us in our natural state.

[0:08:04]  Clay Baker: Yes.

[0:08:05]  Brenton Grimm: You would agree with that?

[0:08:06]  Clay Baker: Apart from Christ. We are given up in that way, in those ways, and we are under God's wrath.

[0:08:12]  Brenton Grimm: Okay, yeah, thanks for that. Do you have any thoughts? I've been thinking through some of the common objections that you hear to what the Bible is actually saying. So one common thing for Romans one is that Paul is actually talking about pedophilia or pederasty rather than a loving homosexual relationship is what you'll hear. Do you have any thoughts on that?

[0:08:43]  Clay Baker: Yeah, I just don't think that's faithful to the text. So if you see in verse 27 of chapter one, paul clearly says men committing shameless acts with men. He's not talking about boys. And in addition to that, he has previously, in verse 26, discussed women exchanging natural relations for those that are contrary to nature. So women with women, and there isn't the kind of evidence for female pederasty as there was for male pederasty. So he's talking about men and men and women and women here, right?

[0:09:20]  Chris Carr: Yeah. I hope that those of you who are listening will kind of key into what Clay just said and what I'm going to say here because I think it's really important, especially maybe for our younger people who are going to hear things like the Bible never says anything, really said anything about homosexuality. That's just not true. Both in the Old Testament and the New Testament, you hear the argument that Jesus never really said anything about homosexuality. And while Jesus didn't specifically talk about homosexuality, he does talk about in Matthew 19 he created them from the beginning, male and female marriage.

[0:10:01]  Chris Carr: Right? And he quotes Genesis 224, the most important verse in the Bible on marriage affirming how God created one man, one woman for a lifetime and that sex is only to be exclusively in that relationship. And then, of course, as Clay talks about here in Romans chapter one, it's clear that he is talking actually about the homosexual acts there. And if I can just refer you to a great book, kevin de Young has really a pretty short book called what does the Bible Really Teach About Homosexuality? And he addresses some of these common objections. And this one about the relationship between an older male and a boy here and says that's really the only type of homosexuality that Paul would have been familiar with.

[0:10:59]  Chris Carr: Paul didn't know anything about consensual adult, committed homosexual relationships. And if I can just say it, it's just not true. There's lots of evidence that it was relatively common for there to be the type of homosexual relationships, whether it's lesbian relationships or the homosexual male relationships that we have today. And if I can just even read a quote here from a lesbian and a lady who has written one of the most important books on lesbianism and took goody, she actually writes this.

[0:11:47]  Chris Carr: And this is about Paul. She says, Paul could have believed that the active female partners in a female homosexual bond and the passive male partners in a male homosexual bond and other sexually unorthodox persons were born that way and yet still condemn them as unnatural and shameful. So she's saying Paul would have known about this and he very well was condemning them here in Romans, chapter one. And she says this I believe that Paul used the word exchanged to indicate that people knew the natural sexual order of the universe and left it behind.

[0:12:28]  Chris Carr: I see Paul as condemning all forms of homo eroticism as the unnatural acts of people who had turned away from God. So this is a lesbian who is a leading, really, voice and authority on lesbianism and antiquity. And she's agreeing with our interpretation. And that's just one example. There's more if we're willing to go and really study and look at it. And so homosexuality was common in the Roman Empire of Paul's day, even amongst the Roman emperors.

[0:13:04]  Chris Carr: And so those arguments really don't hold weight when we look into them.

[0:13:10]  Brenton Grimm: Yeah, there's a lot of objections.

[0:13:14]  Chris Carr: Let me mention something too, because I think it's important to balance this. Paul talks in First Corinthians Six and he lists all these sexual sins and one of them is homosexuals. And he says, and such were some of you. He's talking to the Corinthian Christians, some of them who were homosexuals. And he says, such were some of you, but you were washed, you were cleansed, you were sanctified through Jesus Christ.

[0:13:41]  Chris Carr: And so Paul was not this angry, condemning preacher in regards to homosexuality. He taught the truth, but then he also was very gracious and holding out the hope that the gospel brings to everybody.

[0:13:57]  Brenton Grimm: And he wasn't ignorant of the culture either.

[0:14:01]  Chris Carr: Right.

[0:14:03]  Brenton Grimm: The homosexual debate has been going on for a long time. The newer thing that we're seeing come up is transgenderism. Is there any tie in here? Did you do any thinking about that when you were prepping for the Romans? One message?

[0:14:24]  Clay Baker: Well, there is tie in. I really was focused more on sexual immorality because that's more directly what the passage is addressing. But there's absolutely tie in to the passage. And the theme of my sermon was that we live in this fallen, upside down world. We are fallen upside down people apart from Christ and transgenderism. And the related issues are just one more example of that. Paul writes in our passage that were given over to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. Well, there you go, right, rejecting or at best being confused by the biological sex that you were created to be and desiring to change that.

[0:15:15]  Clay Baker: I liken it somewhat to the person who is same sex attracted, which I did address in my sermon, someone who maybe they don't want to be this way even, but feels a longing for a lust for somebody of the same sex. And that's another example of our fallenness. And I said that the important thing. The most important thing is not so much what temptations you face in life, but what do you do in response to those temptations.

[0:15:47]  Clay Baker: So are you in Christ? That's the most important thing. Are you right with God through faith in Jesus Christ? And then if you are, you do have the power of Christ in you through his spirit to resist those temptations. And so do you resist them leaning on his grace and in humility, or do you give in to them? And I think that the transgender issues are quite similar to that. I would be very sad for somebody who's confused about their gender and thinks that if they're a boy that they might really be a girl or vice versa. And I really think it's terrible the way our culture is trending in this regard, especially towards younger ages, to actually encourage those inquiries, to encourage those notions that, yeah, maybe you really are a boy or maybe you really are a girl despite your biological sex.

[0:16:44]  Clay Baker: I think that's terribly sad and tragic, especially with respect to young people who are so impressionable and so vulnerable. See, I see it as another example of how we're fallen. But I also don't think that's outside of God's grace to redeem and those folks need the gospel, they need truth. They don't need to be like in verse 32. Their sin does not need to be approved of, or they don't need to be encouraged to cross that line. So, okay, it's one thing to have the question, but are we just encouraging them to cross that line into sin and just abandon who God made them to be to to do what ought not to be done with their bodies?

[0:17:24]  Brenton Grimm: Yeah. So your messaging doesn't change much between the two topics?

[0:17:28]  Chris Carr: No.

[0:17:30]  Brenton Grimm: Good. Chris, what are some ways that the church has not handled the homosexual issue well in the past? Yes.

[0:17:40]  Chris Carr: So the church there is a big label. Maybe I would be a little more specific and talk about the Evangelical church. And I would say that in many respects we've done a good job on the truth side, teaching what God's Word has to say about this issue. But we've really been lacking on the grace side, the compassion side. And so we have at times seemingly singled out homosexuality is like this own unique sin that is worse than every other kind of sin and have used honestly, Romans one to try to say that that is the case when that's not really a correct understanding of the text as Clay brought out on Sunday.

[0:18:37]  Chris Carr: And so we have lacked really grace and compassion and honestly humility. And we're going to talk about that this coming week, about how we've been judgmental. We have not tried to understand the struggle that many people who have struggled with same sex attraction and have tried to resist that temptation, whether they've faithfully done it or struggled to do it. If I can just get it more specific. We have joked and used terms which have been demeaning.

[0:19:18]  Chris Carr: We have not made people who struggle with same sex attraction and with homosexuality. We've not made them feel welcome. We've not given them an understanding that there's grace for everyone, not just for our sin, but for everybody's sin. And so we've not been careful about how we've talked about this issue. And yeah, those are just a few, but I think we've really struggled to respond not only with truth but also with tears.

[0:19:56]  Brenton Grimm: Why do you think that this and more than others has been responded to poorly? Is it a lack of understanding by us or what do you think that is?

[0:20:09]  Chris Carr: Yeah, that's a great question. I think it's probably a combination of a number of things. One, I think it's teaching and that we've tended to forget that one of the truths that we need to stand on is love and so that we're called to love everybody. So I think there's been a lack of understanding that I think there's honestly been a lack of actually the proclamation of the true gospel, that we have a gospel problem.

[0:20:41]  Chris Carr: Honestly, I think there's a level of fear here that a lot of times we respond out of a fear because either maybe we don't understand and we're afraid of people who struggle with this issue. And I think sometimes, quite honestly, what we see in conservative media actually inflames that, and I should say you can't see me but conservative in quotes because I don't want to lambast the conservative, so I am one.

[0:21:23]  Chris Carr: But I think a lot of times that really inflames things like you were talking about at the beginning and doesn't help. So I don't know, maybe Clay has a different view or something else to add there.

[0:21:39]  Clay Baker: Well, something I've just observed culturally for a while. I've seen this unfold over the course of my life as you guys have too sort of grown up with this issue and it's changed so much and so quickly over a short period of time. One thing I noticed is that when homosexuality was more of a cultural taboo, when it was less accepted I think it was easier for people who weren't attracted to the same sex, in other words, not homosexual themselves to think of folks who are as the other and they didn't know any.

[0:22:17]  Clay Baker: Okay, but this is a dangerous way to think about a sin issue, think about a particular sin issue as just pertaining to other people and it causes us to forget our own sinfulness. And then as homosexuality became more culturally acceptable then people started the phrase was coming out or coming out of the closet, right? And so people started doing that. Well, then all of a sudden these folks who before didn't think they knew anybody who was same sex attracted or in a gay lifestyle and now all of a sudden they do.

[0:22:55]  Clay Baker: And now they know these people. And these people might be their son or their daughter or their friend, their coworker but because their views on this issue weren't grounded in a right understanding of human sinfulness and the truth of God's Word but just this sense of that's the other person that's wrong and that's weird and that's not me. Now all of a sudden they know these people and they don't have a foundation or a right foundation or perspective, a biblical perspective for how to think about this.

[0:23:27]  Clay Baker: And so they're governed by their emotions. And their emotions are perhaps commendably ones of love and compassion for these people. And that's good. But without the foundation of God's Word at the center of that perspective, then so many people just throughout threw out God's Word and the teachings of God's Word and the church on this issue altogether and perhaps even for many throughout Christianity altogether and just embraced then homosexuality as good and fine and right simply because they loved or had compassion for somebody they now knew to be in that kind of lifestyle.

[0:24:17]  Clay Baker: So I just think if more of us had a right understanding of humanity and had a right understanding of humanity's sinfulness and had a right including a right understanding of our own sinfulness and our own need for the gospel and that was Christ centered and biblically based. Then, as these things changed culturally, we might have been able to be a little more grounded, anchored in God's word and able to respond yes with grace. Yes, with compassion, yes, with love.

[0:24:47]  Clay Baker: But we could have also responded with truth and been able to maintain the truths of the faith without throwing those out as we attempted to embrace people who are struggling.

[0:24:58]  Chris Carr: Yeah, that's a really good word, Clay. And I would say we probably need to address kind of the other side of the coin here because that Clay has brought up is that nowadays the evangelical church is kind of swinging the pendulum to the other side. And even we've seen just in recent weeks some leaked video from a very well known and influential evangelical pastor who is apparently it's not exactly clear and the lack of clarity is a real issue in and of itself but seems to be affirming same sex relationships.

[0:25:37]  Chris Carr: And this is a guy who leads one of the largest evangelical churches in the country and is hugely influential and so really going along the line of what Clay is talking about here. And so there is this balance. And I love what Clay has to say is like, we know what the Bible has to say or we need to know what the Bible has to say first of all, about our humanity and the sinfulness of all of us and how that impacts every single one of us. And then how the answer to that is the gospel.

[0:26:16]  Chris Carr: And when we understand our own sinfulness and God's grace to us in our sinfulness, that should produce in us a grace to everybody else regardless of what sin they are maybe struggling with, especially when it's different than ours. I don't necessarily have all that hard of a time having compassion on people who struggle with the same sin that I do because I understand that what I really need is compassion on those who struggle with sin that I don't necessarily struggle with.

[0:26:43]  Brenton Grimm: Yeah. Verse 32 says though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die they not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them. Is any of is living in this culture? Are we in danger of approving of the sin of our culture? And should we expect more from them? Even though a significant portion of our culture is unregenerate? How do we fulfill that verse 32 and not give approval to those who do evil?

[0:27:32]  Clay Baker: Yeah, I think we need to remember that we are in the world but we're not to be of the world. We can't take ourselves out of this world but our citizenship is in heaven and it's ultimately God who deserves our allegiance. And so I think as we live in this world and in this culture that seems to be increasingly fallen or seems to be going in a direction we don't want it to yeah, we are in danger if we're not actively engaged in God's word and the other means of grace we have available to us to keep us in the faith. We are in danger of slipping into a worldly mindset or a worldly lifestyle. We do need to be on guard against that. We do need to be, like I said, in his word. We need to be in prayer. We need to be in the body of the church on a regular basis under the preaching of His Word. And I think that will help preserve our saltiness and hopefully help preserve our light, because we are called to be salt and light in this world.

[0:28:35]  Clay Baker: We're to be light in the darkness. We're to be salt. Salt was a preservative. We are to preserve the good truths of God's Word. So we need to be on guard against it, but realizing that we can't take ourselves out of it until the day the Lord takes the film to be with Him.

[0:28:50]  Chris Carr: Yeah, I think that this is a really difficult thing for us to navigate and will probably become increasingly so in the days ahead and again back. I don't know, this sounds really repetitive, but grace and truth and verse 32 scares me because it scares me for myself. But for a lot of people in the Evangelical Church these days, they're giving approval for it. And that's a scary thing because I see a lot of approval going on now. At the same time, though, I think we have to remember that when Paul says that he's not actually in that verse specifically going back to homosexuality, he's talking about their slanders, their gossips.

[0:29:44]  Chris Carr: So let's just talk about gossip for a second. I would say that one of the things that Harmony Bible Church struggles with is gossip. And so we've got to be careful. We're not just calling out the sins of other people, but we're also not allowing sins that we struggle with. We're just going to kind of, you know, cover over those kind of things and disobedient apparent. I mean, it just it goes on and on. And that's really what Paul has a view here in verse 32.

[0:30:19]  Chris Carr: Oh, yes, certainly homosexuality. But it's also these other things. And so it's really easy. Yeah, we're going to stand on the truth about homosexuality. If I can just be honest with you. As a pastor at Harmony Bible Church, it actually takes some more courage for me to talk about things like gossip and envy and greed than it does about homosexuality. Because I know and Clay referred to this earlier, our people love the word, and they appreciate when we teach what's clearly in the word, especially as it's kind of contrary to what's in culture.

[0:30:58]  Chris Carr: It takes actually more courage for me to talk about greed and gossip than it does about homosexuality. That would surprise people, I know, because of the comments that I get. But generally the gossip and the greed and the envy and that stuff maybe hits closer to home for most things we struggle with.

[0:31:17]  Brenton Grimm: Yeah. Okay. So this is, I guess, kind of the crux of what I want to talk about.

[0:31:27]  Chris Carr: We're getting to the crux right now.

[0:31:29]  Brenton Grimm: Yeah.

[0:31:30]  Chris Carr: Okay.

[0:31:31]  Brenton Grimm: We're 3 hours in, I think. How would you counsel someone that struggles with these things? Maybe I'll throw in the trans issue too, but same sex attraction, homosexuality, how do you counsel someone?

[0:31:52]  Chris Carr: Well, that's a big question, and a lot of it would depend upon the specific situation that the person would bring to the table and would be wrestling with. I think one starting place is for them to hopefully come to understand that they're created by God and they're created for God, and that they're only going to truly flourish and truly be able to find out who they are and what they are here for when they submit to his design and purpose for their life.

[0:32:42]  Chris Carr: And that we're only going to actually find what we're looking for, and we're going to flourish in life when we affirm that and strive, although we'll struggle to live that out. This ties in specifically to the transgender issue, but to homosexuality as well, and to a whole host of other things. But today, especially in our Western culture, we so value individualism and self expression that we have just made. That really the ultimate value.

[0:33:15]  Chris Carr: And so if a five year old comes and says, I feel like a five year old boy comes, I feel like I'm a girl, then we feel like, okay, we've got to affirm that rather than recognizing that a five year old, you know, changes their mind a hundred times during the day about a variety of different things and understanding that there's a higher authority than what really any of us feel or think at any one time.

[0:33:49]  Chris Carr: And so as it applies to these issues, I think just going back and you're just starting from that baseline of like, you are made in God's image. You're made like him. You're made to represent him. That means that you have immense value and worth. And on top of that, God loved you so much that even in your rebellion against Him, he sent His Son and sent his son to give his life for you. That's how valuable and precious that you are.

[0:34:27]  Chris Carr: And because that is the case, that if you have faith in Him, you now are restored your relationship with Him, and you can now experience really the purpose for which you live, the purpose for which you are created. And so that's really where I would at least begin and spend a lot of time in regard to that. Although I would say this maybe add, I would try to before I even got into that, to listen to the person, to understand what their story is, what has happened to them in their life, what they're struggling with.

[0:35:09]  Chris Carr: And just to try to they probably feel lonely. They probably feel misunderstood. They're probably hurting, struggling, lost. And so just to try to show them some acceptance, not saying accepting. Maybe what they are doing or what they're struggling with, but accept them as a person and as a fellow image bearer. And then once I have a pretty good understanding, or at least a rudimentary understanding of that, begin really honestly in Genesis one and two and carry that all through the gospel story.

[0:35:52]  Chris Carr: I love the rubric of creation, fall, redemption and restoration. And it's a great kind of matrix through which to explain the Bible as a whole in the gospel. So I don't know if you have any follow up on that or Clay, I have anything to add, but yeah.

[0:36:11]  Brenton Grimm: Clay and I were talking a little earlier and I think that what we don't want to do with those people is go straight for the sin we want. We don't want unregenerate people that have less sin in their life. We want people that are glorifying God with their lives. And so the first place we go with that is the Gospel. So I agree that Chris, you said let's start it start at the basis of creation and work through and follow what God has.

[0:36:46]  Brenton Grimm: But yeah, getting to the Gospel first is going to be far more important than addressing this in verse.

[0:36:52]  Chris Carr: That's a really good word because for all of us, our big issue is that we're separated from God and we need to be restored to Him. And the only way that that's possible is through faith in Jesus Christ. And so if someone who is engaged in a homosexual lifestyle, their primary issue is not the fact that they are practicing homosexual, as strange as that might sound. For example, if I were somehow be able to convince someone who's homosexual not to be a homosexual anymore, but they still don't know Jesus Christ, great.

[0:37:38]  Chris Carr: I won't say haven't done them many favors, but I would say that I haven't addressed the core issue. And yet if they come to faith in Jesus Christ, that's not necessarily going to mean that all of a sudden that homosexuality struggle is gone. In fact, in most cases it's still going to be a real struggle for them. But now we have not only the foundation to which to build up, but now we have the power.

[0:38:02]  Chris Carr: And so a lot of times we try to get people to change without the power to be able to do that. And the power to be able to change is only found in the gospel.

[0:38:12]  Brenton Grimm: Absolutely.

[0:38:13]  Chris Carr: I just really want to encourage people. So we get this question how do I help convince my friend or my family member that homosexuality is wrong? And I just think a lot of times we have the wrong approach when we're focused on the homosexuality instead of focused on the fact that the person needs to come to know Jesus Christ as their savior.

[0:38:38]  Chris Carr: Yeah, and even more than that, or in addition to that, why focus on what's wrong about the sin? Why not instead focus on, emphasize, start with what's good about God. And I think so many people, myself included, struggle to believe, struggle to remember that God is good and he is for me and he wants good for me and his ways are better than my ways. I think that taking that positive approach with a person in relationship, helping them understand that could hopefully by God's grace bear some fruit.

[0:39:16]  Brenton Grimm: Absolutely. So kind of coming off of that talking about friends and family, you would walk through how you would counsel someone, but say you have family members, someone in our congregation has a family member who struggles with one of these things or all of them. How should they respond to the family member? They obviously care about them. They care about their daughters, their sons and don't want to see them go down this road. And so there's a lot of emotion mixed up with that. But how should they best handle that?

[0:40:00]  Chris Carr: Yeah, that's a really difficult question to answer out of context. Sure. I would say first of all, that I have a lot of compassion for those who have family members or friends who struggle with this, especially if it's like a child. It's a really difficult position and place to be in. And just so everybody knows, we do have people in the church for whom this is the case. Either they're children, sometimes it's a parent. I've had that situation before.

[0:40:38]  Chris Carr: And there are even people who attend our services who are either struggling with this or actually are in an active homosexual lifestyle. It's really, really difficult to answer this and it's a difficult position to be in, but I think it really goes back to what we were just talking about is our goal cannot be to get the person out of this type of lifestyle. At least our first goal. Because if someone feels like all we want to do is we want to change you because we're uncomfortable with the way that you are or if you're in the church, we're embarrassed.

[0:41:22]  Chris Carr: And really what it is oftentimes at least we give this idea that we're more concerned about how people are going to view us than we are about our family member or friend. And that's going to go haywire for sure. And I've seen it go haywire. And so I really think trying to be loving, to be compassionate to as much and often as we can speak the gospels to them and going back to what Clay's reference is like god is good, god is for you, god wants what's best for you. I want what's best for you.

[0:42:04]  Chris Carr: And not really focus that around their sexuality, but just around them as a person, period. And seek to the best that we can see them come to faith in Jesus Christ. And then once that is the case and now they have the Holy Spirit, then we can get on his team and allow him to begin to work in them and to allow Him to hopefully use us to help them in their sanctification. But I think if we're just focused on the sin in and of itself, we're going to get ourselves into trouble and we're going to probably do more damage than we're going to do good, then it doesn't mean that there aren't some boundaries that may have to be set.

[0:42:56]  Chris Carr: You've got a child that has a girlfriend or boyfriend or even a spouse, and are you going to allow them in your house and sleep in your bedrooms and you got other kids around? I mean, those things get really complicated and I wouldn't want to answer those publicly. That would be an individual pastoral. Let's wrestle with this. I don't think there's any hard and fast, are we going to go to a gay wedding?

[0:43:26]  Chris Carr: What should we do there? Those are really complicated, and I know some people are like, absolutely not, and some people are absolutely yes. And again, I think that there's wisdom and discernment that needs to be placed on an individual case by case basis on those things.

[0:43:44]  Clay Baker: Now, I couldn't say it better myself. I think just to almost summarize that it would be like moving toward the person in compassion and in mercy, like Jesus did, but also like Jesus doing so without sending along with them and doing so without approving of their sin and then what that looks like in specific situations. Absolutely. Very context specific, very difficult, requires wisdom, discernment, prayer and Godly counsel.

[0:44:12]  Chris Carr: Yeah. Unfortunately, we're not Jesus, so it's a little harder for us. We're going to stumble along the way. But honestly, if I just encourage you, I think we need to be okay with stumbling on some of these things. What I mean by that is stumbling to try to figure out how we marry, the grace and the truth. And it's really difficult in the days that we live in and with our limitations. And so we need to humbly seek the Lord and seek to walk not just in the truth, but in grace, too, and compassion. And we're going to fumble if we are I really honestly think in the Christian life, if we're seeking to be faithful, we're going to fumble around a lot sometimes when we're not fumbling around that we're actually the least faithful because we're just on one end of the pendulum or the other.

[0:45:19]  Brenton Grimm: It's a good way to wrap up. Thank you guys. And thank you for us sticking through this whole thing. It's been long, if you notice, every week the episodes keep getting longer, so who knows where we'll land? But we do want to give the time needed for each topic. And so thanks again and we'll talk to you next time.