In the book of Ezekiel, many of the Israelites had heard the Lord’s condemnation, seen the Lord’s wrath, and felt the Lord’s severe hand of discipline, but still they were inclined to disregard God’s Law. Life in Babylon had not cured what ailed them. They were still masters of sin, and Ezekiel was charged with delivering hard sermons to their dull heads.
And in chapter 18, the prophet presents their response:
The word of the Lord came to me: “What do you mean by repeating this proverb concerning the land of Israel, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge’? (Ezek. 18:1-2)
According to them, it was not their fault they lived in sin. It was not their fault they remained engaged in idolatry. No, instead of looking within and seeing sin reigning supreme in their own hearts, they looked back at their parents, and there they placed the blame.
And to this line of thinking, the Lord responded:
As I live, declares the Lord God, this proverb shall no more be used by you in Israel. Behold, all souls are mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine: the soul who sins shall die. (Ezekiel 18:3-4)
Through his prophet, God made one point clear to his rebellious congregation: Each individual is judged by his own heart. Ezekiel’s continued response tells the unrighteous son of a righteous father to expect harsh discipline. And the righteous son of an unrighteous father should expect the tender mercy of the Lord. Anyone. regardless of parental influence, who repents of his sin will find mercy and grace. Anyone, regardless of parental influence, who steadfastly pursues wickedness will be punished.
Peter Hubbard recently wrote a book entitled, Love Into Light. In this book on how the church should love those struggling with same-sex attraction, he gives his assessment of the “nature vs. nurture” debate. In summary, it is not that helpful to determine whether the foundation of one’s same-sex passions come from genetic tendencies or environmental pressures. One’s genes, one’s parents, and one’s culture all have great potential to negatively influence an individual. However, for the individual who finds new life in Jesus Christ, he is no longer enslaved to the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the Devil. He is not in bondage to nature or nurture. Whether he has a biological tendency to engage in homosexual sin, heterosexual sin, or some form of substance abuse; or whether he has been nurtured by his culture to engage in hoarding, polygamy, narcissism, profanity, bigotry, and murder; his heart is set free by Christ, and through the power of the Holy Spirit he can progressively walk in victorious obedience.
That being said, it is not only those struggling with same-sex attraction who seek to blame their sin on nature or nurture:
- How many of us blame our sin on God and the way he allowed us to be formed in the womb?
- How many of us blame our sin on our parents and their dysfunctional way of bringing us up in the world?
- How many of us blame our sin on our parents and their failure to be around and fulfill their responsibilities?
- How many of us blame our sin on some legalistic institution that hid the Gospel behind extra-biblical rules and regulations?
- How many of us blame our sin on the wicked culture that surrounds us?
- How many of us blame our sin on some dysfunctional church that should have ministered more effectively?
- How many of us blame our sin our spouse?
- How many of us blame our sin on our chemical imbalance?
All of these factors are real. We are indeed persistently influenced by our world, our flesh, and the Father of Lies. But with every temptation to sin there is a way of escape given to the believer in Christ. So quit blaming nature. Cease focusing on nurture. Instead, look within and see your nasty heart. Repent of your sin and experience abundant life. Repent of your sin and enjoy communing with the Spirit. Repent of your sin and find victory over nature, nurture, and your nasty heart.
Unfathomable Grace 
Unfortunately, Mr. Hubbard’s work is uneducated and incorrect. Basically what he says is he doesn’t give a flip about how God created people. He is going to discriminate just like the southern white folk did against Gods creation if black people. You completely leave out the fact that the law in the Old Testament is fulfilled. Remember, Jojo, Mr. Barnett’s Christian Liberty paper you did as a senior in the Academy. “All things are lawful for me…”
The clobber passages in the New Testament that peter and you use, after real study of the language rather than a uneducated Jonesian twist of the truth reveals that those passages are talking about prostitution in worship to a pagan god, not a same-sex relationship.
I urge you to do some real, scholarly study. Read Matthew Vines book to start.
I find fascinating YOUR predilection for focusing on gay people and it raises the question of why…..
Dear Joseph, my old friend,
There’s an assumption you make in the beginning of this post that is at its core problematic. Your assumption is that is sinful for a person to love another person of the same sex. You (and Peter Hubbard) use the language of addiction to talk about sexual orientation, which shows an extreme lack of understanding of both addiction and sexual orientation; and then you make offensive moral equivalence between the acts of loving another person and the act of taking another person’s life.
The problem is, as several other BJU graduates have noted in their books (Dr. Virginia Ramey Mollenkott in Is the Homosexual my Neighbor, Pastor Jeff Miner in The Children are Free and Bob Arthur, former assistant Dean of Men for BJU, in The Sex Texts) and Matthew Vines noted in his recent release God and the Gay Christian, the Bible nowhere contemplates our modern understanding and expression of same-sex love and marriage equality, and Jesus went out of his way to heal a Centurion’s boyfriend after saying that the (Roman) Centurion had more faith than he had seen in all of Israel.
Curiously, you also mention polygamy in your arbitrary list of “sins” that people should abandon in their new life in Christ, but for much of the time that the Bible itself was being written, polygamy was normative and not considered to be sinful. In fact, the Torah gives specific regulations for its practice and is replete with stories of patriarchs who were almost all polygamists, with no moral value being assigned to their polygamy. As the late theologian Walter Wink observed, there is more than one sexual ethic in the Bible, but Jesus proclaims a love ethic that must govern all of our dealings with each other as Christians.
I am sure your intentions are good, but you can perpetuate a lot of damage by promoting this misunderstanding of scripture and of human nature. Nearly every day in my work with BJUnity, I have to separate this harmful theology from the message of Christ’s redeeming love, of “addiction” from the psychology of sexual orientation, and of faith from moralism for people who have been driven to the brink of despair by the cognitive dissonance it brings to their lives and their self-awareness.
Yes, in Christ we are a new creation, and Jesus is making us new as we walk with Him (I am a much more loving person today than I was twenty-five years ago, and I credit Jesus with that transformation in my heart), but the apostle Paul is very clear that his idea of a godly sexual ethic is celibacy for all Christians and then tells us that he understands this is not possible for many, many people.
We do not demand that heterosexual married couples give up their sex to walk with Jesus, and nor should that demand ever be made of a gay Christian, unless by our Lord Himself.
Jeffrey Hoffman
Executive Director
BJUnity
the affirming alternative for LGBT+ alumni and students of Bob Jones University