Chapter Three
There is one fundamental truth about salvation that holds for all people and for all time: embracing the Gospel and becoming a Christian always involves transformation from the inside out.
The Gospel = Change
A comprehensive and holistic change that includes every part of our lives, including our sexuality.
This transformation is progressive, meaning it starts with salvation but continues throughout the rest of our lives.
We will always struggle with temptation, and we will always live in the tension of duelling desires—the desires of the old/pre-Christian self and the desires of the new/Christian self that come from the indwelling Holy Spirit.
Sanctification is experienced on this battlefield.
Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”
The Amplified Version puts it this way, “Therefore if anyone is in Christ [that is, grafted in, joined to Him by faith in Him as Savior], he is a new creature [reborn and renewed by the Holy Spirit]; the old things [the previous moral and spiritual condition] have passed away. Behold, new things have come [because spiritual awakening brings a new life].”
Paul says that the Gospel contains the power for anyone to overcome the desires of their flesh, regardless of the specific temptations we are especially susceptible to or even genetically predisposed to, so that no one has to be a slave to the desires of their bodies or held hostage by the appetites of their flesh.
Everyone, through Christ, can be holy.
There is no clause in Scripture that offers a pass for certain sins.
“We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin.” Romans 6:6
Crucifixion is comprehensive—it’s never partial.
It’s the same cost for everyone who becomes a Christian because it’s the same cross that saves. Any presentation of the Gospel that offers a partial crucifixion is a corruption of the cross of Christ and offers no redemption.
We must lay our sexuality on the cross; we must have a crucified sexuality, so that it can be resurrected.
Christians should experience and express a resurrected sexuality!
Christians should experience and express a heavenly sexuality!
The ground is level at the foot of the cross, and we all come guilty and broken and in need of forgiveness.
There is no negotiating at the cross.
Jesus doesn’t ask anything from us that he did not first demonstrate himself; he didn’t stop at the beatings, he didn’t stop after the scourging, he didn’t stop after spikes were driven into his wrists and ankles, he didn’t stop after hanging on the cross for a few hours—he gave everything for us.
Now he demands that we give him everything.
This includes our sexuality.
We offer him the dirty and broken pieces of our lives in the shadow of his offering himself for us.
He exchanged his perfect life for our very imperfect lives; his holy life for our unholy lives; his clean life for our dirty lives.
When we give Jesus everything, then he becomes everything to us.
He becomes the driving force of our lives.
He becomes what defines us.
However, if we only give him parts of us, then he won’t become everything to us; we will value him according to what it costs us.
Too many have a cheap Christianity, offering Jesus a few parts of their lives and, as a result, not treasuring and prioritizing Christ.
Paul says that Christians should not be defined and driven by their sexuality, but rather by their new identity in Christ. When we are born again, we receive a spiritual identity that can and should overpower and supersede all other identities—our gender, our sexuality, our ethnicity, our nationality, our personalities, and our culture. Our faith in Christ becomes the driving force in our lives; our pursuit of Christlikeness becomes the primary goal for every Christian, regardless of who they are or where they are from and regardless of whatever sins they struggle with.
Paul summarizes this conviction in Galatians 2:20, saying of himself, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
He says in 2 Corinthians 5:14-15, “For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.”
We come to the same cross that Paul embraced and the same love he encountered.
It’s the same Christ available to us that Paul accepted, and the same Spirit that lived in him now lives in us.
And it’s the same outcome—Jesus filling and controlling our lives through the Holy Spirit, expressed in different ways through our unique personalities and spiritual gifts.
The calling to “take up your cross” is not for an elite class of Christians.
The calling to “be holy” is not for the super spiritual.
These are for every follower of Christ.
The real cross is not a pleasant place—it’s a place of suffering and death.
The real cross isn’t sanitized; it’s soaked in the blood of Christ.
But resurrection can only be experienced on the other side of crucifixion.
The cross of Christ is the answer to all of our questions and struggles.
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