CA Extreme Ct's Shameful Decision

Wrote the following in the comment section of this post last night:

Speaking of pastors having the free speech right to state Bible verses - which state unequivocally that homosexual behavior is sinful - tomorrow the CA Supreme Court will hand down it's decision on whether or not to overturn Proposition 22 (which was voted on by the people in 2000 to recognize that marriage is defined as the union of one man and one woman in CA) and allow homosexual "marriage."

Knowing how liberal the members of the court are, I would not be a bit surprised if they decide to ignore and trump the votes of 60% of the people in order to push their own ideological agreement with those proponents of same-sex "marriage" on the public in this state.

I pray that Prop. 22 ISN'T overturned, but I fear that this liberal leftist court will not be able to resist the opportunity to do so.

If they do such a thing, it may be "legal" in CA to "marry" a person of the same sex; but it will NEVER BE MORALLY RIGHT IN THE EYES OF GOD. God's laws DO NOT CHANGE!

May 14, 2008 10:33:00 PM PDT

With the CA Extreme Court's "making new law" decision, CA has trumped the vote of the majority of people in this state who voted by 60% margin back in 2000 that marriage should be defined as the union of one man and one woman in the state of California.

How ironic that this Extreme Court has done exactly what John McCain said in his speech this morning about radical judges "legislating from the bench." This court has overturned the will of the people in California.

This unrighteous decision just proves that the Alliance Defense Fund is correct in reclaiming pastor's rights of free speech in the pulpit. Getting that passed will be of the utmost importance in order to prevent so-called "hate crimes" laws - that are currently being pushed into law by homosexual groups and their supporters - which are designed to criminalize any voices that share the fact that homosexual behavior as sinful, shameful, physically, emotionally and spiritually dangerous. Getting pastors who follow biblical morality (and, of course, preach against and oppose homosexual behavior) silenced, is the final goal of the homosexual agenda. If they can, literally, shut all opposition down, then they (believe) that they have won not only the battle, but the entire war against God's Word and proper moral behavior.

There are two people who recently presented strong arguments against homosexual behavior.

1. Pastor Miles McPherson's sermon on February 10, 2008 is called Marriage, The Image of God. Go to the link, scroll down to that date, and you can either watch the video or listen to the podcast.


2. Robert A. J. Gagnon, Ph.D. - who recently wrote An Open Letter to a University President regarding the Suspension of a Black Female Administrator Who Challenged a Comparison between Homosexual Practice and Being Black.

Also see Dr. Gagnon's answers to questions that he has received regarding homosexuality.

[Note: I respectfully disagree with Dr. Gagnon's view that "salvation can be lost." Dr. Gagnon admits that Christians can disagree on this issue.]

Here is the letter and response:

A Question about Eternal Security and Sexual Immorality
From: Mark
Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2007 2:20 PM
To: Robert Gagnon


Dear Dr. Gagnon:

Even as one who has learned a great deal from you through your articles, as a Presbyterian minister I must take exception to one aspect of your teaching regarding whether a lady would go to hell if she is in a lesbian relationship [RG: see email below]. Your answer, as I saw it, stated that it wasn't a given but a possibility seemingly based solely on this one thing. Homosexual activity is a sin (it's ironic that those who view that portion of Leviticus 18 as no longer relevant do see all the other teachings there on sinful relationships there as still in effect - incest and bestiality to name a couple).

However: Heaven is based upon what he did on the cross, and our acceptance of Him as Savior. Fornication, Fathers Not Being Involved in the Lives of Their Children, Lying, Divorce, Not Helping Those in Need if You Can, for example, are also sins, but no one seems to suggest that those who continue to lie from time to time, who left pregnant women to raise kids on their own, or who are who are divorced and remarried are all in danger of hell. Jesus does call them to change their ways as part of following Him and He always will, but to say that the promise of eternal life may now be null and void even if they truly believe (albeit erroneously) that God says homosexual activity based on orientation as okay seems extreme.

Let me be clear. I do not excuse these activities or homosexual activity. Having Jesus as Lord means having him as Lord in all of your life. I know that passage in Galatians 5:19-21. I am angered that we in the PC(USA) seem to told not just to acknowledge homosexual behavior but to celebrate it. All are sins that I confront equally as a child of God. When I hear the suggestion, though, that the Lord puts this one sin in a separate category regarding eternal judgment, raises concerns for me that we've gone from one sandy foundation to another another (Matthew 7). James 2:8-13- "Whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at one point is guilty of breaking all of it." All Christians are called to be different. All Christians also continue to be sinners, too.

Forgive me if I have misinterpreted what you stated there. Is this what you are saying?

Mark

Dr. Gagnon's response:

From: Robert Gagnon
Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2007 5:50 PM
To: Mark

Dear Mark,

The question you raise has to do with the larger question of eternal security, classically defined as “once saved, always saved.” I do not subscribe to it because I don’t believe that Jesus or any NT author, including Paul, subscribed to it. There are literally dozens of texts that make this point. The thought here is not that individuals must merit their salvation but rather that the absence of transformation or the presence of serial unrepentant immoral behavior of an extreme sort demonstrates a fatal deficiency in faith, i.e., in not letting Jesus live in one by grace. When Paul says in 1 Cor 6:9-10 that sexually immoral persons, including those who engage in incest, adultery, and man-male intercourse (and by extension lesbian intercourse) shall not inherit eternal life he is not making this statement only about unbelievers. Both the context of the Christian incestuous man in ch. 5 and the analogy of a Christian, a person who is really and truly joined to Jesus, having sex with a prostitute in 6:12-20 make clear, in my opinion, that he also has in view believers who live immoral lives. It is because the incestuous man’s eternal life is at risk that Paul takes the extreme measure of putting him on church discipline, in the hopes that he might be saved on the Day of the Lord.

Thus also he could say to the Thessalonian believers, in the earliest extant New Testament document:



For you know what commands we gave to you through the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God: your holiness, that you abstain from sexual immorality (porneia) . . . [and not live] like the Gentiles who do not know God. . . . because the Lord is an avenger regarding all these things. . . . For God called us not to sexual uncleanness (akatharsia) but in holiness. Therefore the one who rejects [these commands] rejects not humans but the God who gives his Holy Spirit to us. (1 Thess 4:2-8)

And to the Galatian Christians:

The works of the flesh are obvious, which are: sexual immorality (porneia), sexual uncleanness (akatharsia), licentiousness (aselgeia) . . . , which I am warning you about, just as I warned you before, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. . . . Stop deceiving yourselves; God is not to be mocked, for whatever one sows that one will also reap. For the one who casts seed into one’s flesh will reap a harvest of destruction and decay from the flesh, but the one who casts seed into the Spirit will reap a harvest of eternal life from the Spirit. And let us not grow tired of doing what is right for in due time we will reap, if we do not relax our efforts. (Gal 5:19-21; 6:7-9)

In 2 Corinthians Paul expresses deep concern that

I may have to mourn over many who have continued in their former sinning and did not repent of the sexual uncleanness (akatharsia), sexual immorality (porneia), and licentiousness (aselgeia) that they practiced. (12:21)

Mourning is mourning over death, the possible loss of eternal life for believers who live in this manner. Later, in Rom 6:19-22 and 8:12-14, Paul urged Roman believers to reverse the trend of the immoral life described in Rom 1:24-27, otherwise loss of eternal life would ensue:

For just as you presented your members as slaves to sexual uncleanness (akatharsia) and to [other types of] lawlessness for the sake of lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for the sake of holiness (or: sanctification). For when you were slaves of sin, you were free with respect to [the demands of] righteousness. What fruit did you have at that time? Things of which you are now ashamed, because the end (or: outcome) of those things is death. But now, since you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you have your fruit for holiness (or: sanctification), and the end (or: outcome) is eternal life.

The message of Ephesians is similar:

[N]o longer walk as the Gentiles walk, . . . who . . . have given themselves up to licentiousness (aselgeia) for the doing of every sexual uncleanness (akatharsia). . . . Sexual immorality (porneia) and sexual uncleanness (akatharsia) of any kind . . . must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. . . . Know this indeed, that every sexually immoral person (pornos) or sexually unclean person (akathartos) . . . has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God is coming on the children of disobedience. (Eph 4:17-19; 5:3-6)

And there are many other texts. For me not to say what I said would leave out the whole counsel of God. The deception that a number of the above texts refer to is deceiving oneself into thinking that, as a Christian, who could continue in serial unrepentant sin of an egregious sort (like adultery, incest, same-sex intercourse, sex with prostitutes) and get away with it. It’s not limited to same-sex intercourse. The divorce/remarriage analogy is not a good one, both because Scripture does not treat it as serious an offense (though serious) and because it tends not to be serial behavior (unlike repeated acts of homosexual practice). I would agree, too, that regular, particular grievous non-sexual forms of behavior could also get one excluded from the kingdom of heaven even if one confesses Jesus as Lord.

I realize that Christians have differing views on this issue. I am convinced by Scripture itself that loss of salvation is real and possible for believers. In that sense I am always reforming in the direction of Scripture, or at least trying to do so here.

I hope this helps,

Rob

I would argue that people who do not genuinely confess and repent of their sins before accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior over their lives my not genuinely be saved in the first place. Therefore, their names are not written in the Lamb's Book of Life.

Once genuinely born again, one cannot lose their salvation. However, a nominal or willfully sinning person who has not made a true commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ, but has simply given themselves the label of "Christian" may NOT have been genuinely converted. Jesus said, "you must be born again." He also said, "if you love me, you will keep my commandments." Those who have not made the heart commitment (meaning, not just an intellectual thought that Jesus might be the Savior), may not have been born again through Jesus Christ in the first place. Such people are in grave danger when Jesus, who knows each and every individuals heart and soul, goes through what the Scriptures tell us is "the separation of the sheep and the goats."

Mat 25:32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth [his] sheep from the goats:


Mat 25:33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.


Note Matthew Henry's commentary on Matthew 25:32-33

II. The appearing of all the children of men before him (v. 32); Before him shall be gathered all nations. Note, The judgment of the great day will be a general judgment. All must be summoned before Christ’s tribunal; all of every age of the world, from the beginning to the end of time; all of every place on earth, even from the remotest corners of the world, most obscure, and distant from each other; all nations, all those nations of men that are made of one blood, to dwell on all the face of the earth.

III. The distinction that will then be made between the precious and the vile; He shall separate them one from another, as the tares and wheat are separated at the harvest, the good fish and the bad at the shore, the corn and chaff in the floor. Wicked and godly here dwell together in the same kingdoms, cities, churches, families, and are not certainly distinguishable one from another; such are the infirmities of saints, such the hypocrisies of sinners, and one event to both: but in that day they will be separated, and parted for ever; Then shall ye return, and discern between the righteous and the wicked, Mal. 3:18. They cannot separate themselves one from another in this world (1 Co. 5:10), nor can any one else separate them (ch. 13:29); but the Lord knows them that are his, and he can separate them. This separation will be so exact, that the most inconsiderable saints shall not be lost in the crowd of sinners, nor the most plausible sinner hid in the crowd of saints (Ps. 1:5), but every one shall go to his own place. This is compared to a shepherd’s dividing between the sheep and the goats; it is taken from Eze. 34:17, Behold, I judge between cattle and cattle. Note, 1. Jesus Christ is the great Shepherd; he now feeds his flock like a shepherd, and will shortly distinguish between those that are his, and those that are not, as Laban divided his sheep from Jacob’s, and set three days’ journey between them, Gen. 30:35, 36. 2. The godly are like sheep—innocent, mild, patient, useful: the wicked are like goats, a baser kind of animal, unsavoury and unruly. The sheep and goats are here feeding all day in the same pasture, but will be coted at night in different folds. Being thus divided, he will set the sheep on his right hand, and the goats on his left, v. 33. Christ puts honour upon the godly, as we show respect to those we set on our right hand; but the wicked shall rise to everlasting shame, Dan. 12:2. It is not said that he shall put the rich on his right hand, and the poor on his left; the learned and noble on his right hand, and unlearned and despised on his left; but the godly on his right hand, and the wicked on his left. All other divisions and subdivisions will then be abolished; but the great distinction of men into saints and sinners, sanctified and unsanctified, will remain for ever, and men’s eternal state will be determined by it. The wicked took up with left-handed blessings, riches and honour, and so shall their doom be.

HT: Miles McPherson: Marriage, The Image of God

Dr. Robert Gagnon

Blue Letter Bible's Matthew Henry Commentary

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Update:

Additional posts on this topic:

Americans For Truth: CWA: California Supreme Court Betrays “We the People” on Marriage

Excerpt:

To ensure that marriage is protected and the voice of the people is heard, a constitutional marriage amendment must be placed on the November ballot and national efforts need to be made to generate a federal constitutional marriage amendment. The decision must be removed from the hands of judicial activists and returned to the rightful hands of the people.

Matt Barber, CWA Policy Director for Cultural Issues [Barber is on the Board of Americans For Truth], said “The California Supreme Court has engaged in the worst kind of judicial activism today, abandoning its role as an objective interpreter of the law and, instead, legislating from the bench. It’s absurd to suggest that the framers of the California state constitution could have ever imagined there’d be a day when so-called ‘same-sex marriage’ would even be conceptualized, much less seriously considered. If anyone then had suggested the ridiculous notion, early Californians would have laughed their smocks off.

“So-called ‘same-sex’ marriage is counterfeit marriage. Marriage is, and has always been, between a man and a woman. We know that it’s in the best interest of children to be raised with a mother and a father. To use children as guinea pigs in radical San Francisco-style social experimentation is deplorable.

“The majority of Americans recognize the fact that legitimate marriage and family are cornerstones of a healthy society. Reasonable people have had enough and are refusing to allow radical extremists to redefine marriage and family into oblivion. So-called ‘same-sex marriage’ is a ridiculous and oxymoronic notion that has been forced into popular lexicon by homosexual activists and their extremist left-wing allies.

“If people who engage in homosexual behavior want to dress up and play house, that’s their prerogative, but we shouldn’t destroy the institutions of legitimate marriage and family in order to help facilitate a counterfeit.

“On a positive note, the Court’s decision today will likely serve as a wake-up call to both Californians and their fellow Americans across the country. I’m certain this decision will help fuel a California marriage amendment and re-ignite debate over a federal amendment which would protect marriage as between one man and one woman.”

Concerned Women for America is the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization.