SSA is SSA
Our increasingly avant-garde modern world loves to play word games. All around the Pittsburgh area where I work, you will see signs on front lawns, the sides of city buses, shop windows, and church buildings with a simple sentence. "Love is Love" is posted proudly, usually in rainbow colors. These words suggest "subtly" that the love found in the LGBTQIA+ community is just as good as the love found in other places, such as a traditional place like the monogamous relationship between a husband and wife.
So, in this spirit, let me play the game. My first move is to say, "SSA is SSA." Same-sex attraction is same-sex attraction.
Now, remember the game as I take my second turn. What I am saying is not really what I mean. Not all loves are equal, for not all loves are moral. What I mean in saying SSA is SSA is that same-sex attraction is sinful sexual attraction.
Sadly, it appears the church needs to hear this truth repeatedly. As the world continues its relentless catechizing to conform us to its image, even some of the strong fall under the pressure. The sad news reached my ears recently that Biblical counselor Ed Welch, whose books and booklets I refer readily and often, apparently has begun to melt under the heat. In this recent review of the second edition of Welch's popular book, Blame it on the Brain (note: link is to the first edition), Brandon Adkison at The Everman Theologian notes a dangerous shift in Welch's teaching regarding SSA.
As Adkison shows, in his first edition, Welch said the following about same-sex attraction.
The deception of homosexual orientation must be exposed and corrected. It is a false teaching that will eventually lead to bad fruit.the
Yet, in the second edition, what does he say?
If same-sex orientation were the same as lust, it would be sinful and treated by confession and repentance. Such a life would be complicated, however. You would need to confess constantly and would never be quite right with God, as if you were repenting of a preference for left-handedness or for bearing the name that your parents gave you.
Adkison goes on to further detail the shift in the two editions.
We cannot separate the idea of desire from action, responsibility, and accountability. If the physical health proverb "we are what we eat" is true, how much more the Biblical proverb "as a man thinketh in his heart, so he is" (Prov. 23:7).
The first garden teaches us this truth. The sin of our first parents did not begin but ended when they took from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and then ate from it. No, as the Scriptures record, it began at the level of desire in their hearts. Following Satan's denying God's Word and tempting them, we read that "when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate" (Gen 3:6).
As James says, "Each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death" (Jam. 1:14-15). Sin is born in the heart when we desire, or are attracted to, things forbidden by God. Our Lord told us, "For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person" (Matt. 15:19-20a). A defiled heart leads to defiled actions.
Returning to SSA, how is the attraction itself sinful? Because the desire for anything God has forbidden is sinful. A single man can desire a woman and, if he righteously pursues her for marriage, has done no wrong. But a married man cannot even desire another woman without sinning. As Jesus said, "I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Matt. 5:28). Similarly, a man cannot righteously desire another man, for God has outlawed it. Just read Leviticus 20:13 and Romans 1:26-27. That latter passage speaks of "men committing shameless acts with men," but not before it says, "God gave them up to dishonorable passions."
Why is simple biblical truth so difficult for the modern church? Is it perhaps because the church fails to see the other side of the coin - the power of the gospel changes sinful attractions and evil desires? How can the church not see that the Bible teaches that at conversion, the old has gone, and behold, new things have come (1 Cor. 5:17)? How can the church not understand the Bible teaches that the blood of Christ can sprinkle clean an evil conscience (Heb. 10:22)? How can the church not declare that because of the resurrection of Christ, we are now "dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 6:11)? How can the church not know that as the temple of God that the Spirit of God dwells within it (1 Cor. 3:16)?
The answer to all those questions is the same as the answer to the question of how the church can support such things as SSA, Side B Christianity, trans identity, etc. Unbelief. Too many today do not believe in the depths of sin nor in the deep power of the gospel to do what adulterous David prayed: "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me" (Psalm 51:10).
In his Treatise on Religious Affections, Jonathan Edwards wrote,
Conversion is a great and universal change of the man, turning him from sin to God. Converting grace will make a great alteration in him, with respect to these evil dispositions; so that however he may be still most in danger of these sins, they shall no longer have dominion over him...when he is converted, he is not only restrained from sin, his very heart and nature is turned from it unto holiness: so that thenceforward he becomes a holy person, and an enemy to sin.
With these truths in mind, let me return to the game with which we started. Sin is sin. Conversion is conversion. Except this time, the game has now ended.
