I was born into and grew up in a very legalistic church — so legalistic, in fact, that it claimed to be the one and only true church. All other professing Christians were viewed as deceived pagans who were destined to Hell, and rightfully so because they did not agree with us on our “plan of salvation.” That plan was also often referred to as “the five-finger exercise” because it consisted of five points which our preachers would always count out on five fingers of one hand. The five points were: 1) Hear, 2) Believe, 3) Repent, 4) Confess, and 5) Be Baptized.

Some particularly zealous preachers would sometimes add a sixth point: obedience to all New Testament commands. Over and over, I heard it declared that “God had done His part, and now we must do our part.”

This, of course, amounted to salvation by good works, in direct contradiction to Ephesians 2:8-10 where the Apostle Paul specifically stated that we are saved by grace through faith and “not as a result of works.”

Baptismal Obsession

The really BIG point in our plan of salvation was baptism. Yes, we believed in what theologians call “baptismal regeneration.” We thought that baptism magically washed our sins away. Our preachers even had a saying that “you meet the blood of Jesus in the water.”

Accordingly, while I was growing up, I heard sermon after sermon on baptism. I learned that my salvation depended upon being baptized in the right way by the right person for the right reason.

Specifically, I had to be totally immersed by a preacher of my church for the purpose of being saved. The Baptists were constantly attacked from our pulpits because they believed baptism was simply a public manifestation or proclamation of one’s salvation. Our leaders openly scoffed at such an idea, calling it “unbiblical.” The purpose of baptism could only be in order to obtain salvation.

Sermons in the Book of Acts

My turnaround occurred while I was in college. The Holy Spirit led me one day to start reading all the sermons recorded in the book of Acts, and I noticed that they focused not on a mechanical Plan but on a divine Man and His glorious resurrection from the dead.

For example, in the first gospel sermon ever preached by the Apostle Peter on the Day of Pentecost, he focused from the beginning to the end on proving that Jesus was indeed the long-promised Messiah of God. The entire sermon reveals how Jesus fulfilled Bible prophecies about the Messiah, leading up to the climax of the Resurrection.

As I read sermon after sermon recorded in the book of Acts, I noticed that the Resurrection rather than baptism was the central point that was stressed over and over again:

> On the Day of Pentecost, Peter declared that Jesus was raised from the dead, and therefore the Jewish people could know for certain “that God has made Him both Lord and Christ — this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:32, 36).

>When Peter was hauled before the Sanhedrin Council for healing a man in the name of Jesus, he called Jesus “the Holy and Righteous One” whom they had put to death but whom “God raised from the dead” (Acts 3:14-15).

>When Peter was arrested a second time for proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus on the Temple grounds, he declared to the chief priest and the rulers and elders that “there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:10,12).

>In Acts 4:33, we are told that all the apostles “with great power were giving witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.”

>In the first sermon to a Gentile group, Peter, speaking to the household of the Roman soldier Cornelius, concluded his remarks by asserting that “God raised Him [Jesus] up on the third day” (Acts 10:40).

>We are told in Acts 17:18 that the Apostle Paul spent his time in Athens “preaching Jesus and the resurrection.” In fact, Paul concluded his sermon with these words: “He [God] has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man [Jesus] whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.”

Paul summed up the central message in these sermons and others in the book of Acts when he wrote these words in his letter to the Romans: “if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9).

The Biblical Concept of Salvation

God’s true plan of salvation focuses on a person. It was revealed in the Old Testament in the book of Joel, where the prophet wrote: “And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved” (Joel 2:32 NKJV). In Old Testament times, that name was Yahweh; in New Testament times, it became Jesus (Yeshua) — both being divine beings who are part of the Triune God.

In addition to studying the sermons in the book of Acts, I discovered a definition of the Gospel written by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:1-4:

“Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures…”

A Summary

In summary, the Gospel is the good news that Jesus came to the earth, died for our sins, and was resurrected from the dead, proving that He was God in the flesh and that those who put their faith in Him will be saved. It is not a matter of God doing his part and us doing ours. No! Baptism is not even mentioned. Jesus did everything necessary when He died for our sins on the Cross.

My complete deliverance from baptismal salvation came when I discovered a verse about baptism that I had never heard read aloud in the church of my youth. That verse is 1 Corinthians 1:17. It is a verse that literally jolted my spirit. In it, Paul boldly asserts that “Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel…” The gospel is not baptism; it is the joyful news that Jesus loved us enough to come to earth to pay the penalty for our sins, making it possible for us to be reconciled to God.

The focus of all Christian preaching should be a divine Man, Jesus, and not a humanly-devised plan. We should be proclaiming to all humanity that salvation is by grace through faith in Jesus, and not by works of any kind (Ephesians 2:8-10).

Hallelujah!

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Before I explain the title of this article, I must first do something that would have been unthinkable 20 years ago: I must prove that homosexuality is a sin. That’s how far and fast the center of Christianity has shifted toward a gross degree of apostasy that previously was considered impossible.

Proving homosexuality is a sin is simple. It is condemned as such in both the Old Testament (Leviticus 18:22 & 20:13) and the New Testament (Romans 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 & 1 Timothy 1:8-11). Read these verses for yourself. They are perfectly clear in their condemnation of homosexuality as a sexual perversion that constitutes a sin against God.

Twisting Scripture

The only way to get around these verses is to play games with them by spiritualizing them to mean something other than what they say. Depraved minds can do that, and so it is done all the time. There are even homosexual churches masquerading as Christian churches that blatantly claim these verses do not mean what they say.

It is one of the only sins identified in the Bible that has an advocacy group in the Church! Another is those professing Christians who advocate the horror of abortion. Advocating the permissibility of homosexuality is, to me, equivalent to arguing that it is okay to commit adultery.

The Christian advocates of homosexuality have even perverted the story of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19) into meaning that God destroyed the cities, not because of their sexual perversion, but because they were “inhospitable to strangers.”

The Worst Defense

And then there is the pathetic defense made by some Christian defenders of homosexuality that goes like this: “God made them that way, so it must be okay.”

Wake up, folks! All of us have been born with a sin nature which is manifested in various ways. Are we to excuse “natural-born adulterers” or “natural-born thieves or liars”? Of course not. We are to call them to repentance and abandonment of their sin. We are not to encourage it.

Churches today that are accepting homosexuals into their fellowship without requiring repentance of their sin, and who are ordaining homosexuals as clergy without demanding repentance and abstinence, are operating in open rebellion against God — thumbing their nose at Him and His Word. These are churches that have sold out to the world, seeking the acceptance of society over the approval of God.

Addressing the Title

Let’s now get to the title of this article: How can homosexuality be more than a sin? Again, the answer is simple: Homosexuality can be a judgment of God.

Romans chapter one makes this very clear. The chapter states that when a nation as a whole sets its jaw against God and His Word and refuses to repent, God will step back, lower His hedge of protection, and allow evil to multiply. It’s what theologians call “abandonment wrath.”

To explain it another way, when a society makes it clear to God that they have no interest in abiding by His Word, He will step back and abandon them to their desires. Basically, this happens when God responds to unrepentant sin by saying, “If you want to live in a fouled nest, then so be it.”

The book of Romans says the first stage of this abandonment by God will be characterized by the outbreak of a sexual revolution (Romans 1:24-25), which is exactly what happened in this country in the 1960s. The passage then says if rebellion continues, God will step back a second time, lowering His hedge of protection again, and a plague of homosexuality will descend upon the nation (Romans 1:26-27). Again, that is exactly what happened in our nation, beginning in the 1980s and 90s.

If there is still no repentance, then God will step back a third time and turn the nation over to a “depraved mind” (Romans 1:28). That is where we are today.

The Sexual Perversion Movement in our nation has achieved the legalization of homosexuality, same-sex marriage, and transgenderism. But that is not enough. It is now demanding the legalization of polygamy, pedophilia, and prostitution. There is no satisfying the movement’s appetite for depravity.

So, there is definitely a point in a nation’s rebellion against God when homosexuality ceases to be just a sin. It becomes a judgment of God. And those Christians who have given their approval to homosexuality are literally spitting in God’s face.

The Grace of God

What makes it so sad is that God, in His amazing grace, is willing to forgive and forget the sin of homosexuality for any person in bondage to it who will repent and receive Jesus as their Lord and Savior. Further, once having done that, the Holy Spirit will provide the person with the spiritual power to abstain from the sin and become an overcomer.

In 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, God identifies homosexuals as part of a group of “the unrighteous” who will not inherit the kingdom of God. But then, the Apostle Paul declares: “Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.”

Praise the Lord for His love and grace!

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