Marriage and same sex attraction

As a Leadership Team we believe that the Bible is the Word of God. Our aim is to interpret God’s Word as truthfully and passionately as we can. So, it’s our interpretation that God’s ideal for marriage is for a man and woman, to be committed to each other solely for life. We see that from the start of scripture, God creates complementary pairs, (heaven and earth, light and dark, sea and dry land, day and night) which are clearly meant to work together; this includes male and female. The Bible begins with a marriage in the Garden and the final scene in the Bible is also of a marriage; Christ and his Bride, The Church. It’s an entire narrative of scripture that works within this complementarity of male and female and it’s a theme which is referred to again and again and again.

Therefore, we believe that any sexual activity that takes place outside of this covenant plan misses the mark, as far as God is concerned. Whether this is people of opposite genders, the same gender, adultery, promiscuity, pornography, divorce or even simply lusting after someone in our hearts. All of this misses the mark and goes against God’s ideal. This is the position of the Leadership of this church.

Therefore, for the reasons sketched out above, Frinton Free Church will not be conducting same sex marriages.

Some implications of this:

Everyone misses the mark (Romans 3:23) so we do not rank one sin worse than another. To rank sexual sin worse than any other is wrong. If we’re going to point our finger at someone, or a group of people, we first need to take the plank out of our own eye.
We are desperately sorry for how The Church as a whole has often scapegoated, attacked and at times persecuted gay people, seeing this as “a sin above and beyond all others”. This is not the view of this leadership team and we repent of any language, attitudes and behaviour that has given this impression.
Each one of us will experience temptation in all areas of our lives. Indeed, Jesus himself experienced temptation. The experience of being tempted isn’t of itself a sin and same sex attraction isn’t sinful.
We don’t get to choose the form of temptation; however, we do get to choose how we respond to all temptation.
We believe that our church must be a community that welcomes everyone regardless of the temptations they face in life and together we seek to be a community that works for and strives after holiness and is characterised by love. This is the same love that we see in Jesus; unconditional, transformational, sacrificial, selfless and for all.