Consequences Like a Blindside Linebacker

The Bible teaches that mankind bears the image of God sexually. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Gen. 1:27). The attempt therefore to disregard all this in the “recognition” of same sex mirage is not just an act of immorality, but also an act of theological defiance. It is heresy; it is apostasy.

The image of God borne by a man and women together is therefore a creational reality, not dependent in any way on the definitions that a secular state might want to come up with. Marriage exists prior to, and independent of, any determinations by any civil magistrate. The magistrate did not create marriage and therefore has no authority to define it, or recreate it in his own image.

The civil magistrate is a steward, entrusted to guard that which God has determined. In Romans 13, the magistrate is repeatedly identified as God’s “deacon,” God’s servant, entrusted with rewarding righteousness and punishing wrongdoing. He has no authority to invert this, and to define as up what God has named as down.

Now this does not mean that the civil magistrate has nothing to do with the definition of marriage; he does have a solemn responsibility to recognize the way the world is, and to discharge his related obligations accordingly. It works this way.

Because heterosexual unions are fruitful — not inherently fruitless the way same-sex copulations are — they are unions that bear, not only children, but also civic responsibilities and challenges. The issues of property and custody and inheritance are in principle woven into every heterosexual relationship, and are woven into no homosexual relationship. They can be nailed onto the side of a homosexual incident, but that is all. They can be arbitrarily assigned to a homosexual partnership, but do not flow out of the creational nature of that partnership.

If two people go into farming together, with one contributing the fertile ground and the other the seed, there will be questions of responsibility and ownership that grow out of the ground. What shall we do with the 30, 60 and 100 fold? But if two people form a partnership in which they plant pebbles instead of seed, the same kind of issues do not and cannot arise. The magistrate does not have to adjudicate anything with regard to the harvest.
So when the civil magistrate starts demanding that we recognize pebble planting as being of the same nature as seed planting, you may depend upon it — there is a method in their insanity. They are not trying to give a new status to pebble planting, which is kind of a dead-end enterprise. They are in fact trying to create a new status for the seed planting, a new relationship between the state and the fruitful ones. They are trying to wrest control of the harvest away from those who live fruitfully. Depend upon it — follow the money. The real problem here is not the lust of homosexuals, but rather the lust of government to rule, manage, and control. These people hate any institutions that are older and more honorable than they.

In the face of this government lust for control, this libido dominandi, the libertarian temptation is a pressing one. Many Christians think that we should just get government out of the marriage business altogether. Wouldn’t that simplify everything? No, not at all.

The civil magistrate is the authority established by God for sorting out and adjudicating issues of property, inheritance, and custody. Therefore, it is their responsibility to know beforehand how they will adjudicate such things. Solomon knew beforehand that the baby needed to go to his natural mother.

In order to keep all these issues clear, I would much prefer that all legitimate marriages be registered with the state, and not licensed by the state. When the state issues a license, they are saying licet, let it be, and if you do this long enough you might start to get delusions of deity — thinking that you can impose your own image and likeness on whatever kind of union you like. This has been a profound mistake, and it is one our culture has fallen into. Instead of thinking that they have the authority to say licet to unions that fit God’s definition, they have come to think that they can say licet whenever they want. Since they have not been up to the temptation that came with that word, let us resolve to take that word away from them.

But at the same time, there has been something God-honoring about our system of licenses because the state does have an assigned responsibility to say non licet, “you may not.” If the couple in question are brother and sister, the state must prohibit the union. If it is one man and seventeen women, the state must say no. If it is two men, or two women, no again. Now if the magistrate has the obligation before God to say non licet, then at some level, somehow, they are saying licet for the normal unions. But lest they get above themselves, as they have plainly done, I would prefer that all heteronormative marriages be filed at the county courthouse with a registrar, and not created by a notary potentate of creative sexual definitions.

Anybody who thinks that a ruler’s denial of the image of God in man is a trifle is someone who does not know how to track an argument, and will therefore be earholed by the consequences when they arrive like a blindside linebacker. Any magistrate who does not see mankind as created in the image of God is a magistrate who is not qualified to rule. He needs to be frogmarched out of office. He is a tyrant and a despot at the root, before he has decided to do anything. This is because whatever he decides to do is going to be based on his assumption that human beings are just meat, bones, and protoplasm — and that assumption necessarily leads to carnage. Evolution is a god of blood, and always will be.

We were created in the image of God, and that image is expressed as male and female together. Because He created us in His image, we bear His name. We are told that it is a grievous sin to bear His name in vain (Ex. 20;7). Not only does heterosexual marriage declare the image and glory of God, but it also declares the glory of the gospel. This is a great mystery, Paul says, but a man and a woman together are a declaration of Christ and the Church. What God is up to in the gospel is the restoration of the image of God in man, which had been defaced.

Sin had vandalized the image of God in man, but had not annihilated it. Man and woman in the Garden were described as having been made in God’s image, male and female together. A few chapters later, after sin entered the world, the image of God in man is still recognized. Capital punishment is required for murderers because murderers have assaulted the image of God (Gen. 9:6). The image is still there, still to be respected — on pain of death — but it was a ruin of an image. It was still there, but greatly in need of restoration. That is what Christ came to do — to restore the image of God in man. And when He did this, He did the same thing that had been done at the beginning. He spoke of His restoration of this image in terms of male and female together. His purpose is for us to put on the “new man,” the new image of God in man, in righteousness and true holiness (Eph. 4:24), which finds its completion in the mystery of Christ and His Bride.

And so, when Christ told His questioners to bring Him a coin, He told them that because it had Caesar’s image on it, it was lawful to render that lifeless bit of metal to Caesar. He had managed to place His image there, and we could see our way to the payment of taxes with it. But Christ, in the same breath, prohibited rendering to Caesar that which was God’s. But how do we know what is God’s? Caesar identifies his own with his image; God identifies His own with His image. Caesar is therefore required by God to recognize what is not lawful for him to have. Marriage is right at the center of what is not lawful for him to have.

So what is in play in this battle about same sex mirage? The secular state is now declaring that we must render to Caesar what does not have Caesar’s image on it. There are certain currencies that Caesar is pretty adept at debasing, and he has gotten cocky. He now wants to debase this currency, he wants to place marriage under the control of the Federal Reserve. We have been around long enough to know how that is going to go.

So no. We must render to God that which is God’s. The task before us is to figure the quickest and most potent way of simply saying never.