RESOLUTION 76:04: In Defence of the Biblical Definition of Marriage

In Romans 13 the Lord God, Ruler of the Nations, says ...rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. (Rom 13:3)

Government’s role is not to determine good and evil, that is the prerogative of the Sovereign Creator of men and women. When Governments and rulers abuse their authority to redefine good and evil and then employ their power in forcing that definition upon the people, they slip out of their legitimate roles, usurp the authority of God, and become despotic, self-imagined demigods.

The God who created man and woman, created them male and female with a designed purpose in mind. That purpose is explained, in part, in Genesis 2:23-25, where we read…

Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out ofMan.” Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

Man is not free to redefine his own purpose and the Epistle of Jude calls the attempt to create something different between a man or a woman, an attempt to become “strange flesh.”

…Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. (Jude 7)

Efforts to normalize this sexual immorality and to call it good, by societies, governments, rulers, churches, or any other element charged with the responsibility of clearly defining evil as evil, not only engages in deceit, but puts itself, and those under their authority, in dire jeopardy from the One who condemns the sin and has called it evil.

In fact, Scripture states that such a trend or effort is not a sign of a society’s sophistication or a ruler’s evolution to a higher plane of tolerance and self-awareness, but it is a sign of degeneration and of God’s displeasure on an idolatrous, thankless, and willful people. Speaking of such men and women, Paul says,

Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due. (Romans 1:22- 27)

Therefore, we, the members of the 76th General Synod of the Bible Presbyterian Church; meeting in Lakeland, Florida; August 9-14th, 2012

(1) Reaffirm our belief in God’s Word, maintaining that marriage is only legitimate as defined by the Creator—a man and a woman, leaving mother and father and becoming one flesh.

(2) Reject the notion that the practice of unnatural efforts to become strange flesh should be accepted and normalized. We believe that it is the duty of those charged with discouraging evil conduct to restrain efforts to call good evil and evil good, and

(3) Urge those who rule in our land, and around the world, to maintain the bounds of their legitimate authority and refrain from any effort to compel, by coercion of any kind, the acceptance of this evil. The rights of the governed are a gift from God, not government, and as such, we have a legitimate right to our convictions based upon God’s Word and the state has no inherent, nor may it assume to itself, the right to bind the consciences of men and women.