What Does Equip Believe? Why?

Sexual Ethics

In a few words, with a few verse references, here is what Equip believes about God-honoring sexual stewardship for all people and God’s love and wisdom for gay** people:

1. Experiencing same-sex attraction is a product of the Fall. (Matthew 6:12-13; James 1:14-15; Hebrews 4:15). Experiencing same-sex attraction—finding people of the same sex physically attractive and desiring romantic relationships with them, being gay—is a result of the Fall. When Adam and Eve chose to disobey God, their sin led to a domino effect of brokenness. The introduction of sin bent all of the ways God had perfectly designed and ordered this world. To the extent that this world around us, the people around us, and even ourselves are not how God first intended us. 

2. God did not intend for people to experience same-sex attraction (Romans 1:26-28, Romans 5:12, James 1:13, Psalm 51:5). When God first imagined each of us and projected us being born into a perfect world, He did not intend for any of us to develop same-sex attractions. But we have instead been born into a broken world, and one of the ways some are affected by that brokenness is by developing same-sex attractions.

3. Experiencing same-sex attraction is not a sin, and God does not send people to Hell merely for being gay (John 10:28-30; Romans 8:38-39; Ephesians 4:30). Experiencing same-sex attraction is a brokenness, a temptation to sin, but God does not hold our attractions against us. Merely experiencing temptation is not actual sin. God does not send people to hell merely because boys are attracted to boys or girls are attracted to girls.

4. We do not choose who we are attracted to, but we do choose how we respond.

5. The consensus of scientists is that some combination of nature and nurture contribute to the development of sexual orientation, but those environmental and biological contributors are not known.

6. Sexual orientation change efforts have been proven to be harmfully ineffective. 96% of individuals who participated in sexual orientation change efforts experience no change in their sexual orientation. However, sexual orientation changes efforts have been proven to increase participants’ likelihood of attempting suicide by 92%. God has the power to change anything about this world, but the spiritual and psychological costs of pursuing sexual orientation change far outweigh the benefits.

7. God calls all Christians to vocational singleness or Christian marriage (Matt 19, 1 Cor 7, Ephesians 5). Vocational singleness is a lifetime calling to abstinent singleness for the sake of kingdom work with undivided attention. Christian marriage is a lifetime calling to marriage between one Christian woman and one Christian man with an openness to the important kingdom work of raising children.

8. There is no context for same-sex sexual or romantic activity that God blesses.

9. Same-sex sexual and romantic activity are sins in any context (Romans 1; Leviticus 18:22; Leviticus 20:13; 1 Corinthians 6:9-10).

Why is Equip convinced this is God’s wisdom for sexual stewardship?

Every time the Bible addresses same-sex sexual activity (often referred to as the “clobber passages”), it calls it a sin. Admittedly, each of these instances are in the context of rape, incest, adultery, or sex outside of marriage. Nevertheless, as Equip has addressed in a seminar responding to convincing arguments for a revisionist sexual ethic, based on the clobber passages alone, there is significantly more evidence for a historic sexual ethic than for a revisionist sexual ethic.

However, we don’t need the clobber passages to know God’s wisdom for everyone’s sexual stewardship, including gay people. We’re convinced by what the whole of Scripture consistently reveals about God’s design for our lives—God’s order for the world, even in the midst of brokenness. When it comes to what we do with our capacity for romance and sex, God seems to be pretty clear that there are two options for Christians: vocational singleness or Christian marriage with someone of the opposite sex. 

Jesus and Paul had a lot to say about both of those options. They praised both and described both as having a specific design. In passages such as Matthew 19 and 1 Corinthians 7, they spoke of a committed vocational singleness where one gives up romance, marriage, and sex to do kingdom work. In Matthew 19 and Ephesians 5, Jesus and Paul, respectively, spoke of Christian marriage as a lifelong partnership between a Christian man and woman for the purposes of enjoying intimacy with each other, raising children, and embodying the gospel.

The Christian should not approach God or the Bible with the question, “What is permissible when it comes to my sexuality? What can I get away with?” Instead, we should ask, “What is most wise and most good? What is God’s best when it comes to my sexuality?” God’s best for how all Christians should steward their sexuality is clear: vocational singleness or Christian marriage with someone of the opposite sex. 

Gender ethics

In a few words, with a few verse references, here is what Equip believes about God-honoring gender stewardship for all people and God’s love and wisdom for trans** people:

1. When God first imagined each of us being born into a perfect world, He intended for each of us to be either a male who feels fully like a man or a female who feels fully like a woman—in other words, God intended for us to be either male-bodied men or female-bodied women. God intended for this diversity and corresponding differentness to display a holistic imago Dei, image of God (Genesis 1-3).
2. The Bible affirms the sex and gender binary. Faithfulness to our biological sex includes accepting our biological sex and following God’s wisdom when we engage our capacity for relationship.
3. God didn’t provide any further universal prescriptions for maleness/femaleness or masculinity/femininity. He allowed space for humanity to create cultural norms for gender and gender expression. The Bible affirms dozens of times when men and women in the Bible break what we would consider to be contemporary gender stereotypes (Psalm 51:10-11, Micah 6:8, I Samuel 18:1-3, Proverbs 31, Judges 4:4, Acts 16:14, Luke 7:47,50).
4. Everything about this world is broken, including each of our biological sexes and each of our genders. Cultural concepts of gender, including arbitrarily assigning preference to one gender or another, are broken.
5. There seems to be a biblical pattern of condemning genital alteration (Deuteronomy 22:5 and Deuteronomy 23:1), cross-dressing as part of cult practices (1 Corinthians 11:2-16), and the elimination of gender difference (1 Corinthians 11:2-16).
6. Historical evidence suggests that the authors of Scripture were aware of trans people. The Bible makes clear that sinful genital alteration does not prevent people from being able to image God or be part of His family (Isaiah 56:1-5, Acts 8:25-39).
7. Gender incongruence is a brokenness, but merely experiencing gender incongruence is not a sin.
8. Gender incongruence develops from a combination of nature and nurture, but specifics of how much is attributed to each are unknown. God didn’t intend gender incongruence, and no one chooses to experience enduring, robust gender incongruence.
9. While some estimates are that 80% experience relief from gender incongruence over time, there’s no formula for “healing” gender incongruence.
10. Unique challenges are posed by gender incongruence experienced by kids/teens and noticed by peers. We generally defer to the authority of parents to disciple their children. Ministering to kids who experience gender incongruence and teaching kids more generally about gender incongruence can be approached with wisdom and compassion.
11. God calls His Church to support one another with grace so that we can faithfully steward God’s gift of biological sex and gender. Engaging in different forms of social transitioning could be either sinful or morally neutral depending on one’s motivations/intent. Denying one’s biological sex or intentionally deceiving others while engaging in social transitioning is outside of God’s plan. At the same time, we respect that a person can faithfully take practical steps to reduce one’s experience of incongruence (for example, by using single-stall bathrooms, wearing androgynous clothes, or using gender-neutral pronouns) in a way that honor’s God’s gift of their biological sex.
12. Hormonal/surgical transition has not been scientifically demonstrated to reliably reduce depression/suicidality. There is no evidence to clearly support the theory that there is a brain-sex/body-sex difference that leads to gender incongruence.
13. When a person is not intersex but experiences gender incongruence, we believe their biological sex is as God intended, but their gender experience is broken.
14. Taking steps to medically alter one’s biological sex is a rejection of God’s gift of their biological sex and, therefore, is a sin. At the same time, someone who has medically transitioned still has full access to God’s grace and forgiveness and can be restored in their relationship with God, even if they are unable to detransition.

Why is Equip convinced this is God’s wisdom for gender stewardship?

When a Christian asks, “Who am I, fundamentally? Who did God create me to be? How does God see me?” the individual is asking a question of ontology. Then, the Christian’s appreciation for God’s intentions should guide how they faithfully respond to the broken world they experience. As we’ve already stated, when God first imagined each of us born unblemished into a perfect world, He imagined each of us as either a male-bodied man or a female-bodied woman. But we live in a broken world, and some experience a distressing incongruence between their biological sex and felt gender.

Which reflects God’s intentions? Which is broken? And how then should the trans* Christian faithfully manage that brokenness?

If an individual is not intersex and their chromosomes, gonads, sexual anatomy, and secondary sex characteristics all indicate the same biological sex, then we can see God’s intentions for the individual’s biological sex.

Plus, when God’s intentions for an individual’s biological sex are evident, we can also see His intentions for their experience of their gender. So when a person is not intersex but they experience gender incongruence, we believe that their biological sex is as God intended but their experience of their gender is broken. We know that God intended to gift them with a particular biological sex and gender, and we believe that their experience of their gender has been negatively impacted by the Fall.

For example, if a person is biologically male, then God intended for that person to be biologically male and feel mentally/psychologically like a man. If this male experiences gender incongruence and, as such, does not feel robustly like a man and instead feels more like a woman or somewhere in between a man and a woman, we can recognize that their experience of gender has been negatively impacted by the brokenness of Creation caused by sin.

We know that God intended to offer this male his maleness and a sense of being a man as a sacred gift, but unfortunately the downstream effects of the Fall have disrupted God’s intentions for the male’s gender.

We’ve seen the bad fruit of revisionist sexual and gender ethics

This has been the understanding of an overwhelming majority of Christians throughout time, a vast majority of global Christians today, and the consensus of modern global denominational leaders who can trace their authority to lead the Church back to the apostles to whom Jesus passed His teachings and authority.

Yet, even if we weren’t convinced logically of a historic sexual and gender ethics, we couldn’t ignore the evidence we’ve seen in the lives of others that revisionist sexual and gender ethics aren’t God’s best. In particular, too many of our LGBT+ Christian friends who adopted a progressive sexual and gender ethics eventually stopped believing in God altogether.

At first, these friends performed impressive theological acrobatics to read Scripture to say that God fully blesses same-sex marriages and affirms hormonal and surgical transition. But eventually, most of these friends admitted that the Bible probably says what we’ve consistently understood it to say for 2000 years (and what a majority of progressive LGBT+ theologians believe today): the God of the Bible is against gay sex and against altering one’s physical body in an attempt to remake oneself in one’s own image. These friends were convinced that God fully blesses same-sex marriages and fully affirms medical transition, and concluded that the Bible is not binding or authoritative for modern people. Yet once they concluded that the Bible and the Church couldn’t tell them who God is, they realized they were just worshiping a God they came up with. Within five years, too many abandon the Christian faith. At first they hesitate to call themselves Christians, and eventually they can’t bring themselves to confess the Nicene Creed at all, the universal statement of Christian faith.

Let us be clear: we want our LGBT+ friends who hold revisionist sexual and gender ethics to have robust relationships with God. It pains us to see this consistent pattern. But the fruit of revisionist sexual and gender ethics that we see in the lives of our gay friends is them losing their faith.

But there’s bad fruit of historic sexual and gender ethics, too

On the other hand, LGBT+ Christian friends attempting to steward their sexuality or gender according to historic sexual and gender ethics are lonely and struggle with sin. This has affected their relationships with God and the kingdom work they could do. Why? Because churches haven’t taught about God’s full wisdom for sexual and gender stewardship or embodied that wisdom in a way that cared for LGBT+ people. That’s the double burden of Christians who are LGBT+: churches don’t know how to love them well, and the alternatives culture offers still aren’t good for them either.

Yet even if churches are failing to love and care for LGBT+ people, that doesn’t make something that is bad for God’s people now good for them; that doesn’t change something from being a sin to being edifying to God.

Why did God make the world this way? We don’t know. At the end of the day, it’s not our job to question God or tell Him how to do His job. We must trust that God knows what is best for us and obey His teachings.

Ultimately, the solution to the bad fruit of historic sexual and gender ethics isn’t to abandon that wisdom, because there’s even worse fruit of revisionist sexual and gender ethics. Instead, churches must learn how to better embody historic sexual and gender ethics in a way that produces good fruit for LGBT+ people.

That’s why Equip exists. That’s what Equip helps churches do.

We’ve got to start inviting every Christian to think theologically about their sexual and gender stewardship and to take seriously what the Bible has to say about vocational singleness for straight people, God’s purposes for marriage, unbiblical divorce and remarriage, gender expression, and stewardship of the physical body.

We’ve got to make sure everyone in our churches, particularly kids, knows about God’s love and wisdom for LGBT+ people so that they never have to make sense of their sexuality or gender alone in the closet.

We have to become churches where every Christian considers vocational singleness and could find permanent, lived-in family in lifetime singleness.

With Equip’s help, your church can become a place that offers LGBT+ people something undeniably better than the empty promises of the world. Your church can become a place where LGBT+ Christians find more beauty and connection from following God’s teachings than from seeking out romantic relationships with people of the same sex or from pursuing medical transition.

Contact us today at info@equipyourcommunity.org to start becoming that church.

**For the sake of clarity, here are the terms and definitions that we use in these conversations:

• Gay—a general term for someone who experiences same-sex attraction
• Sex—also referred to as biological sex: being male or female as defined by chromosomes, gonads, sexual anatomy, and secondary sex characteristics
• Gender—also referred to as gender orientation; a person’s internal sense of being a woman/a man or being masculine/feminine, influenced in part by cultural gender roles/expectations
• Femininity/Masculinity—a person’s sense of being a woman/man and cultural expectations for how women/men will express their gender
• Gender Incongruence—an acute sense that one’s gender does not correspond with the experience typically associated with the person’s biological sex
• Transgender/Trans—a general term for anyone who experiences gender incongruence; it can include people who have engaged in some level of transitioning, but is not limited to those who have
• Gender Identity—how a person internally describes and labels their gender
• Gender Expression—how a person publicly expresses or presents their gender through outward appearance, behaviors, clothing, voice, body language, and name/pronouns/etc.
• Gender Dysphoria—a clinical psychological condition where a person experiences significant distress or discomfort due to a mismatch between their internal sense of being a women/man and their biological sex; this phrase has negative connotations for some trans people as it might suggest being trans is a mental illness
• Genderqueer—a gender identity that doesn’t fit the male/female binary or in some other way violates society’s expectations.
• Nonbinary—not identifying as either male or female, or not identifying with masculine or feminine traits.
• Intersex—being born with atypical features in one’s sexual anatomy and/or sex chromosomes
• Transitioning—various steps one takes to represent oneself as a person’s gender, as opposed to a person’s biological sex. Gender transition can be organized into three categories: social transition, hormonal transition, and surgical transition.
  • Social transitioning involves taking steps within one’s social circles to mitigate incongruence non-medically. These include name and/or pronoun changes, adjustments to one’s appearance through clothing and hairstyle changes, wrapping/taping to flatten the chest, packing to give the appearance of having a bulge, using single-stall bathrooms, using the bathroom of people of the opposite sex, and voice training to raise or lower the pitch of one’s voice.
  • Hormonal transitioning involves the use of hormone blockers and/or Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) that chemically alters a person’s secondary sex characteristics to align with their gender identity.
  • Surgical transitioning can include adding or removing breasts, various forms of plastic surgery to change facial features or enhance other parts of the body, vocal cord surgeries, and altering genitalia. The most common terms associated with surgical transitioning is “top” (think top half of the body) and “bottom” (refers exclusively to genital alterations) surgery.