unnatural?

Originally posted on February 20, 2026 – by Andre Piet

God’s honor in the distinction of the sexes

A few months ago I gave a Bible study about male and female in connection with Romans 1:24-28. In it I pointed out that sexuality by its nature and essence is heterosexuality. For both anatomically and biologically the male is designed for the female. And of course vice versa. That is not morality, but physics. Homosexuality (“males in males”; Rom.1:27) is therefore in the Bible ‘unnatural’. In Romans 1 this ‘unnatural’ is in the first place the dis-honoring of the body (:25), not as a moral verdict, but as a description of what happens when the relationship between Creator and creature is let go. Sexuality, after all, is the portrayal of that relationship. Thus it becomes visible how God brings about new life through resurrection, whereby this creation is in eager expectation of deliverance. They are ambiguous concepts which each refer to the honor and glory in the Divine design of sexuality. In homosexuality that honor is lacking and hence there is dis-honor of the body. That is sin, not in the moralistic sense of the word, but in the literal meaning: missing the mark.

wrong feelings do not exist

What surprised me after the mentioned Bible study was that most reactions did not concern the above assertions, but what I had added at the end as a side note: the Bible does not devote a word to the phenomenon of homophilia, i.e. feeling sexually attracted to the same sex. It plays no role. That also means that not a word of condemnation is spoken about it. As the Bible, moreover, never speaks condemningly about any sexual feeling whatsoever. Feelings may be unwanted, but never wrong. How one deals with them, that is the question. This approach differs enormously from what has been handed down from church tradition.

asceticism

In Christendom asceticism and aversion to pleasure soon penetrated (as foretold by Paul in 1Tim.4:1-5). And especially sexual desire had to suffer for it. For that would by definition be sin and even within marriage sex was still presented as a necessary evil. This idea, with the accompanying call to continually fight against one’s own flesh (but see Eph.5:29!), has caused innumerable struggle and guilt feelings. Young boys and girls were told that they had to fight against their sexual desires and masturbation was out of the question. Was this because Scripture warns against it? No, although Scripture was harnessed to that cart.

Onan

Thus for a long time ‘self-gratification’ was dismissed as the sin of Onan (see Genesis 38) and hence called ‘onanism’. Completely unjustly, for what was held against Onan was not that he ‘wasted his seed on the ground’, but that he did not want to raise up seed for Tamar.

desire and appropriation

Another text that is invariably cited to condemn sexual fantasy or arousal is the text below from ‘the Sermon on the Mount’.

But I am saying to you that everyone who is looking at a woman to lust for her already commits adultery with her in his heart.
-Matthew 5:28

The common explanation of this statement has left many in despair and burdened with guilt. It is understood to mean that a man who becomes sexually aroused by seeing a woman or who fantasizes about her would already be committing adultery in his heart. That is absurd and certainly not the purport of Jesus’ words.

Jesus refers to the tenth commandment in Exodus 20: “You shall not covet your associate’s house; you shall not covet your associate’s wife…”. The issue here is not sexual attraction as such, but the will to appropriate something that belongs to another. That is what David did when he looked at Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, with the intention of taking her to himself. In his heart he had already committed adultery, even if he had never been able to carry it out.

It is not the natural attraction between man and woman that is at stake here – that is precisely what the Creator designed. The point is the disregarding of another’s marriage bond and the desire to appropriate what God has entrusted to someone else.

clarity

Scripture knows no distrust toward the body or toward sexual desire as such. It regards sexuality as a creational given, with order and meaning. Where later guilt and struggle have arisen, that is not due to what is written, but to what has been added to it. Whoever gives Scripture back its own voice is left not with condemnation, but with clarity.

Delen: