"The Truth About Same-Sex Marriage" Revised and Re-released

Erwin Lutzer loves homosexuals. Fortunately, he loves them enough to tell them the truth and to share with them what the great apologist Francis Schaeffer called “true truth.” Moody Press recently released an expanded and revised edition of Lutzer’s book (originally published in 2004) called The Truth About Same-Sex Marriage: 6 Things You Must Know About What’s Really at Stake. As advertised, Lutzer writes both with deep compassion for homosexuals and with biblical depth and clarity about the seriousness of the deadly deception of homosexuality.

The Truth is as much a call to the church to love homosexuals and minister compassionately to them as it is a defense of traditional biblical marriage. But, make no mistake, Lutzer is clear and firm in upholding God’s good blueprint for marriage. Several things drove the longtime pastor of Moody Church to write the book, including a concern for the current younger generation in America, a generation that is being bombarded by messages that promote gender and sexual confusion and seek to normalize a lifestyle that Scripture calls sin. Writes Lutzer:

I thought of the young people in our churches who are growing up sexually confused as they are daily exposed to the pro-homosexual message of our culture. I wondered what messages same-sex marriages would communicate to them—what would same-sex marriage tell them about marriage, parenting and role models? At this point, I knew we had to speak to the issue.

Lutzer calls for an eyes-wide open awareness in the church of the issues at hand: there is much at stake in the church’s loving, but firm teaching on homosexuality. He upbraids the church for offering little resistance to the wholesale redefinition of family that has taken place over the past two decades and encourages a loving, but clear response.

Let no one say that we have to choose between loving homosexuals and opposing same-sex marriages. Biblically, love is defined not as license to legitimize sinful behavior of any kind, but love helps us see that there is a better say. Obviously, we must be as concerned about our own sins as we are about the sins of the homosexual community. We must be concerned enough to speak out about any action, heterosexual or homosexual, that violates God’s intended plan for marriage and family.