“God is for sex.” That was the clear message from the Rev. Canon Vaughan Roberts, rector of St. Ebbe’s Church in Oxford, England, who advised Christians globally on how to respond to the myriad harms caused by the sexual revolution and distortion of God’s created order. The sexual revolution that began as a countercultural movement in the 1960s isn’t so anymore and is now “absolutely mainstream,” Roberts said.Over the decades, the false promises of human flourishing pushed by those promoting the sexual revolution have led to the “almost complete collapse of family life in our culture and devastating effects on families, especially the most vulnerable: children,” he lamented.
Instead of thinking about what classes they’ll be taking, as Roberts said he was doing as a young student, children are being asked to choose their pronouns, what sex they want to identify as, and their sexuality. This has only intensified their feelings of “isolation” and “confusion,” said Roberts, who described today’s youth as the “anxious generation.”The sexual revolution, Roberts said, has taught generations to give into their feelings and fleshly desires and that “any external forces must be resisted — whether it’s from traditional morality, religion, or even biology itseHow should Christians respond?Roberts says the process is a simple one that requires adherence to the scriptures with added humility and compassion in such a way that churchgoers can be honest about their struggles without fearing they’ll be shunned. “We must turn to God’s never-changing Word and not just to a few proof texts, but to its main overarching themes: Creation, fall and redemption,” Roberts told the thousands of delegates gathered at Songdo Convensia international convention center for the Fourth Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization on Monday.“You can summarize God’s design for sex and marriage in some very basic statements. God is for sex,” he declared, emphasizing that “sex is for marriage” as outlined in Genesis 2:24. “And in God’s design, sexual union is designed to express, seal and strengthen the one-flesh union” between a husband and wife.Roberts stressed that God’s instructions for human sexuality are not the way they are because He’s “a spoilsport, wanting to spoil our fun.” Instead, they are provided “for our good, that we might flourish individually, as families and as societies.”But instead of adhering to God’s Word, some churches have capitulated to the many iterations of the sexual revolution. Declaring themselves as inclusive congregations, they drape the exterior and interior of their churches with LGBT and progress pride flags in the worship of inclusivity.Such churches lack “theological integrity,” Roberts said, posing the question of what good can come from a church that merely repeats the same views of the non-Christian world and doing so in such a way that church leaders read into the Bible teachings that are not there.
