Law and Sexual Behavior

By Dr. Gerhard O. Forde

The full text of this essay is available on the web at:
http://www.augsburgchurches.org/Library/LawSexualBehavior.htm
FOCL readers are incouraged, if possible, to access this article to build a comprehensive understanding of the theological issues at stake in continuing on the course for full inclusion of all in leadership regardless of sexual orientation and specific practice We are unable, due to space limitations, to reproduce the full article here, but would love for our readers to take advantage of this greater opportunity for understanding.  Excerpts from the essay are included to hopefully encourage you to read the whole essay.

This is an essay about the function of law as it confronts sexual behavior. Therefore the first thing that needs saying is that it cannot be a paper about compassion. To be sure, Christians, not to say human beings in general, are called upon to act with compassion and care toward all, particularly those who suffer, whatever the cause. But this essay is not about that. This disclaimer needs to be entered because the vast majority of discussions about sexual behavior, especially of homosexual behavior, become arguments about compassion. Discussants relate tragic and agonizing stories about failures in compassion. Those who wish to talk more "objectively" about law and ethics are faulted for lacking compassion. Of course we are to act compassionately toward those who, are caught in the immense web of tragedy that problems of sexual identity and practice have spun about us today. Of course we are to act justly and compassionately toward those who suffer from AIDS or whose civil rights are violated. But this is a discussion about law and sexual behavior, not about compassion. A major dimension of the problem, mostly obscured or forgotten, is that law has no compassion.
Headings include: The End and Establishment of Law; The Uses of the Law; The Civil Use of Law and Sexual Behavior; The Estate of Marriage; The Homosexual and the Uses of the Law; and, Concluding Observations on the Theological Use of
Law.

Law has no compassion. That is just as it should be. But it is not the end of the matter. Compassion is the business of the gospel. To return to what we said at the outset, there is another pole to the doctrine of the law. Christ is the end of the law to everyone who has faith. Christ is the only end. There is no other. That is the reason the treatment of law can and must be so uncompromising. For where the law is watered down or jettisoned we come under the most diabolical illusion of all—that there is no longer any need for Christ. We must not take that road. What the church has to offer in these, as in all matters, is not accommodation but absolution and a new life. That is the greatest service to the neighbor we can do. True, many today may find this to be of small comfort. But that may be only because they fail to realize how desperate the battle is.