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What
is the "Communities of Grace" commitment?
In recent years there
has been a shift in societal attitudes about sex and sexuality.
Behaviours that are explicitly categorized within the pages of Holy
Scripture as being sinful have in recent years become widely accepted
within our society. Predictably, the church is coming under increasing
pressure to put Her seal of approval on many of these behaviours.
In the past, the church has not dealt very well with people who
struggle with various sexual sins. This is in no doubt partly due
to embarrassment, and partly because in our society such things
were traditionally kept quiet, with the people tempted to indulge
in such behaviours often being left to a solitary and lonely struggle.
All too often, the chief reaction that people who struggle with
sexual sins have received from society and the church has been fear,
ignorance, derision, shunning, and at times even violence (especially
toward homosexuals).
People who struggle
with sexual sins, and have sought freedom from them have often found
voices full of condemnation and hatred from one side, and voices
urging them to indulge their desires, and even to celebrate their
sexual proclivities as a creative gift of God on the other. The
church has struggled in terms of Her response, tempted on the one
hand to shun people with these struggles, and on the other hand
to give approval (official or unofficial) to actions clearly called
sinful by the Word of God.
We recognize that as
Lutheran Christians we have been part of this problem. We need to
repent individually of sinful sexual activity where it occurs in
our lives as individuals, and we need to repent of our inactivity
as a community of faith in helping individuals who struggle with
sexual sins to find help, healing, comfort and consolation. Furthermore,
we need particularly to repent when through action or inaction we
have made homosexuality a sort of "sexual leprosy", and
have treated it with a contempt reserved only for it, while we have
at the same time been more understanding about other sexual sins.
There must be a way
for the church to welcome people who struggle with sexual sins into
our communities, especially since we recognize that we all are sinners
anyway. There must be a way for the church to minister to people
without abandoning them to their sinful proclivities. We hope the
Communities of Grace program will provide just such a way.
ALL
people are welcome here. Why should we single out anyone?
Why should we single
out anyone? The Communities of Grace commitment is, in fact, not
to single anyone out for special treatment or discrimination. Our
commitment is to the authority of the scriptures and to the centrality
of Christ in all we do and say. As such, we believe that all are
sinners and have fallen short of the glory of God (Rom 3:23). We
understand that this "falling short of the Glory of God"
has often expressed itself in sexual behaviours explicitly condemned
by God in Holy Scripture. We accept without reservation the biblical
view of homosexuality as being outside of God's will (Gen. 19:5-8;
Lev. 18:22-23; Lev. 20:13: Judges 19:22; Rom. 1:24-28; 1 Cor. 6:9;
1 Tim. 1:9-10; Jude 1:7) just as "evil thoughts, sexual immorality,
theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy,slander,
arrogance and folly" are also out of His will for our lives
(Mk 7:20-23; Gal. 5:19-21).
We also believe that
God's healing power is found by His grace alone. The power of the
resurrection and healing from sexual sin is evidenced in the story
of the woman caught in adultery whom Jesus frees from the power
of sin in his words of forgiveness and release, "go now and
leave your life of sin" (Jn. 8:3-11 NIV).
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