We're All Condemned

This Jimmy Carter quote has been making the social media rounds:

Homosexuality was well known in the ancient world, well before Christ was born and Jesus never said a word about homosexuality. In all of his teachings about multiple things - he never said that gay people should be condemned.

There's no need to make this quote into a debate about the gay issue, because Jimmy Carter's correct in saying that Jesus didn't condemn gay people.

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.  John 3:17

You see, starting with Adam and Eve, sin, condemnation, and death came into this world.  

Because Adam and Eve didn't obey their God, the Lord God told them:

...for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.              Genesis 3:19b

That means, we're all condemned, all of Adam's offspring.  Whether we're full of pride, of lust, sloth, wrath, greed, envy, gluttony, we're all guilty and condemned, and that includes homosexuals.

Jesus came into a world that was already condemned.  And He came not to condemn the world, but to save it.

If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world.  John 12:47

My point is, there's only one issue involved here.  Every other topic of debate, or of picking at specific sins, they're side-track issues, and they get us off the main problem, our main problem.

We're a sinful people.  We're a sinful world, a world that needs a savior.

...for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.  Romans 3:23-24

That's the Christian message.  Anything else, it misses the gospel.

And this gospel doesn't mean that our sin is okay, that being gay is okay.  It means that, through Christ, we're forgiven.

Thankfully, our Lord doesn't keep us in our sin.  He shows it to us, forgives us, and takes us beyond that sin.  He does a work on us, on our hearts, and we're convicted...and changed.  We struggle against our sin, and we no longer live in overt sin.

Like Adam and Eve, we see with new eyes; we're aware of our sin; we're ashamed.  But, through the cross, we're forgiven, and we see and know that as well.

And the forgiveness of sins that we experience, the love we know, it's what compels us to reach beyond ourselves to other people, people who need to hear that gospel message, the message of love and the forgiveness that only Christ can bring.