Airline accidentally exposes that the emperor has no clothes

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Somebody clearly didn’t think through the implications of the above advert for Amsterdam Pride. It does seem quite a few folk have been pointing our the same flaw on twitter. In so doing, Royal Dutch Airlines have accidentally exposed the reality of the gay agenda – namely, that who you click with might, indeed, be a matter of life or death.

It may be your choice to connect whatever ends of the seatbelt together you wish, but in the event of a catastrophe, two buckle ends aren’t going to do anything for you. God’s word also makes clear that, so far as sexual relationships go, there is one appropriate setting, namely within the confines of monogamous, heterosexual marital union.

In an interview with Stand to Reason, Sam Allberry – pastor and author of Is God Anti-Gay (written as a Same-Sex Attracted man) – put it this way:

Whenever the Bible gives us a prohibition, the question I want to ask is, what is the positive thing that prohibition protects? Whenever the Bible gives us a negative, there is always a bigger positive that that negative is an expression of. What the Bible says about homosexuality only really makes sense in the light of what the Bible says about marriage, and more than that, what the Bible says marriage means. We see in the Bible that we have a marriage at the beginning with Adam and Eve and we have a marriage at the end with Christ and His Church.

Throughout the Bible, the first marriage is used as a picture of the second marriage. It’s that vision for human marriage being a picture, being a foretaste, of the relationship between Christ and the Church that actually makes sense of why Christians have the definition of marriage that they do and why the Bible has the sexual ethics that it does.

Within that framework, we can see why the Bible says marriage is between a man and a woman, and why the Bible says sex is for such a marriage, and that being the only context in which God has designed sex to be a blessing. Homosexuality—and what the Bible says about homosexuality—is just one outworking of that vision for marriage that we see straight through the whole of the Bible.

The Christian view of marriage exists to protect the picture of Christ and his Church. Scripture is clear that those who are married to Christ by faith are those who will be saved from destruction to spend eternity with him. John puts it this way in his gospel:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 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. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. (John 3:16-18)

According to the Bible, who you click with is very important indeed. Paul puts it like this:

19 Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21 envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. (Gal 5:19-21)

It is the same point made by John in his first letter:

4 Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practises lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. 5 You know that he appeared to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. 6 No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him. 7 Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practises righteousness is righteous, as he is righteous. 8 Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. 9 No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. (1 John 3:4-9)

Just as two buckle ends will not connect together and cannot save you in the event of a crash, so failing to unite yourself to the only one who capable of saving you from the wrath of God will do nothing to save you in the judgement.

To be saved from the wrath of God means turning from our sin and submitting our lives to Jesus Christ. It means to love him above all others. It is to be unified in that marriage between himself and his Church. To unite ourselves to Jesus this way, he said himself, ‘if you love me, you will keep my commandments’ (John 14:15).

Again, Sam Allberry puts it well:

Jesus talked about sexual sin, and He spoke about sexual sin that would’ve left His original hearers in no doubt that would’ve included homosexual sexual sins when Jesus talks about—in Matthew 15 or Mark 7—about how sexual immorality is something that defiles us and makes us spiritually unclean. It’s very clear that the language He uses there—the Greek word we have in the Gospel is porneia, where we get the word “pornography” from—that was a catch-all term for any sexual activity outside of a man and woman marriage. Jesus didn’t name homosexuality, but He certainly included it in the language that He used talking about sexual sin in general.

It would seem that who you click with is incredibly important indeed. In fact, it is a matter of eternal consequence that, just like correctly applying a safety belt in a crash, is the only way to avoid certain death.

A simple picture on an airline advert makes the point well. Only one of those belts will work in a crash, it is vitally important that you attach the correct bits together otherwise the whole thing simply won’t work. Without reducing the whole issue of sexuality to ‘bits’, it is true that without appropriate setting and boundaries – set in place by God to picture the ultimate wedding between Christ and his Church – the whole thing is bound not to work.