A pastor who listens to this podcast writes in to ask a tricky leadership question, Pastor

John, what should a church council or board do if one of their pastors asks to officiate

a same-sex wedding?

Pastor John, what council would you have for this church?

Tony, I don't feel like I can answer that question without dropping one level down because

this is so sensitive and explosive and politically agitating that I want to go down to the

bottom again and then come back up to the practical question.

I think the practical question is relatively easy once you get the other things sorted out

which are not easy.

The emotional and physical sensations that we call same-sex attraction are disordered

emotions and disordered sensations and that disordering of the soul's emotions and the

body's sensations are rooted in the fall of humanity and to sin.

And more specifically Paul says, they're rooted in the sin that's understood as exchanging

God's glory for images, Romans 123.

So the exchange of woman as the glory of man for another man is a parable of the exchange

of God for images like ourselves.

So a person who experiences this disordering of the emotions of the soul and the sensations

of the body may or may not himself exchange God for images, it may be a Christian.

But the disordering he's experiencing is rooted in that original sin and in that ongoing

human bent of soul that we all have, all of us.

So the issue becomes what do we do with the disordering effects of sin in our lives?

I say our lives and you'll see why in a minute John Piper's life.

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