Redeeming
Sexuality

Publication details

Copyright © 2026 Northwood Church. All rights reserved.

First digital edition · November 2026

Published by Northwood Church

Based on the June 2024 sermon series by Pastor Jordan Ducote.

Scripture is identified by book, chapter, and verse. Biblical explanations in this edition are paraphrases, not verbatim quotations from a particular English translation.

Personal accounts are adapted from the source sermons and attributed to Pastor Jordan or to the people whose accounts he shared. Anonymous participants remain unnamed.

Cover design developed from the original Northwood Church sermon series art direction.

northwood.church

About this edition

This eBook adapts Northwood Church's four-part Redeeming Sexuality series, taught by Pastor Jordan Ducote in June 2024. Each chapter keeps the official title of its corresponding sermon.

The messages have been edited for sustained reading. Repeated introductions and live-audience directions have been removed, related ideas have been brought together, and transitions have been added to carry the argument from chapter to chapter.

Northwood Church is the author and publisher of this edition. References to Pastor Jordan identify the source teacher, and personal stories are attributed so that an individual's experience is not mistaken for an institutional one.

The book presents the church's theological convictions. Source notes clarify selected historical, statistical, and terminology references. A bibliography and links to the four original messages appear at the end.

The contents page, chapter bookmarks, and numbered source notes provide navigation in the digital editions.

Introduction

A life brought back to God

Sexuality touches questions we cannot keep at a comfortable distance. What does it mean to be human? What should we do with desires we did not ask to have? How do we love someone when our convictions differ? What happens when the person asking is our child, our friend, or the person looking back from the mirror?

An argument can remain abstract. A person never does.

This book begins with a Christian conviction: God made us, and his design is good. Our bodies matter. Our relationships matter. Our desires matter. None of them stands outside his care or his authority. The same Scriptures that describe his design also tell the truth about our condition. Sin has fractured the world we inhabit and the lives we live. We need more than permission to follow ourselves. We need redemption.

To redeem is to rescue and restore. In Christ, God does not abandon people to what sin has damaged. He forgives, reconciles, and calls us into a life shaped by his Spirit. That call reaches every part of us, including our sexuality. It also reaches our pride, our dishonesty, our anger, and our willingness to dismiss people whose struggles differ from our own.

The four chapters that follow move from biological sex to gender, masculinity, and sexual orientation. Each retains the title of the original Northwood Church message. Together they ask how Christians can receive God's design, recognize the effects of the fall, and respond faithfully to real people in a complicated world.

These pages explain Northwood's understanding of Scripture. They assume the Christian belief that God is our Creator and that the Bible carries authority for our lives. They do not attempt to prove every foundation of Christian faith before addressing the questions at hand. Readers who do not share those foundations are welcome to examine the reasoning and to understand why these convictions matter to us.

Some readers will recognize their own experience immediately. Others will think of a family member or a difficult conversation. Read with both in mind. Resist the temptation to gather ammunition for someone else while leaving your own life unexamined. The lordship of Jesus is never a weapon reserved for another person's desires.

We can speak clearly without speaking cruelly. We can listen carefully without pretending disagreement has disappeared. We can admit what we do not know while remaining honest about what we believe Scripture teaches. Those commitments belong together.

The aim is a life brought back to God: embodied, accountable, loved, and increasingly formed by Christ.

Chapter 01

Redeeming Biological Sex

Before we ask what sexuality means for our identity, we have to ask what the body means at all.

Is it a gift with a purpose we receive? Is it raw material whose meaning we determine? When our bodies, desires, and experiences do not fit together easily, which of them gets the final word?

These questions shape much more than a discussion about anatomy. They influence how we raise children, understand suffering, speak about human dignity, and decide what freedom looks like. They also expose the foundation beneath our answers. Two people may use the same vocabulary while reasoning from entirely different accounts of the world.

For Christians, the starting point is a Creator. We are not self-made people who happened to acquire bodies. We are creatures whose lives come from God. That conviction does not answer every medical question, but it changes the way we approach every question about being human.

What needs redeeming?

Genesis describes God looking at everything he had made and declaring it very good (Genesis 1:31). Creation was not a failed experiment awaiting our improvements. It was a good work entrusted to human beings who bore their Creator's image.

That goodness includes the body. Scripture does not introduce physical existence as an embarrassment or an obstacle to spiritual life. God creates embodied people and gives them a place, a responsibility, and a relationship with him. Their lives are meant to flourish within his order.

The biblical idea of peace helps us picture that wholeness. Peace is more than the absence of a fight. It includes things being rightly related: people to God, people to each other, and humanity to the created world. When those relationships are intact, life can thrive.

Sin fractures that order. Genesis 3 introduces hiding, blame, alienation, and death. The damage reaches beyond the decisions of any one individual. We are born into a world where bodies become ill, relationships break, and desires can pull against what God calls good.

This matters whenever Christians describe something as an effect of the fall. We are speaking about the condition of creation, not assigning personal guilt to someone because of a physical condition. A child born with a medical complication has not caused that complication by committing a particular sin. Nor does a difficult condition make that child less fully human or less loved by God.

Redemption addresses a world that is both created good and deeply wounded. Jesus forgives sin and reconciles us to God. His resurrection also points toward the restoration of embodied life. Christians live between the beginning of that restoration and its completion. We can experience real change now without pretending every difficulty has already disappeared.

If we forget creation, we lose sight of design. If we forget the fall, we cannot account honestly for suffering. If we forget redemption, we leave people with a diagnosis of what is wrong and no hope of what God can do.

The conversation is already happening

Pastor Jordan Ducote did not approach this series as an exercise in finding a controversial subject. Questions were already reaching people in ordinary places: families, classrooms, friendships, and conversations with teachers and school leaders. Cultural events advertised for families also raised questions about what children were being asked to absorb.

Silence would not make those questions disappear. It would simply leave other voices to answer them.

Ideas rarely arrive in public life fully formed and without a history. They are discussed, developed, repeated, and eventually treated as familiar assumptions. An argument that begins in an academic setting can become the premise of entertainment, education, and public policy. Christians should understand what is being said and why people find it persuasive.

That requires more than reacting to a short clip. A clip may expose a disagreement, but it rarely explains an entire person's reasoning. The person who disagrees with us may be thoughtful, sincere, and motivated by concern for someone they love. We do not become more faithful by assuming otherwise.

At the same time, sincerity does not settle whether an idea is true. Proverbs 14:12 warns that a way can seem right to a person and still lead toward death. The warning applies to us as well as to anyone else. Feeling certain about a conclusion is not the same as examining it well.

Much of the contemporary conversation treats personal expression as the path to freedom. Within that framework, an external limit can look like an attack on the self. Agreement then becomes the expected proof of compassion. If we love someone, the reasoning goes, we must affirm the way they understand every aspect of their life.

Christians cannot accept that definition without qualification. Love takes another person's good seriously, and we believe God has something to say about that good. Yet disagreement never cancels the obligation to honor a person. Labels, ridicule, and contempt do not become acceptable because our position is biblical.

A pastor's volume is not evidence that the Holy Spirit is speaking. A sharp insult is not a spiritual gift. Truth deserves better than that, and so do people.

We can speak clearly without speaking cruelly.

Define the words before debating the conclusion

One of the simplest ways to improve a difficult conversation is to ask what a word means.

Sex and gender are often used interchangeably in everyday speech. In other settings, they identify different things. One person may be discussing reproductive biology while another is describing social expectations, appearance, or an internal sense of identity. They can argue for an hour without addressing the same question.

Biological sex concerns bodily characteristics associated with sexual development and reproduction. Those characteristics include reproductive anatomy, hormones, and chromosomes. Gender, in common institutional definitions, refers to social roles, norms, and expectations associated with women and men. Gender identity and gender expression describe additional aspects of a person's experience. We will examine those distinctions more closely in the next chapter.¹

Consider a kilt. A garment that communicates masculinity in one cultural setting may be read differently somewhere else. The fabric does not change a person's reproductive biology. It does show that the meaning people attach to clothing can vary.

That distinction keeps us from making careless arguments. A preference in clothing is not a chromosome. A cultural expectation is not a reproductive organ. A person's physical characteristics and their experience of those characteristics are related, but they are not identical categories.

Human sexual reproduction involves two kinds of reproductive cells: sperm and eggs. The male and female reproductive roles are organized around that distinction. A person's value, however, does not depend on the ability to produce a reproductive cell, conceive a child, or become a parent. Infertility, age, illness, and differences in development do not erase human dignity.

Biology also includes variations that deserve careful attention. Some people are born with sex characteristics that do not fit typical male or female patterns. The term intersex is commonly used for a range of those variations. They are real people with real lives, not an inconvenience to be argued away.

Christians should be able to affirm the male and female pattern of creation while speaking honestly about atypical development. Recognizing a pattern does not require denying every complicated case. Recognizing complicated cases does not, by itself, determine every theological conclusion about the pattern.

What a statistic can and cannot tell us

Discussions of intersex prevalence illustrate why definitions matter.

A widely repeated estimate is approximately 1.7 percent. A much narrower estimate, published by Leonard Sax in 2002, is approximately 0.018 percent. The difference is not a rounding error. The estimates count different sets of conditions. Sax's definition was considerably narrower than the approach associated with Anne Fausto-Sterling and the review by Melanie Blackless and colleagues.²

It is misleading to repeat either number as if everyone agreed on the same definition. Before a statistic can clarify an argument, we need to know what was counted, how it was counted, and what conclusion the number can support.

The question of prevalence is also different from the question of care. A rare condition does not deserve less compassion because it is rare. A broad category does not make every experience within it identical. People deserve more attention than a debate over percentages can provide.

Pastor Jordan remembered growing up watching Bill Nye and associating a familiar, engaging voice with scientific authority. Familiarity can make trust feel automatic. That happens with television personalities, pastors, authors, and people who agree with us online.

The answer is not to stop learning from knowledgeable people. It is to examine the reasons they offer. What evidence supports the conclusion? What definition is being used? Where does a description of biology become a claim about identity, morality, or the purpose of the body?

Those questions help us distinguish expertise from the conclusions we have attached to it. A person can be knowledgeable and still make a philosophical argument that deserves examination. A person can disagree with us and still raise a question we need to answer honestly.

Christians do not serve truth by using weak evidence in defense of a strong conviction. If a statistic needs qualification, qualify it. If an illustration overstates the case, revise it. The biblical account does not become more secure when we become less careful.

Male and female in the biblical account

Genesis 1:27 places sexual difference within the creation of humanity in God's image. Male and female share that image. Neither is a secondary kind of human being. Neither receives dignity as a favor from the other.

The next verse includes the blessing and responsibility of fruitfulness (Genesis 1:28). Human life is meant to continue through the union of male and female. The passage connects embodied difference with a purpose larger than individual preference.

This is a statement about humanity's created pattern, not a claim that every person must marry or have children to fulfill God's purpose. Scripture honors faithfulness in different circumstances. A single person, an infertile couple, and someone who has lost a spouse do not stand outside the worth God gives his people.

When Jesus addresses marriage, he reaches back to creation and speaks of the Creator making humanity male and female (Matthew 19:4–6). Northwood understands that appeal as significant. Jesus treats the created body as meaningful to the moral shape of human relationships.

That is why our conviction about sex is not built on whether a particular cultural argument is popular this year. It rests on the relationship between creation, the teaching of Jesus, and the wider biblical account of embodied life.

Readers may debate the literary features of Genesis, and Christians do not resolve every question about those features in the same way. But attending to literary form does not require treating the passage as though it has no claim on our understanding of humanity. A text can communicate through carefully shaped language and still say something true.

At this point, disagreement often moves beneath biology. Is there a Creator whose intention has moral significance? Can the body disclose something we are meant to receive? Does freedom consist only in choosing, or can it include learning to live well within a good design?

Those are worldview questions. We should identify them openly instead of pretending one statistic will settle them all.

Small changes in direction matter

An aircraft can be only slightly off course at the beginning of a flight and end up far from its intended destination if the error continues uncorrected. The size of the initial adjustment does not tell us the size of its eventual effect.

Ideas can work that way too. A small shift in what we believe about the body can affect what we believe about identity. A shift in identity can influence what we think love requires. Over time, those changes can alter our reading of Scripture and our understanding of discipleship.

That is a reason for careful thought, not panic. Fear usually makes us less precise. It encourages us to treat every person as a representative of the most extreme position we have encountered. It can also make us so eager to win that we stop noticing whom we are addressing.

We need a better discipline. Define the issue. Follow the reasoning. Distinguish what the text says from what we wish it said. Ask whether the conclusion fits the whole account of creation, sin, and redemption.

Christians also believe that spiritual life involves competing influences. Scripture calls us to discern what draws us toward God and what turns us away from him. That conviction should deepen our attention to truth and prayer. It should never become permission to describe a neighbor as less than human.

The person across from us bears God's image even when we believe their conclusions are wrong. So do we when someone challenges ours.

How to have the conversation

Begin by asking what the other person means. If the discussion concerns gender, determine whether they are describing biology, social expectations, identity, or expression. A clarifying question often accomplishes more than a forceful rebuttal to a position nobody actually holds.

Then distinguish observation from interpretation. We can discuss reproductive biology and variations in sexual development without assuming everyone shares the same account of creation. We can explain our theological conclusion without pretending it is simply a laboratory measurement.

Finally, state the Christian foundation plainly. We believe God made embodied human beings with purpose. We believe sin has affected creation. We believe Christ redeems people, and we look forward to the completion of that redemption. These beliefs shape the way we receive our bodies and the way we respond when bodily life is difficult.

None of this guarantees an easy conversation. A disagreement can carry the weight of years of rejection, a painful medical experience, or fear about a child. Someone may hear a theological statement as a personal dismissal even when that is not what we intend. We should care enough to notice and to explain ourselves patiently.

Most of us already know that love and agreement are not identical. Marriage supplies plenty of opportunities to practice the distinction. People who deeply love each other can reach different conclusions. The disagreement may require work, honesty, and humility, but it does not automatically prove the absence of love.

That principle does not excuse harshness. It calls us to a more demanding kind of relationship, one in which we refuse both dishonesty and contempt.

No one is a problem to be disposed of

If you were born with an intersex variation, your body is not an argument against your worth. You do not need an uncomplicated medical history to bear God's image. Your place before him does not depend on fitting neatly into someone else's explanation.

If you are a parent facing difficult medical decisions, this chapter is not a substitute for qualified, individualized care. Complex questions deserve knowledgeable clinicians, careful attention, and compassion. They do not deserve a stranger's confident judgment based on a few sentences.

Within the church, the call is to honor people and remain faithful to God. We can hold a conviction about creation while acknowledging that some people have experienced physical life in ways most of us have never had to consider. Listening to them does not threaten the truth. It helps us speak about it responsibly.

Nor can Christians reserve the language of brokenness for people whose struggles appear unusual to us. The fall has affected all of us. Sexual sin is not limited to the subjects that generate public controversy. Lust, adultery, exploitation, and selfishness can hide comfortably inside a familiar life.

The good news is that Jesus receives people who need redemption. That includes every one of us. Our deepest hope is not that our bodies or desires will make us morally superior to someone else. Our hope is that we belong to Christ.

Once we receive the body as meaningful, another question follows: how should we understand the relationship between that body, the expectations of our culture, and our own experience of being male or female? That is where the conversation about gender begins.

Carry this forward

God's good creation gives the body meaning. The fall helps explain why embodied life can be painful or complicated without assigning personal blame for a medical condition. Redemption gives us hope and calls us to receive God's authority over our lives. In conversation, define terms, handle evidence honestly, and honor the person whose experience you are trying to understand.

Chapter 02

Redeeming Gender

Imagine a father who notices that his son does not fit the expectations people have placed on him. The boy enjoys art more than sports. He is sensitive, thoughtful, and uncomfortable with the version of masculinity that seems to impress his peers.

As he gets older, the father notices other changes. His son becomes withdrawn. He seems unhappy, but conversations do not get very far. Then, at sixteen, he tells his father that he believes he is a girl.

This is a hypothetical situation, but the questions it raises are personal for many families. What should the father hear in that disclosure? What should he say? How can he take his child's distress seriously without abandoning what he believes about the body? Where should he seek help?

An abstract argument can move quickly. A parent cannot. This is a child he loves.

The church needs to be able to think carefully about gender and respond tenderly to people. If we possess only an argument, we will not know how to sit with someone who is hurting. If we refuse to examine our beliefs, we will not know what guidance we are offering or why.

Separate the questions

Several different subjects often get crowded into a single word.

Biological sex concerns the body's sexual development and reproductive organization. Gender, as commonly defined in social and health contexts, concerns the roles, expectations, and norms associated with women and men. Gender identity describes a person's internal experience of gender. Gender expression concerns the outward ways a person presents themselves, including clothing, appearance, and mannerisms.¹

These distinctions are useful even when Christians disagree with some conclusions people draw from them. Understanding a term does not require endorsing every framework in which it is used. It allows us to identify the actual question.

Something described as socially constructed is not necessarily imaginary or unimportant. It means that human communities help shape its expectations and meaning. Those expectations can differ across cultures and change over time.

A man who enjoys cooking has not become a woman. A woman who hunts has not become a man. A boy's artistic interests do not establish a female identity. A girl's strength or assertiveness does not make her male. These are simple observations, yet our stereotypes can become so rigid that we forget them.

The same care applies to temperament. Tenderness is not reserved for women. Courage is not reserved for men. Men and women can both be nurturing, decisive, sensitive, and strong. We create needless confusion when we tell people that a personality trait means their bodies must be wrong.

Christian teaching about male and female should not depend on a narrow cultural performance. Scripture gives us a moral vision of life before God. It does not require every man to enjoy the same hobbies or every woman to speak with the same personality.

Our first task, then, is to stop treating every difference from a stereotype as evidence of a deeper identity claim. A child needs room to develop interests and abilities without being pushed into a conclusion by adults who have mistaken convention for creation.

Take distress seriously

Clearing away stereotypes does not resolve every experience people describe. Some people report a persistent sense of incongruence between their gender identity and their sex. For some, that experience includes significant distress.

Gender dysphoria is a clinical term for distress associated with that incongruence. It is not simply another word for being transgender. Not every transgender person experiences gender dysphoria, and a disagreement about theology is not a clinical diagnosis.³

Christians should not pretend to understand a person's experience before listening. The first person we meet who is transgender will not tell us everything about every other transgender person. One person's history does not provide a universal explanation.

Nor should we assume that a person is being deceptive because their experience is difficult for us to imagine. Someone may describe a painful conflict they have carried for years. We can believe they are describing their experience honestly while continuing to examine what that experience means and how to respond.

The opening illustration matters here. The father needs to notice his son's distress, ask patient questions, and remain present. Shock can make parents reach for the strongest sentence they can find. Fear can turn a conversation into an interrogation. Neither reaction makes a child feel safer telling the truth about what is happening.

The opposite response can be equally unreflective: deciding that a single disclosure settles every question and immediately determines every next step. A child deserves attentive care, not a hurried conclusion in either direction.

Pastor Jordan emphasized that questions or distress concerning gender are not, in themselves, a sin. That distinction belongs near the center of the church's response. A person should not have to hide the existence of a struggle in order to remain close to Christian community.

If people learn that admitting confusion will lead to ridicule, they will look elsewhere for someone willing to listen. The church then loses the opportunity to love them through a difficult experience. We cannot complain that people seek community elsewhere after making our own community unsafe for an honest conversation.

A person should not have to hide the existence of a struggle in order to remain close to Christian community.

What parents can and cannot assume

Pastor Jordan recalled a brief conversation with his own young daughter. She came home and said she was a boy. He responded calmly, assuring her that she was a girl. In that particular moment, the conversation ended there.

It was an ordinary parental exchange, not a clinical case study. It does not establish that every child's questions can be resolved with the same response. A passing childhood statement and persistent distress require different kinds of attention.

Children try out ideas. They also encounter messages before they have the experience to evaluate them. Parents routinely help them distinguish imagination, preference, and reality. A child's wish to be a superhero does not obligate a parent to affirm that the child can fly. At the same time, an illustration about childhood imagination should never become a way to mock a person describing serious distress.

The practical point is that adults have a responsibility to guide. Guidance involves listening, explaining, setting appropriate boundaries, and learning when a situation requires help beyond what the parent knows. It cannot be reduced to either unquestioning agreement or an abrupt dismissal.

Christian parents should be able to teach their children what they believe about creation and the body. They should also be willing to examine how they communicate those beliefs. Conviction does not justify threats, humiliation, or withdrawal of affection.

Questions about a minor's health and development deserve particular care. Decisions involving medical treatment can carry substantial consequences, and different interventions have different effects. A sermon or a book cannot assess an individual child. Families need qualified clinicians who can evaluate the actual circumstances, explain the evidence and uncertainties, and take the child's well-being seriously.

Pastor Jordan's concern was that adults not rush past the responsibility to protect children while treating every expression of uncertainty as a settled conclusion. That concern should lead to thoughtful care. It should not lead Christians to deny distress, invent a diagnosis, or repeat a percentage about children's futures without understanding the research behind it.

Public debates also raise questions about parental responsibilities, institutional authority, and the role of the state. Those debates are real, but a broad claim about what “the law” allows is rarely adequate. Laws differ by place and change over time. The church's pastoral responsibility begins with the family in front of us and the facts of its situation.

The body belongs within discipleship

Northwood's theological conviction is that being male or female has a bodily meaning we receive from our Creator. Within that understanding, the body does not become irrelevant when a person's internal experience is painful or difficult to reconcile with it.

This conviction follows from a larger Christian account of the human person. We are not souls temporarily trapped in meaningless physical containers. The body participates in worship, obedience, service, intimacy, and resurrection hope.

Paul's language in 1 Corinthians 6:19–20 is direct: the body belongs to God, and believers are to honor him with it. That claim reaches far beyond a controversy about gender. It challenges the assumption that personal desire makes us the final authority over anything we do with ourselves.

Romans 12:1–2 joins the offering of our bodies to the renewal of our minds. Christian transformation involves both. We learn to place our embodied lives before God while allowing him to reshape our judgment. We do not honor the body by refusing to examine desire, and we do not honor the mind by treating the body as disposable.

Galatians 2:20 gives this surrender a personal center. Paul describes his life in relation to the crucified and living Christ. His identity is no longer organized around the claim that he must rule himself. He lives by faith in the Son of God who loved him and gave himself for him.

That is not a small adjustment. It is a different account of freedom.

If freedom means that no desire can be questioned, discipleship will always feel like a threat. If freedom includes being restored to the God who made and loves us, obedience can be understood as a response to grace even when it is costly.

Christians must be honest about that cost. A theological conviction does not automatically make every emotion fall into place. Prayer does not authorize us to promise that a person's distress will vanish on a schedule. Faithfulness can include ongoing questions, patient support, and help from people with appropriate expertise.

The church's task is to remain present in that process. A person is not a project we abandon when the story becomes less tidy than we expected.

Ancient texts and present questions

Questions about clothing, sexual behavior, bodily difference, and social roles did not begin with contemporary vocabulary. Ancient writers discussed practices involving sex and gender, often within social and religious settings quite different from our own.

Pastor Jordan referred to Philo of Alexandria, whose discussion in The Special Laws includes gendered presentation and sexual conduct. Philo supplies evidence that ancient people could recognize and debate behaviors crossing the expectations of their own society. His categories, however, should not be treated as identical to modern descriptions of transgender identity or gender dysphoria.⁴

That distinction protects us from two mistakes. We should not assume that ancient people knew nothing about behavior outside conventional expectations. We should not assume that an ancient writer's description functions as a modern clinical account.

The same attention to context matters when reading Deuteronomy 22:5, which addresses male and female clothing. The passage belongs to Israel's covenant life. Christians need to consider its setting and its place within the whole of Scripture. It cannot be reduced to a permanent list of modern garments that every culture must classify in the same way.

For Northwood, the theological concern is the meaningful distinction between male and female within God's created order. Cultural expressions can vary without making that order meaningless. The kilt remains a useful reminder: we need more than our local habits to interpret a garment.

Scripture also connects worship with the way people use their bodies. Idolatry is not limited to bowing before an object. It includes giving something created the authority that belongs to God. A desire, an ideology, or a preferred account of ourselves can become an unquestioned master.

That danger belongs to everyone. A person can make an idol of being culturally accepted. Another can make an idol of being the one who is always right. Both need to submit to Christ.

Read faithfully, and remain teachable

Christians do not all interpret every passage in the same way. Some churches affirm understandings of gender and sexuality that Northwood does not share. The existence of disagreement should encourage serious study rather than careless certainty about what other people have or have not considered.

Yet disagreement alone does not require us to surrender conviction. We still have to ask which reading best accounts for the text, its context, and the broader biblical account. A conclusion is not established merely because a credentialed person teaches it, because it is culturally welcomed, or because it is difficult to resist socially.

The same scrutiny applies to a conclusion we find comfortable. We should not quote a teacher as a substitute for reading Scripture. We should not protect our preferred interpretation by refusing to hear a thoughtful question. Christian confidence can coexist with the willingness to correct an argument or acknowledge a limitation.

Pastor Jordan expressed the desire for the church to remain faithful when public opinion shifts. That requires a longer view than winning the immediate exchange. People need a community that can offer stable convictions and steady care, including when the wider conversation becomes angry or confused.

We can also admit that our own language may improve. Looking back, a pastor or parent may recognize something they would phrase differently. That admission need not mean the underlying conviction was false. Sometimes maturity means learning to say a true thing with greater accuracy and more love.

Two responsibilities in the same conversation

It helps to distinguish the work of understanding an idea from the work of caring for a person.

When examining an idea, we ask about definitions, evidence, assumptions, and Scripture. Does the reasoning hold together? What account of the body is being offered? What does obedience to Christ require within the church's understanding?

When caring for a person, we ask about their experience. What have they carried? What are they afraid to say? Who has treated them well? Where have they been hurt? What support do they need now?

These responsibilities belong together, but they are not interchangeable. A careful theological explanation may still be a poor first response to someone's disclosure of pain. An empathetic conversation may still need to make room for an honest discussion of belief.

Begin by listening. Do not supply a history the person has not given you. Do not assume every experience comes from trauma, family failure, or the same social influence. Ask open questions, attend to the answers, and let the person be more than the category you first noticed.

Seek qualified support when it is needed. Pastoral care, professional counseling, and medical assessment have different responsibilities. One does not automatically replace the others. A professional should be able to take a person's faith commitments seriously without using shame or coercion to force a predetermined outcome.

When family relationships are strained, help may need to include the family. The goal is a more truthful, supportive relationship, not merely finding someone who will tell one side that it has won. Parents may need help managing fear. Children may need help explaining what they have not felt able to say.

Remain connected to Christ-centered community. People need more than a referral and a promise that someone else will care. They need friends who remember them, meals shared without an interrogation, and a place where honest prayer is possible.

Belonging and accountability

Christian community has to make room for people who are still working through difficult questions. If belonging requires the absence of struggle, none of us qualifies.

That does not mean the church has no moral convictions. It means that admitting a struggle and refusing all accountability are not the same thing. We should be able to distinguish them with care.

A church that treats gender questions as uniquely disqualifying while excusing dishonesty, drunkenness, or cruelty has lost perspective. It communicates that some people must hide while others can remain comfortably unexamined. The New Testament does not give us permission to select another person's difficulty as a distraction from our own sin.

At the same time, love is not helped by pretending obedience no longer matters. Christians gather around a Lord whose authority reaches all of us. Our task is to help one another follow him, with patience appropriate to real people and honesty appropriate to his Word.

For a person experiencing distress, that may begin with one trustworthy conversation. For a parent, it may begin with learning to remain calm enough to hear an answer. For a church, it may begin with repenting of the jokes and assumptions that have made people afraid to speak.

Every one of us knows the pressure of a desire that wants the final word. We may differ in the desire, its intensity, or the cost of resisting it. We do not differ in our need for grace.

The question is not whether we can produce a life without dependence. The question is whether we will entrust our whole selves to Jesus and help one another do the same.

The next chapter brings that challenge into an area where cultural stereotypes and Christian discipleship are often confused: masculinity. If the church calls men to receive their identity before God, it must also explain what a faithful use of masculine strength looks like.

Carry this forward

Distinguish biological sex, social expectations, identity, and expression. Do not confuse a stereotype with God's design or a person's distress with personal rebellion. Listen before assuming, seek qualified help when needed, and keep people connected to caring community. Northwood's conviction about the body belongs alongside a steady commitment to the dignity and well-being of the person.

Chapter 03

Redeeming Masculinity

Some men have learned to expect a rebuke before anyone has said a word.

They hear that men are the problem. They hear what fathers have failed to do, what husbands have misunderstood, and what boys need to stop being. Then, after years of being treated as a liability, they are asked why they lack confidence or initiative.

Pastor Jordan observed that a gathering for women will often emphasize encouragement and affirmation, while a gathering for men can feel as though everyone has arrived to be punched in the face. The comparison is humorous because there is something recognizable in it. Men need correction. They also need a compelling account of the good they are being called toward.

Redeeming masculinity begins with the conviction that being a man is not itself a moral failure. Men, like women, need redemption from sin. Strength, courage, initiative, and responsibility can be distorted. They can also become gifts to a family, a church, and a community.

The question is what will govern them.

Called out of hiding

After Adam and Eve disobey God, they hide. In Genesis 3, God calls to Adam and asks where he is. The question brings him out of concealment and into accountability.

Many men know the instinct to hide after failure. Some withdraw emotionally. Some become defensive. Some stay busy enough to avoid an honest conversation. Others retreat into entertainment, work, or a private habit they do not want anyone to examine.

Hiding does not repair what has been damaged. It leaves the people around us carrying both the original problem and our absence from it.

God's call invites a different response: come forward, tell the truth, and take responsibility. A man does not become trustworthy by pretending he has never failed. He becomes trustworthy as he stops hiding and learns to respond faithfully when he has.

That matters in a home. It matters when a father apologizes without adding an excuse. It matters when a husband admits that his anger has made conversation difficult. It matters when a young man asks for help before a secret becomes the organizing force of his life.

Responsibility is not the same as accepting blame for everything. It is the willingness to own what is ours and act on it. Men need communities that call them to that responsibility without teaching them that shame is their permanent identity.

What makes a strength toxic?

The phrase toxic masculinity can identify harmful patterns: domination, cruelty, sexual entitlement, and the demand that men never show weakness. Those patterns deserve to be challenged. Trouble begins when the phrase becomes a way to treat masculinity itself as poisonous.

Consider the care of a swimming pool. The substances used to keep the water healthy must be handled properly and kept in the right balance. Misuse can make something helpful harmful. The answer is not to conclude that the pool never needed care. It is to understand what each part is for and how it should be used.

Strength can protect someone or intimidate them. Assertiveness can make an important truth clear or silence everyone else. Courage can face a danger or become recklessness. The trait alone does not settle the moral question. Its purpose and use matter.

Women also demonstrate strength, courage, and initiative. Calling these qualities part of healthy masculinity does not mean women cannot possess them. Nor does harmful behavior become acceptable when a woman practices it. Contempt, manipulation, and abuse are wrong regardless of who exercises them.

Pastor Jordan challenged the cultural double standard that can treat a dismissive remark about men as harmless while recognizing the same kind of remark about women as demeaning. Movements that begin by identifying real harm can lose their moral clarity when they replace correction with contempt.

Christians should resist that pattern. We can acknowledge the damage men have caused without denying the good men have done. We can challenge an abusive father without teaching a boy that fatherhood is inherently suspect.

Think of the men who build, maintain, repair, and protect. On the Mississippi Gulf Coast, memories of Hurricane Katrina include people working through exhausting conditions to help communities recover. Pastor Jordan pointed to the contribution of hardworking men in that rebuilding. Gratitude for their work does not diminish anyone else's contribution. It recognizes good where good has been done.

What we celebrate helps shape what people repeat. If the only public picture of a father is a foolish, impulsive man whose family manages around him, boys receive a thin account of what they might become. They need examples of competence joined to kindness, strength joined to restraint, and responsibility joined to joy.

Let Jesus define the goal

Jesus gives us more than a cultural ideal to imitate. He reveals a life fully submitted to the Father and freely given for others.

His strength does not depend on making vulnerable people afraid. His authority does not require constant self-promotion. He can confront, grieve, teach, serve, and endure suffering without becoming less faithful or less strong.

That is the direction of redeemed masculinity. We do not simply polish the habits our culture rewards. We allow Christ to expose what is sinful and form what is good.

For a single person considering marriage, this makes character more important than an impressive image. A wedding does not automatically turn selfishness into sacrifice. Patterns that concern you before marriage deserve attention before marriage. The same principle applies to both men and women: do not ask a future ceremony to perform the work of present repentance.

For a married couple, growth requires more than identifying each other's failures. Honest encouragement matters. A husband who is learning to lead with humility needs room to practice. A wife should not be asked to minimize harm, but neither spouse should overlook every sign of faithful change.

Five common distortions help us see what Christ calls men away from and what he calls them toward.

From promiscuity to sexual integrity

The number of people a man has slept with does not measure his maturity. It may reveal only the number of relationships he has approached without the responsibility they deserved.

Sexual integrity begins when a man refuses to treat another person's body as proof of his own importance. It includes his actions, his habits, and the attention he deliberately cultivates.

Pornography makes it possible to consume sexual images privately while maintaining a respectable public appearance. The privacy can make the habit feel disconnected from character. But repeated choices shape what we seek and how we regard other people. A screen does not make objectification morally neutral.

In Matthew 5:27–28, Jesus presses beneath the outward act of adultery to the intention of the heart. The defense that a man is “just looking” misses the point when the looking is deliberately cultivating lust. Jesus is not content with a public record that conceals a private appetite.

This does not mean that noticing beauty or experiencing an unwanted temptation is identical to choosing lust. It means we should stop treating deliberate indulgence as harmless merely because it has not yet become a physical encounter.

Within the biblical sexual ethic taught in this series, sex belongs within marriage between a man and a woman. Married men are called to fidelity. Unmarried men are called to self-control and sexual integrity. Neither group receives an exemption because a desire is strong.

We often assume this is an impossible standard while accepting self-control as necessary in other areas of life. Anger does not authorize assault. Wanting something does not authorize theft. A desire can be real without carrying the right to govern our behavior.

Imagine the difference faithful sexual responsibility would make in homes and relationships. Fewer secrets would need protecting. Fewer spouses would be asked to recover from betrayal. Fewer people would be treated as products. This is a moral vision worth pursuing, even though no individual can repair every harm in the world.

For the man who has failed, the next step is not to become better at hiding. Confess honestly. Seek appropriate accountability. Change the arrangements that make secrecy easy. Receive forgiveness without using it as a reason to keep repeating the same choice.

Integrity is formed through faithful action, including the action no one applauds because no one sees it.

From dominance to sacrificial service

Dominance asks who can be made to yield. Christian service asks whose good we are responsible to seek.

A man can mistake control for leadership because control produces visible results. People stop disagreeing. The house becomes quiet. Decisions are made quickly. But silence produced by fear is not the same as trust.

Jesus overturns the assumption that greatness consists in occupying the highest place. In Mark 9:35, he teaches that the person who wants to be first must become a servant. In Mark 10:45, he describes his own mission in terms of service and the giving of his life.

That is a demanding model. It calls a man to use his strength for someone else's good, including when the cost falls on him. Protection, provision, and initiative become forms of love rather than evidence of superiority.

Serving does not mean becoming passive. Sometimes love requires a difficult conversation or decisive action. Sometimes it requires confronting a danger. The difference lies in the aim: are we protecting people and honoring God, or protecting our pride and securing our own way?

No claim to spiritual leadership gives a man permission to intimidate, coerce, or abuse. The example of Jesus cannot be used to excuse behavior that makes a home unsafe. Sacrifice means offering ourselves in love, not demanding that another person absorb our cruelty.

In ordinary family life, service often looks practical. Notice what needs doing. Share the work. Attend to a spouse's exhaustion. Help a child without treating the interruption as an offense. Take responsibility for a conversation you would rather avoid.

These actions may not look impressive to an audience. They matter deeply to the people who live with us.

Strength becomes a gift when love governs its use.

From emotional suppression to honest expression

A man who never names his emotions has not necessarily mastered them. He may simply be forcing the people around him to experience them in another form.

Grief can appear as distance. Fear can appear as control. Shame can appear as anger. If anger is the only emotion a man believes he is allowed to show, many different experiences will eventually come through that one narrow opening.

The consequences can be serious. United States data for 2023 show that the male suicide rate was approximately four times the female rate. That fact does not establish a single cause, but it is a reason to take men's distress seriously rather than dismiss it as weakness.⁵

Some men are afraid that vulnerability will cost them respect. They may have seen an honest admission used against someone. They may have learned early that a boy's tears invite ridicule. Those experiences can make emotional honesty feel dangerous even in a relationship where care is available.

The church should help change that expectation. A man needs to know that he can tell the truth before the pain has become a crisis. Prayer, friendship, pastoral support, and professional care can all play a part. Asking for help is a responsible response to suffering.

Jesus was not emotionally numb. Matthew 9:36 describes his compassion for people who were harassed and helpless. His response to corruption in the temple shows that love can also include moral anger (Matthew 21:12–13). Neither passage gives us permission to excuse uncontrolled rage. Together they prevent us from confusing holiness with the absence of feeling.

Meekness is often described as strength under control. It involves the capacity to act without being ruled by every impulse. A man can feel anger and still choose a faithful response. He can grieve without abandoning responsibility. He can speak tenderly without surrendering courage.

Pastor Jordan shared a detail from his family that made this personal. His father did not hear his own father say “I love you” until he was forty-eight. The absence of those words had lasted for decades.

In Pastor Jordan's account, God's work in his father's life changed the pattern passed on to the next generation. His father could be strong and protective while also sitting with his family and expressing love. Tenderness did not cancel strength. It made that strength easier to trust.

Families do not have to repeat every emotional habit they inherit. A father can begin saying what he never heard. A son can learn to speak about a fear he was taught to conceal. The first conversation may be awkward. Awkwardness is a small price for a more honest relationship.

From isolation to Christ-centered community

Being surrounded by people is not the same as being known.

A man can have friends who share his interests while having no one who knows the condition of his marriage, the pressure of his work, or the habit he keeps secret. He can spend hours with other men and never allow a conversation to reach anything that matters.

Some friendships actively protect avoidance. Everyone agrees that the problem is someone else's fault. A complaint is affirmed, a cruel joke is rewarded, and the behavior that needs attention remains untouched. The group feels loyal because it never asks anyone to change.

Christian friendship has a deeper loyalty. It cares enough about a person's good to speak honestly. It also stays close enough for that honesty to be received as love.

In John 13:34–35, Jesus connects the identity of his disciples with their love for one another. That love is more substantial than shared opinions or a good time together. It includes attention, sacrifice, patience, and the willingness to help someone who is struggling.

If a friend were drowning, we would not wait for him to make the situation less embarrassing before offering help. Emotional and spiritual distress deserve the same readiness. Notice the withdrawal. Make the call. Ask a question that cannot be answered with a joke, and be willing to hear the response.

Northwood's Groups provide one setting where that kind of community can grow. Participation does not automatically create honesty, but regular relationships make honesty possible. A man needs people who can recognize when something has changed and who will care enough to ask about it.

Younger men also need examples. An older man's faithful presence can show what a healthy marriage, a sincere apology, or steady discipleship looks like. We should not assume boys will learn those things from the loudest voice available to them.

Friendship is not a luxury a man earns after completing his responsibilities. It is one of the ways he becomes better able to carry them.

From pride to humility

Pride does not always look confident. Sometimes it is an anxious effort to prevent anyone from discovering a weakness.

A man may resist correction because he fears it will confirm the worst thing he believes about himself. He may insist on the last word because he does not know how to remain secure without it. These patterns can be understandable without becoming harmless.

Proverbs 16:18 connects pride with destruction. The warning is practical as well as spiritual. A person who cannot receive correction becomes harder to help. A person who cannot admit fault requires everyone else to carry the cost of preserving his image.

Philippians 2:8 points to the humility of Jesus in his obedience even to death. His humility was not a denial of who he was. It was the faithful use of his life in submission to the Father.

That example frees men from treating every admission as a defeat. We can say that we were wrong. We can ask a question. We can acknowledge that another person knows something we do not. None of those actions makes us less responsible or less capable of courage.

Humility also makes repentance concrete. A vague apology can protect us from the discomfort of naming what happened. A better apology identifies the wrong, recognizes its effect, and accepts the work of changing it. The people we have hurt should not have to comfort us before we will take responsibility.

The Holy Spirit forms self-control in people who surrender to him. That work can include patient correction, a difficult conversation, or the support of someone who refuses to let us hide behind a familiar excuse. Humility makes room for the help we need.

Take initiative in love

Paul's appeal in 1 Corinthians 16:13–14 joins vigilance, firmness, courage, strength, and love. The final command governs the others. Strength detached from love has missed the point.

A man who would investigate a noise outside the house should also pay attention to the spiritual life inside it. Physical protection matters. So do prayer, conversation, character, and the example children see each day.

Take initiative in the ordinary responsibilities of family life. If getting everyone ready for church has become one person's burden, help carry it. If prayer has become something you assume someone else will lead, begin. A simple, sincere prayer is more useful than waiting until you can sound impressive.

Ask your family where your presence would make a difference. Listen without turning the answer into a defense of how busy you are. Where you have failed, apologize specifically. Where a harmful pattern continues, seek the help needed to change it.

For a young man, taking initiative may mean choosing a mentor, joining a Group, or asking a trustworthy adult a question you have been carrying alone. For an older man, it may mean making yourself available instead of assuming the next generation does not want your presence.

Families and churches should notice growth. Encouragement does not excuse wrongdoing; it helps make the good visible. Celebrate a father's faithfulness, a husband's service, a young man's honesty, and the courage it takes to seek help.

Men do not need to become less human in order to become more faithful. They need to bring their whole lives under the authority and grace of Jesus. Redeemed strength can protect. Redeemed desire can honor. Redeemed emotion can connect. Redeemed responsibility can make a home steadier and a community stronger.

The same lordship that reshapes masculinity also addresses desire itself. Our final chapter considers sexual orientation and asks what it means to follow Christ when attraction, conviction, and obedience do not fit together easily.

Carry this forward

Healthy masculinity takes its direction from Jesus. Replace sexual entitlement with integrity, dominance with service, emotional suppression with honest expression, isolation with community, and pride with humility. Take responsibility for the people and work entrusted to you, and let love govern the use of your strength.

Chapter 04

Redeeming Sexual Orientation

There is a difference between defending a conviction and becoming defensive.

The first requires understanding what we believe and explaining it honestly. The second often begins when we feel threatened and decide that the other person must be defeated before we can be at peace.

Conversations about sexual orientation can move from one to the other quickly. Christians may feel pressure to surrender a conviction so that no one will be offended. Others respond to that pressure by becoming harsh. Neither reaction produces the patient faithfulness people need.

The question before us is both theological and personal: what does it mean to follow Jesus when sexual attraction and biblical conviction do not point in the same direction?

We cannot answer well if we reduce a person to an issue. We also cannot answer well if we remove Scripture from a conversation about Christian discipleship. We need enough courage to speak honestly and enough humility to recognize the weight of what we are saying.

Desire is real, but it is not our only authority

Sexual orientation describes patterns of sexual or romantic attraction. People commonly use terms such as heterosexual, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and asexual to describe those patterns. Understanding the vocabulary helps us understand what someone is telling us. It does not, by itself, settle a theological question about sexual behavior.

The distinction between attraction and action is essential. People do not always choose the attractions they experience. A Christian ethic of sexual behavior does not require pretending otherwise.

Pastor Jordan was explicit about this. He does not approach a person who experiences same-sex attraction with the promise that he can change their orientation. He cannot make such a change happen, and he does not ask people to treat attraction as a switch they should simply turn off.

His own experience supplies an ordinary point of comparison. As a heterosexual man, he cannot make himself attracted to men by deciding that he ought to be. Recognizing that limitation helps him understand why telling someone else to stop experiencing same-sex attraction is not a useful pastoral response.

The Christian question concerns how we live with the desires we experience. That question applies to every believer, though the circumstances and costs can differ significantly.

In one conversation, Pastor Jordan encountered the assumption that sexual abstinence was simply unrealistic. The reaction reflected a broader belief: if a desire is strong and persistent, resisting it must be unreasonable.

Yet we depend on self-control in other parts of life. A strong desire does not automatically authorize a decision. We expect people to examine anger, ambition, appetite, and the impulse to retaliate. We recognize that acting on every feeling can harm both the person who acts and the people around them.

Sexual desire is not trivial, and self-control is not always easy. But difficulty does not make desire the final moral authority. For Christians, that authority belongs to God.

Receive the pattern of creation

The argument developed throughout this book begins with creation. God makes human beings in his image, male and female, and calls his creation good. The body has meaning before we assign it a personal interpretation.

Genesis 2:24 describes a man leaving his father and mother, holding fast to his wife, and becoming one flesh with her. Northwood understands that passage, affirmed by Jesus in Matthew 19:4–6, as establishing the pattern for marriage: a covenant union between a man and a woman.

Within that covenant, sexual union is more than an exchange of pleasure. It joins people within a relationship of faithfulness and responsibility. Its place in the biblical account connects bodily intimacy with a commitment that extends beyond the immediate encounter.

The possibility of children makes that responsibility particularly visible. A child needs care that outlasts an adult's changing feelings. The created pattern links sexual intimacy to a family relationship capable of carrying that responsibility.

That does not justify contempt toward people whose families have experienced loss, abandonment, divorce, or other painful circumstances. A single parent doing difficult work deserves support. A child does not lose dignity because the adults around them have struggled. A church that teaches a vision for family life should help people whose actual circumstances are hard.

Nor does the goodness of marriage mean that a person without a spouse has only a partial life in Christ. Christian identity is not conferred by marital status. The church must be able to honor marriage while offering substantial belonging to people who remain single.

God's design can challenge what we want in the moment. That is true throughout moral life. A lie may appear to provide an easy escape, but it often creates the need for another lie and then another. What began as a small act of self-protection becomes a structure that must be maintained.

The illustration does not make every sexual question simple. It does remind us that immediate relief is not a reliable measure of a decision's goodness. God's commands ask us to consider the kind of life our choices are forming.

Read the whole list

First Corinthians 6:9–11 is central to this discussion. It is also easy to use badly.

Paul names sexual immorality, idolatry, adultery, and conduct involving sex between men. He also names theft, greed, drunkenness, reviling, and swindling. A reader who notices only the part relevant to someone else's life has not read the passage honestly.

The warning concerns a life that persists in wrongdoing rather than submitting to Christ. It does not give a congregation permission to overlook the greedy person while treating another person's sexual behavior as uniquely beyond grace.

Paul's wider category of sexual immorality includes more than the subjects that dominate public debate. In the biblical sexual ethic taught here, sexual activity outside marriage is not made right simply because it is common or mutually desired. Adultery remains wrong even when the people involved have developed an explanation that makes it feel reasonable.

An agreement to open a marriage does not change Northwood's understanding of the covenant. The consent of the participants matters in distinguishing coercion from voluntary conduct, but consent alone does not settle every moral question. Within Christian discipleship, God's authority remains part of the question.

Pastor Jordan described encountering people in premarital counseling who had not understood that the church taught sexual abstinence before marriage. That experience should make us careful about assuming everyone already knows our convictions. Clear teaching is more useful than surprise that people have not absorbed what was never plainly explained.

The passage also contains a word of hope. In verse 11, Paul reminds the believers that some of them had lived in the patterns he has named. He then speaks of their washing, sanctification, and justification in the name of Jesus and by the Spirit of God.

The church is a community of people who need that grace. The list exposes sin, but it does not establish a class of people whom Christ is unwilling to receive.

What the language does and does not settle

Some disagreements about this passage focus on translation. The modern vocabulary of sexual orientation is not the vocabulary of the ancient world. A contemporary label can carry assumptions about identity and experience that an ancient word did not carry in precisely the same way.

That is a reason to read carefully. It is not, by itself, a reason to conclude that ancient writers had no concept of same-sex sexual behavior.

Two Greek words in 1 Corinthians 6:9 receive particular attention: malakoi and arsenokoitai. The first is the plural of a word whose basic sense includes softness. Its meaning in a particular passage depends on usage and context. A broad dictionary gloss cannot settle Paul's meaning all by itself.

The English word spring offers a simple comparison. It can describe a season, a coil, or an action. We do not determine the intended meaning by collecting every definition and choosing whichever one best suits our argument. We attend to the sentence and the subject under discussion.

Arsenokoitai is a compound associated with the Greek words for male and bed. The wording of the Greek translation of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 provides an important background to traditional interpretations. The compound itself should not be confused with the two separate words in those passages. Related language also appears in 1 Timothy 1:10.⁶

Interpreters disagree about the scope of the terms. Some argue that Paul's concern is limited to particular exploitative practices, such as prostitution or sexual abuse involving unequal power. Others understand the language as addressing male same-sex intercourse more broadly.

Northwood holds the traditional interpretation. That conclusion is not based only on the parts of one compound word. It is read alongside Paul's wider sexual ethic, Romans 1:26–27, and the male and female pattern presented in Genesis and affirmed by Jesus.

This distinction matters. A word study can contribute to interpretation, but it cannot replace the work of reading a passage within its biblical setting. Nor should the existence of an alternative interpretation be presented as proof that the traditional reading has been disproved.

Historical context also requires care. Ancient discussions of same-sex behavior do not map neatly onto every modern category of orientation, identity, or relationship. Philo's writings are one example of the range of ancient moral discussion. They help show that the subject was not absent from the ancient world, while leaving us responsible to interpret each author and passage in context.⁴

Christians should be able to explain why they hold a conclusion without pretending that everyone who disagrees is uninformed. The aim is faithful understanding, not a display of certainty that outruns the evidence.

Pastor Jordan recommended Preston Sprinkle's People to Be Loved for readers who want a fuller treatment of the biblical discussion and its human implications. The book's concern that people not be reduced to an issue fits an essential commitment of this series.⁷

Conviction carries a real cost

It is possible to state a sexual ethic so quickly that we fail to acknowledge what it asks of a person.

For someone who experiences persistent same-sex attraction and shares Northwood's convictions, faithful discipleship may involve celibacy. That is not a minor adjustment. It can affect hopes for partnership, daily companionship, family life, and the future a person once imagined.

The church should not speak about that cost with casual confidence and then leave the person alone to carry it. A community that teaches sexual boundaries has a responsibility to offer meaningful friendship, shared life, and sustained care.

We should also refuse to make a change in orientation the test of faithfulness. A person may continue to experience an attraction while choosing how to respond to it. Discipleship concerns a life submitted to Christ, not a performance of emotional simplicity for the comfort of other Christians.

Nor should anyone be pressured into a heterosexual marriage as a supposed solution. Marriage calls for truthful commitment to a particular person. It should not be used as a strategy for concealing or curing a difficulty.

God's commands do not come with a promise that obedience will always feel easy. They come within a relationship with the God who loves us. Christians believe that his wisdom is trustworthy even when following it requires sacrifice.

That conviction should make us patient with one another. Someone else's obedience may cost more than we have ever had to imagine. We honor it by taking their life seriously, not by turning their experience into a slogan.

One woman's account of faithfulness

Pastor Jordan shared the story of a woman he had known for many years. She did not attend Northwood, and she supplied her account for him to share. Her identity remains private here. The following is an adaptation of her account, not a new quotation or a claim that every person's experience follows the same pattern.

She grew up in the Southern Bible Belt in a family that identified as Christian. In her experience, however, religious belief was often used to judge others rather than to practice the faith consistently. Her mother left when she was seven, and her father raised her and her brother.

By sixth grade, she recognized that she was attracted to girls. Online conversations helped her find language for what she had noticed in her own life. She remembered deeper emotional connections with girls than with boys, and the descriptions she encountered made sense of those experiences.

Her fears were relational. She worried that she would never find a partner and that her family would never truly love her if they knew. Their vocal disapproval of people who were not heterosexual made disclosure feel risky. Online communities offered a place where she felt able to speak more freely.

High school brought additional difficulty. She fell in love with a classmate who was openly lesbian and experienced ridicule. The surrounding hostility made her own situation harder and strained her relationships with family.

After becoming a follower of Jesus, she initially found reassurance in an affirming understanding of Christianity. The conviction that love justified the relationship seemed to offer a way to bring her faith and desires together.

Over time, her account describes a different experience. Sexual encounters with women were followed by an internal conflict she could not ignore. She understood that heaviness as conviction and began giving more attention to prayer, church, and Scripture.

Gradually, her focus shifted. She wanted to align her life with what she believed the Bible taught. She stopped dating and came to understand her deepest identity as being a child of God rather than being defined by her sexuality.

At the time of the sermon in June 2024, she described having been celibate for about a decade. She also described resistance to that decision, including from some Christians. Still, she understood it as a faithful response to God.

Her account did not end in isolation from church life. She was leading a young adults group and supporting others who were wrestling with questions related to sexuality and identity. She encouraged them to root their identity in God.

This is her account of conviction and obedience. It should be received as such. It does not establish a universal explanation for same-sex attraction, prove that every person will experience the same emotions, or authorize someone else to pressure a person into repeating her story. It does show why the church must make room for people whose freely chosen response to Christ includes costly commitments.

A conversation the pastors did not control

Pastor Jordan also described a meeting with two men who were married to each other and had been attending Northwood for some time. They asked to meet with him and another pastor.

He was nervous. He did not know what the conversation would involve or how the men would hear the church's convictions. When they sat down together, he realized they were even more nervous than he was.

The men explained that they had been experiencing conviction as they read Scripture and prayed. About three months before the meeting, they had stopped having sex and begun sleeping in separate rooms. In their account, this decision preceded the pastoral conversation. They had not been confronted into it during the meeting.

Pastor Jordan explained Northwood's traditional understanding of Scripture and made clear that the disagreement was not personal hostility. He also acknowledged that other churches held affirming interpretations and would understand their relationship differently.

The men responded that they did not want to attend those churches because they did not believe those churches were telling them the truth.

For Pastor Jordan, the encounter illustrated the difference between trusting the Holy Spirit and trying to force conviction through pressure. The pastors had not produced the men's decision. They were receiving a story about work the men believed God was already doing in their lives.

The account does not provide every detail of what followed, and it should not be made to supply an ending it does not contain. Its significance here is the posture of pastoral care: speak truthfully, love the people present, and recognize the limits of persuasion.

We cannot manufacture repentance by increasing our volume. A more intimidating conversation is not necessarily a more faithful one. Christians can explain, reason, pray, and remain available. God remains God.

We cannot manufacture repentance by increasing our volume.

A boundary for every believer

The discussion must now widen again. Sexual discipleship is not a special assignment for people who experience same-sex attraction. Every Christian lives under the authority of Christ.

First Corinthians 6:13 identifies the body as belonging to the Lord rather than being intended for sexual immorality. Paul refuses to treat sexual behavior as though it has no relationship to worship or identity. The body is part of the life we offer to God.

That gives us three responsibilities.

First, receive God's design. Within the conviction taught throughout this book, sexual union belongs in the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman. Receiving that design means allowing God to question our preferences, including the preferences we have learned to defend most skillfully.

Sexual union also carries relational significance. People sometimes use the pastoral phrase soul tie to describe the bonds that can develop through intimacy. The phrase is not a technical biblical category or a medical diagnosis. Its useful point is that sex involves people, not merely bodies performing an isolated act. Our choices can affect attachment, trust, and the lives we share.

Second, resist temptation. In 1 Corinthians 6:18, Paul tells believers to flee sexual immorality. Sometimes faithfulness requires leaving a situation instead of proving how close we can remain to it without falling. A practical boundary can be wiser than another confident promise to ourselves.

The details will differ. One person may need to stop cultivating a private relationship. Another may need to remove access to material that feeds a habit. Another may need to tell a trusted person what has been happening. The purpose is to respond honestly to the temptation we actually face.

This is not a claim that every sin has identical consequences. Choices can damage people in different ways. It is a recognition that none of us is exempt from the need for repentance and self-control.

Third, submit desire to God. First Corinthians 6:19–20 connects the indwelling Holy Spirit, the price of redemption, and the call to glorify God in the body. Christian surrender is not based on the belief that we are worthless. It is grounded in the truth that Christ has given himself for us and that we belong to him.

The grace to keep following

The church has not always handled sexuality with the dignity people deserve. Mistreatment, humiliation, and cruelty toward gay and lesbian people cannot be defended as faithfulness to Jesus. Christians should be able to name that wrong without becoming evasive about their theological convictions.

Repentance may therefore be needed in more than one direction. A person may need to reconsider sexual behavior. Another may need to repent of the way they have spoken about that person. A congregation may need to examine whether its welcome has been sincere enough for people to tell the truth.

Our confidence is not in our ability to make every conversation resolve neatly. It is in Christ's faithfulness. He calls us to obey, gives his Spirit, and places us among people who are meant to help us continue.

Do not let a short clip, a preferred speaker, or a passing cultural argument carry the whole weight of your convictions. Read Scripture carefully. Pray honestly. Ask serious questions. Seek people who will both care for you and tell you the truth as they understand it.

Following Jesus reaches our bodies, our attractions, our relationships, and the habits we would prefer to leave untouched. It also reaches our fear of other people, our need to win, and our willingness to remain close when obedience is difficult.

Sexuality is part of human life. It is not the fullest name God gives his people. In Christ, we are received as those he loves, redeems, and calls to follow him.

Carry this forward

Distinguish attraction from action, and refuse promises that orientation can simply be switched off. Understand Northwood's sexual ethic within its wider reading of Scripture, including the call to repentance that applies to everyone. Honor the cost of obedience, reject cruelty and coercion, and build a community where truth, friendship, and patient care remain available.

Conclusion

Following Christ with our whole lives

We began with the body and arrive at a question of trust.

Do we trust the God who made us enough to receive his authority over our lives? Do we trust him enough to bring him the desires we understand and the experiences we cannot easily explain? Do we trust his Spirit enough to speak honestly without trying to control another person's response?

These questions belong to all of us. The particular difficulty may differ, but no Christian matures beyond the need to surrender.

Creation teaches us that embodied life is good. The fall teaches us to be honest about the fractures in that life. Redemption teaches us that God has not abandoned what he made. Jesus meets people in their actual condition and calls them to follow him.

That call does not erase every struggle at once. It gives struggle a different setting. We face it as people who can confess, receive forgiveness, ask for help, and depend on the Holy Spirit. We face it within a community called to love us faithfully rather than demand an uncomplicated story.

For some readers, the next step will be a conversation. Speak to a trusted pastor, friend, or qualified counselor. Tell the truth about the question you have been avoiding. You do not need to have every conclusion settled before asking for help.

For others, the next step will be repentance. A habit may need to end. A relationship may need an honest boundary. An apology may need to become specific. Someone who has been wounded by your words may need to hear that you were wrong.

For a parent or friend, the next step may be learning to listen without panic. You can remain honest about your convictions while making clear that the person matters to you. A relationship is not strengthened by making every conversation a referendum on the entire subject.

For the church, the work continues in ordinary faithfulness. Teach clearly. Welcome people sincerely. Protect the vulnerable. Refuse contempt. Make room for questions. Offer friendship that lasts beyond the first disclosure of difficulty. Celebrate growth without demanding a performance.

We do not need to choose between serious theology and serious love. The God whose design we seek to honor is the God who has loved us in Christ. His truth calls us to obedience, and his grace keeps us from despair when we see how much we need him.

Bring your whole life to him. There is no part of it beyond his concern.

A prayer of surrender

Father, thank you for making us and loving us. Help us receive your Word with humility and obey you with courage. Bring truth into the places where we hide. Teach us to care for people whose experiences differ from our own. Give us patience for the work you are doing in one another. By your Spirit, form the character of Jesus in us, and help us honor you with our bodies, our desires, and our relationships. Amen.

Notes and sources