What are healthy male/female roles in friendships and dating?
In friendships, men and women have very little specific biblical responsibility to one another, other than remaining above reproach and honoring one another’s specific callings in Christ.
Galatians 3:28
28 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
As soon as romantic interest enters the picture, it changes the dynamics of our roles as men and women. So, in the cultures sampled throughout biblical history, there was no dating. The purpose of Biblical dating in 2020 is to successfully set up a marriage to honor Christ.
Ephesians 5:22-28
22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing[a] her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
The key concept about the role of women in a marriage is that submit does not mean be submissive as our culture understands it. Submitting to your husband is not taking a passive role in the marriage, it is affirming him in his God ordained role as the direction setter of your marriage. It is not bowing down to a husband who is leading you away from the Lord, it is not choosing to be weak in the face of a husband who is abusive or neglecting. It is a role of the helper.
Men are called to lead your marriages. When you run your faith into the ground, you are running your families into the ground as well. Run at such a pace towards Christ that you are sheltering your family from the darkness of the world that is constantly working to crush your home. Men, this is no small ordeal, rise up!
The goal of dating then is to model this at different levels as you work towards marriage.
What is Living Faith Church’s stance on LGBTQ?
1 Peter 2:17
17 Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the emperor.
“That’s why anti-gay interpretations of Scripture can’t condemn you but also gay-friendly interpretations can’t justify you. “What then shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns?” (Romans 8:31-34)”
-Richard davis
Is homosexuality sin? Yes.
Leviticus 20:13
13 “‘If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.”
1 Corinthians 6:9-11
“9 Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men 10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”
Nowhere in the whole Bible is homosexuality given as an example of a God honoring marriage. Homosexuality is no worse of a sin than white lying. The problem is, white lying is no better of a sin than murder. It’s all the same, it’s all sin and blackness.
Romans 3:23
“for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”
Ephesians 2:8
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
Romans 10:9
“9 If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
Romans 12:1-2
“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”
How to we respond daily in a world bent on marriage equality?
1 peter 2:9-17 (living as believers in an unbelieving society.)
“9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
“11 Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. 12 Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.
13 Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human authority: whether to the emperor, as the supreme authority, 14 or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. 15 For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people. 16 Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God’s slaves. 17 Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the emperor.”
