The language of the Overture does not say that a man must no longer struggle with temptation or that he must be dishonest about his temptations. It states that officers may not “describe themselves as homosexual.” This is consistent with Paul’s affirmations that Christians are new creations, are to be unleavened, and are to consider themselves dead to sin. Genuine repentance does not mean perfection, but it does mean a complete break with sin, even in how Christians identify and describe themselves.

This year’s General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) voted to affirm an amended version of Overture 15, which is now being considered by the denomination’s presbyteries as Item 1. It seeks to add the following language to the Book of Church Order (BCO):
7-4. Men who describe themselves as homosexual, even those who describe themselves as homosexual and claim to practice celibacy by refraining from homosexual conduct, are disqualified from holding office in the Presbyterian Church in America.
I would like to give three reasons why I believe presbyteries should vote yes for Item 1 (i.e., PCAGA49’s Overture 15)[1] this cycle, and then respond to a couple objections.

To describe oneself as a “Homosexual Christian,” “Gay Christian,” or “Same-Sex Attracted Christian” is itself a tacit approval of a Freudian worldview. Men who affirm this Freudian foundation are not qualified for office.

Sigmund Freud taught that what defines people is their sexuality, that who you are is ultimately determined by your sexual desires. Before the spread of this Freudian philosophy, homosexuality was viewed as something a person did. Now it is considered who a person is because he feels those desires, even if that person has never been sexually active.
For many in our day, to describe oneself as a “Gay Christian” does not sound as inappropriate as does to describe oneself as a “racist Christian” or “idolatrous Christian.” but this is only a reflection of the fact that we live in a Freudian culture which has convinced society at large that men and women are defined by their sexual desires (hence society’s broad acceptance of the LGBTQ movement that roots identity in sexuality). But this is not a Biblical worldview.
Racism and homosexuality are both sins, yet if one is considered an appropriate self-description for a Christian while the other is not, this only demonstrates that one’s worldview has accepted (at least in part) the world’s Freudian presuppositions. Scripture defines men and women in creation as being made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26) and then in redemption as being united to Jesus Christ. Officers in the PCA must be men who do not accept the world’s philosophies and definitions of men (Col. 2:8), but Scripture’s.  A Christian who describes himself in terms of sexual desires is one who at least in part affirms a Freudian worldview that contradicts God’s Word, and is thus unqualified to hold office in Christ’s church.

PCA officers must embody and walk with the wisdom we teach others to live by.

The Report of the Ad Interim Committee on Human Sexuality [2] includes a section on language which states, “We affirm that those in our churches would be wise to avoid the term ‘gay Christian’…Churches should be gentle, patient, and intentional with believers who call themselves ‘gay Christians,’ encouraging them, as part of the process of sanctification, to leave behind identification language rooted in sinful desires, to live chaste lives, to refrain from entering into temptation, and to mortify their sinful desires” (p. 12).
As this is the wisdom that we are to teach all Christians, it ought to be the standard that officers – being above reproach – likewise pursue. To allow otherwise is to allow hypocrisy. We must walk in accordance with that wisdom we teach to others. It is a great hypocrisy to declare that we are to teach believers to leave behind this language when our officers themselves will not do the same. In such a scenario, the Report’s wisdom becomes “wisdom for thee, but not for me.” Permitting officers to continue to describe themselves with such language undermines our denomination’s exhortations to others that growth in sanctification means leaving behind identification language rooted in sinful desires. Men who will not abide by the wisdom with which we instruct others are not fit for office.

Scripture describes Christians in terms of union with Christ, which is the foundation of Christian ethics.

When Paul rebukes the Christians at Corinth for failing to exercise discipline, he uses the metaphor of the leaven and the lump, with the lump being the church and leaven representing sin. He writes, “Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened” (1 Cor. 5:7). Notice how he describes these Christians. They must cleanse out the leaven because they are unleavened. Paul grounds the church’s behavior in the church’s being, which he describes with the term unleavened. What Christians do is founded on what Christians are.
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[1] For the sake of simplicity, I will refer to Overture 15 in the remainder of this article.
[2] Visit pcaga.org/aicreport for links both to the printed report and to the video footage of its presentation before the 48th Stated Meeting of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA).
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Although Abraham saw Christ, this did not give Israel permission to make any images of him and the same is true for us. Surely it would have been a blessing to have been one of those thousands of men and women who saw Jesus with their own eyes during the incarnation. But the Holy Spirit has chosen not to preserve any description of Christ for us because we are called to be a people of the word who walk by faith, not by sight. Just because some people saw Christ does not mean that we may now make images of God for didactic or any other purpose. 

When men being examined for ministry take an exception to any portion of the Westminster standards we always require that they explain their rationale. A man ought to be able to explain and defend why he believes what he does. In my experience, the justifications given when men take exceptions to Larger Catechism 109 are usually along the same lines. So I want to respond to two of the most common explanations that I hear at presbytery.
Larger Catechism question 109 states
“What sins are forbidden in the second commandment?
 The sins forbidden in the second commandment are, all devising, counseling, commanding, using, and any wise approving, any religious worship not instituted by God himself; the making any representation of God, of all or of any of the three persons, either inwardly in our mind, or outwardly in any kind of image or likeness of any creature whatsoever; all worshiping of it, or God in it or by it; the making of any representation of feigned deities, and all worship of them, or service belonging to them; all superstitious devices, corrupting the worship of God, adding to it, or taking from it, whether invented and taken up of ourselves, or received by tradition from others, though under the title of antiquity, custom, devotion, good intent, or any other pretense whatsoever; simony; sacrilege; all neglect, contempt, hindering, and opposing the worship and ordinances which God hath appointed.”
Common Rationale #1
The common objection to this portion of the catechism usually concerns images of Christ. Specifically, men taking this exception will acknowledge that images of Christ should not be used for worship, but they see no problem with images being used for didactic purposes, by which they mean that they see no problem using images of Christ to teach children. This is so common an exception it’s often called the “Jesus Storybook Bible exception.” However, the problem is that images of God will be connected to worship and that education should be connected to worship.
As always, we should begin by considering scripture itself. Exodus 20:4-6 says, “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.”
What’s frequently overlooked when considering the second commandment is the fact that it contains two imperatives, not one. In forbidding idols this commandment does not simply say “You shall not worship them.” It says much more than that. It first says in verse four that you shall not make them. Significantly, the language does not say “You shall not make them in order to worship them.” The Hebrew conjunction ‎ לְמַעַן generally translated “in order that” is conspicuously absent. Verse four is a separate sentence in Hebrew as well as English. The second commandment has always been “you shall not make any idols” and “you shall not worship them.” No Israelite could ever make an image of God or any other gods and plead its acceptability on account of its not being used for worship, but only didactic purposes.
Attention must be drawn to this fact because compression of the second commandment often underlies this common exception. God gave this commandment the way he did because he understands our hearts, even better than we do ourselves. John Murray writes, “A picture of Christ, if it serves any useful purpose, must evoke some thought or feeling respecting him and, in view of what he is, this thought or feeling will be worshipful.”[1]
If we say something is a depiction of God we will naturally desire to worship through it, or have that image be a means of stirring up devotion and piety.
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And so does rejection of a gay self-conception united to one who is united to Christ. We cannot be those who apply good and necessary consequence to our doctrine, yet refuse to apply it to our ethics. Even though in this life Christians still battle and experience temptations and sin, such sins do not define us anymore. Those things are who we were, not who we now are. What defines those of us who have been washed in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ is that we are in Christ.

This year, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America will once again be addressing issues pertaining to human sexuality in the church. This is because sexuality has become one of the primary points of conflict between the church and the culture of this age and, rather than being conformed to the world, the church of Christ must stand firm upon the truth of God’s word. One of the many questions facing the church today is whether or not a Christian may identify with a homosexual or transgender self-conception. More simply, can a Christian identify as a “gay Christian”? While there have been many excellent resources written on this topic, to my knowledge, none have interacted directly with the interpretative principle of “Good and Necessary Consequence.” When viewed through the lens of good and necessary consequence we will see that for a Christian to adopt a homosexual or transgender self-conception is an unbiblical contradiction in terms and must be rejected by those who view scripture as the only rule of our faith and practice. So, it is helpful to begin with understanding this principle.
Historically, Reformed Christians have adhered to and applied Scripture in accordance with a principle known as Good and Necessary Consequence. This is the approach to Scripture that teaches that we are to believe and obey not only those things that are explicitly stated, but also that which may be deduced or inferred from Scripture as a necessary implication. The Westminster Confession of Faith says, “The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture” (WCF I.6, emphasis mine). Some doctrines and commandments are spelled out for us, while others are implied or systematically pieced together. For instance, there isn’t a single verse citation we could make to spell out the doctrine of the Trinity, and yet by good and necessary consequence we rightly deduce that there is one God who exists in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, who are the same in substance, equal in power and glory. This same principle that leads us to affirm the doctrine of the Trinity likewise has led Reformed churches throughout history to believe in and practice infant baptism, the regulative principle of worship, and Sunday as the Christian’s Sabbath. None of these doctrines are explicitly spelled out in the New Testament, yet we believe they are rightly deduced from Scripture by this principle of good and necessary consequence.
This principle can be demonstrated in numerous places in the New Testament, but the clearest example can be seen in Jesus’ dispute with the Sadducees found in each of the synoptic Gospels.[i] In Matthew 22:23-32 the Sadducees try to trap Jesus with a hypothetical scenario involving the obscure case law of levirate marriage, hoping to demonstrate that belief in the resurrection is ridiculous. Jesus’ response to their denial of the resurrection was to quote to them Exodus 3:6 where, when speaking to Moses at the burning bush, God introduces himself by declaring “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” With this single quotation, Jesus demonstrates that “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living” and silences the Sadducees. Jesus proves that there is a resurrection by citing the fact that God introduced himself to Moses by saying “I am the God of Abraham,” and not “I was the God of Abraham.” His entire argument hinges on the conjugation of one verb in the present tense instead of the past tense, which is sufficient to demonstrate the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead.
Significantly, the passage from which Jesus quotes, Exodus 3, isn’t explicitly about the resurrection – it’s the call of Moses to be Israel’s deliverer. The passage doesn’t even mention words like “resurrection,” “heaven,” “hell,” “soul,” or “eternity,” all terms we associate with the resurrection. And yet Jesus’ rebuke of the Sadducees is to say, “You know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God.” This harsh rebuke demonstrates that this is not merely a principle for Jesus alone to use in interpreting Scripture, but one he expected them to have applied as well. No Christian has a right to object, “If you can’t show me the Bible verse that says it, then I’m not required to believe or obey it.” On the contrary, if a truth or commandment may be proven from Scripture by good and necessary consequence, then yes, you are required to believe and obey it.
As Reformed Christians, this is a principle that ought to be kept in mind as we consider the question of a Christian’s identity. At the 47th General Assembly of the PCA, the assembly voted to declare the Nashville Statement to be a biblically faithful declaration on human sexuality. And yet, there were many who objected. Particularly, one stated reason was opposition to Article 7’s denial which reads, “We deny that adopting a homosexual or transgender self-conception is consistent with God’s holy purposes in creation and redemption.”[ii] Put simply, the Nashville Statement says that it is unbiblical to identify oneself as a “gay Christian.” While this statement is not explicitly spelled out for us in any one verse, it does not need to be because it is rightly deduced from Scripture by good and necessary consequence.
One of the places we see this most clearly is 1 Corinthians 6:9-11. Paul writes, “Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, 10 nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, shall inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God” (NASB). Notice the way Paul speaks of these Christians in verse 11. You were these things. Significantly, Paul does not merely say you used to practice these things. He goes beyond that and addresses their identity. It’s also significant that Paul says “you were” and not “you are.” In Greek the imperfect indicative ταῦτά τινες ἦτε makes the statement even more forceful, highlighting the radical change that has now taken place through union with Christ. The descriptions of verses 9 and 10 are who these Corinthian Christians were, not who they now are.  And this is a vital distinction. In Jesus’ own rebuke of the Sadducees this same kind of distinction was sufficient to demonstrate the resurrection of the dead and warrant the harsh rebuke that his opponents did not know the Scriptures. God is the God of Abraham. And who are Christians? You were adulterers, homosexuals, drunkards, and covetous, etc. And by good and necessary consequence the text teaches that this is not who a Christian now is. This is because to be washed by Jesus Christ cleanses us from more than just legal guilt. If you have been washed by Christ, you have a new identity.
This is why it is correct to say that adopting a homosexual or transgender self-conception or identity is unbiblical. As Reformed Christians, we cannot be those who apply the principle of good and necessary consequence to our doctrines of God, worship, and the church, and yet fail to apply it to our ethics.
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[i] For a full treatment of good and necessary consequence, see By Good and Necessary Consequence by Ryan McGraw (Reformation Heritage Books).
[ii] You can access the full Nashville Statement here: https://cbmw.org/nashville-statement/