When it comes to “who really loves homosexuals and lesbians more?” the only answer is those who also love the divine revelation of God and are willing to speak the truth in love to their homosexual and lesbian family members and friends. 

With a month of national promotion, embracing and engaging in “Pride Month,” it’s an opportune time to ask the question: “Who really loves whom more with regard to homosexuals and lesbians?”  Do those who approve of sexual lifestyles and sexual acts that God’s divine revelation reveal as immoral, sinful, and clearly against God’s will love them more than those who abide by and accept the biblical admonitions and principles?
The question, of course, relates to relationships, doesn’t it?  What is one of the most prominent pieces of evidence of love toward another?  It may help to examine other human relationships.
Let’s begin with the family and parents and children.  Which parents genuinely love their children more?  Is it the parents who dote upon their children, who fail to train them in moral principles related to others, who never discipline their children, and who only praise them and give them their every wish?  Or is it the parents who lovingly teach their children moral principles to build character for their future, who provide for their genuine needs but not every want or wish, who praise their children in moderation as opposed to lavishly, and who discipline them when they lie, steal, disrespect others, and more because they want them to grow up to be decent adults?  Wouldn’t we choose the latter parents as those who love more than the former parents?
Let’s consider friendships.  Which friends love their friends more?  Is it the friends who never offer opposing and wise counsel to a friend who may be making a wrong decision, or is it the friends who are willing to speak the truth in love?  For instance, your Christian friend has decided to move in with a romantic partner before marriage.  Isn’t it the friend who counsels such a move does not please God because sexual relationships are only righteous within marriage?  Isn’t that speaking the truth in love?  Or consider if your friend confides he or she has become sexually involved with someone other than his or her spouse and plans to divorce their spouse in order to be with another.  Wouldn’t a genuine friend lovingly and truthfully counsel to seek marriage counsel and forgiveness from one’s spouse and remain true to one’s marriage vows?
Lastly, let’s consider church relationships.  Which churches love believers more?  Is it the churches that no longer believe the Scriptures to be God’s holy and divine revelation and have decided some parts of the Scriptures no longer apply to modern-day believers?  Or is it the churches that remain faithful and true to what they believe are eternal truths God has privileged both Jews and Gentiles to know?  Isn’t the latter more evident?
These are just a few examples of the complexity related to genuine love.  Genuine love does not exclude resistance to that which is immoral or biblically unwise.
Facing a month of pride related to acts and relationships God has clearly revealed to be seriously against His will and are actually abhorred by Him is a challenge to believers who love others but love God more.
Here is a passage of Scripture that we all do well to consider and embrace, “God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar. . .”  (Romans 3: 4). The King James Version of this verse perhaps states this most powerfully.  When it comes to “who really loves homosexuals and lesbians more?” the only answer is those who also love the divine revelation of God and are willing to speak the truth in love to their homosexual and lesbian family members and friends.  Though there are Old Testament passages that communicate God’s truth, the New Testament makes it abundantly clear:
“Therefore, God gave them up to vile impurity in the lusts of their hearts, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them.  For they exchanged the truth of God for falsehood, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.  For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged natural relations for that which is contrary to nature, and likewise the men, too, abandoned natural relations with women and burned in their desire toward one another, males with males committing shameful acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.” (Romans 1: 24-27, NASB)
Let’s be those Christians who genuinely and truly love homosexuals and lesbians more than those who approve and embrace live styles and deeds that God has clearly revealed to be against His will.  Let’s be like the parents, the friends, and church people who love in truth enough to be honest because we want what is best for them in God’s creative plan for human relationships.
Helen Louise Herndon is a member of Central Presbyterian Church (EPC) in St. Louis, Missouri. She is freelance writer and served as a missionary to the Arab/Muslim world in France and North Africa..
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By hiding, Jesus, who is the Light, publicly dramatizes the truths John succinctly captures in the prologue: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not apprehend it” and “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him” (John 1:5, 11). Herein is his prophetic pronouncement of impending judgment. John seizes the occasion to present a narrator’s soliloquy to explain Jesus’s symbolic hiding as the appropriate climax to his public signs and teaching that have provoked such widespread unbelief among his own people. Indeed, Jesus performed his many signs in plain sight of his fellow Jews. John explains that they saw his signs, yet they did not believe, as Isaiah prophesied.

In part one, we saw that John 1:5 harkens back to the Light’s penetration into the darkness on creation’s first day. In this verse, John succinctly condenses and anticipates a dominating theme in the Gospel’s plotline. Light versus darkness (e.g., John 8:12; 11:10; 12:34, 46) invokes a cluster of imageries: day–night (e.g., John 9:4) and sight–blindness (9:1–40), all present in Isaiah’s prophecies to which John’s prologue alludes (Isa. 9:2; 42;6–7; and 60:1–3). The Evangelist masterfully compresses profound theological claims concerning the commanded Light on the first day of creation. He foreshadows the arrival of the True Light—the Messiah—in the Last Days, the Light that shines and cannot be extinguished. Consider, then, how this one verse in the prologue condenses the storyline of John’s Gospel even more densely than 1:9–11.[1]
With luminary imagery harking back to Genesis 1:3, the Evangelist subtly but unmistakably speaks of the Word’s advent (John 1:5). He shrewdly prepares attentive hearers and readers for the much more explicit announcement of the Word’s incarnation in John 1:14, “The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us.”
Modern English Bibles translate 1:5, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome [katalambanō] it” (emphasis mine). As one reads and studies the Greek text of John’s Gospel, one sees that on occasions, John uses words with two meanings, intending both. The KJV’s “comprehended it not” hints at this, but the ASV’s “apprehended it not” effectively captures John’s intended dual sense of katalambanō. The darkness neither understood the light nor overpowered the light.[2] Thus, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not apprehend it.” A minor expansion on this assists in showing how the plotline of John’s Gospel is compressed in 1:5—“As day emerged from night when the Word spoke Light into darkness in the beginning, so the darkness did not apprehend the True Light, the Word incarnate.”
Twice, Jesus explicitly presents himself as “the Light of the world”: once publicly at the Festival of Tabernacles (John 8:12), and again privately to his disciples while still in Jerusalem following the festival (just before he gave light to the blind man when he gave him sight in John 9:5). During Israel’s festival commemorating the Lord’s covenant mercies in the wilderness with water from the rock and the protecting pillar of fire at night, Jesus presents himself as greater than the rock, the one who quenches true thirst and banishes darkness (John 7:37–38; 8:12; cf. 1 Cor. 10:4). Similarly, with the lighting ceremony, Jesus boldly announces that he displaces the ball of fire in the sky, “I am the Light of the world. The one who follows me will not walk in the darkness but will have the light of life” (John 8:12). Belief acknowledges that Jesus is the one who gushed water and provided protection day and night. Later, Jesus privately repeats this bold claim while still in Jerusalem, when he and his disciples come upon a man living in darkness from birth, for he was born blind. About to perform an uncommon miracle, Jesus prepared the Twelve by announcing, “We must accomplish the works of him who sent me while it is day. Night is coming when no one can work. When I am in the world, I am the light of the world” (John 9:4–5). Yes, the sun that lights the world is but a created imitation of the original— the True Light shining in darkness.
Clustered imagery in two prominent passages develops John’s light-darkness motif, echoing John 1:9, “the True Light was coming into the world,” and John 1:5, “the darkness did not apprehend it.” In both, Jesus ascribes to Light a titular function as in the Gospel’s prologue; Jesus is the Light. The initial passage, John 3:19–21, echoes the phrasing of John 1:9 as it announces,
Now, this is the judgment: the Light has come into the world, and humans loved the darkness instead of the light because their deeds were evil. For everyone who practices evil hates the Light and does not come to the Light, lest his deeds be exposed. But the one who does what is true comes to the light that it may be obvious that his deeds have been brought about by God. (emphasis added)
Jesus, “the Light of the world,” divides, prompting evildoers to retreat into darkness and doers of good to embrace him, the Light, testifying that what they do “has been done through God” (John 3:19–21).
In chapter 12, the culmination of the light-darkness theme (John 12:35–36, 46) coincides with the climaxing of three other core themes with their own supporting images:

“glory”–“glorified” (John 1:14; 2:11; 5:44; 7:18; 8:50, 54; 9:24; 11:40; 12:41, 43),
“my hour” (John 2:4; 4:21, 23; 5:25, 28; 7:30; 8:20; 12:23, 27), and
“lifted up” (John 3:14; 8:24; 12:32, 34).[3]

Chapter 12 is the structural and theological hinge on which the entire Fourth Gospel turns. Here, John reflectively summarizes the escalating conflict between Jesus and his religious opponents in Jerusalem, the zealous guardians of Israel’s traditions and Temple, throughout chapters 2–11, the “Book of Signs.” This conflict intensifies when Jesus’s giving sight to a blind man on a Sabbath day blinds those who claim to see.[4] The blind rulers threaten to banish all who believe in Jesus from the synagogue (John 9:22). Jesus, after he raised Lazarus from the dead, returns to Bethany, where he is anointed for his own burial (John 12:1–8). Drawing a large crowd, the tension intensifies such that the chief priests conspire to put Lazarus to death in addition to Jesus (John 12:10). With hostilities peaking against him, Jesus carries out his final public prophetic act, fulfilling Zechariah’s prophecy by riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, an act even his disciples did not comprehend (John 12:12–19) but which increases the Pharisees’ ire and jealousy over his popularity (John 12:19).
Likewise, in chapter 12, John’s account anticipates and foreshadows chapters 13–20. When Philip and Andrew tell their teacher about Greeks who want to see Jesus, he explicitly announces, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (John 12:23).
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God speaks to Abram with grace, gentleness, and love. If Abram was afraid of Chedorlaomer returning to exact vengeance upon him, God promises to be his shield. If Abram was still concerned about the treasure that he refused from the king of Sodom, God reassures that his reward will be very great. This is how God responds to us as well. Too often, we become like Abram, questioning and doubting God and His promises, but God responds to us with love and grace. 

After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision:“Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.”
Genesis 15:1 ESV

This is an interesting follow up to Abram’s militant exploits of the previous chapter. After coming into a decisive and miraculous victory from the hand of God, we would expect to see Abram exceedingly glad and rejoicing in the LORD, yet this is not the case. From a vision, God tells Abram not to be afraid. We can presume that God would only tell Abram this if Abram was actually feeling fearful.
The phrase “after these things” directly ties the present chapter with the former, so we have a good understanding of Abram’s circumstances. Perhaps Abram was considering the enemies that he made within chapter 14. He chases Chedorlaomer and his followers quite a distance; however, nothing prevented them from returning to enact vengeance upon Abram. Maybe Abram thought he made an enemy of the king of Sodom by declining his offer. Either way, it seems to me that Abram’s fearfulness likely resulted from being exhausted. In the events of chapter 14, Abram traveled great distances, and we can only imagine how long his campaign lasted. Exhaustion has a way of bringing to the surface all of our deepest fears.
It could be easy for us to read about Abram’s fears and wonder why the man of faith was so afraid. After all, if faith is trusting God, should a follower of God ever truly be afraid? Does not such fear indicate a lack of faith?
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