A Biblical Response to “Transgender Day of Visibility”

By Robb Brunansky

Published April 9, 2024

Last month, President Joe Biden issued a Proclamation on Transgender Day of Visibility, setting the date for Easter Sunday. The announcement was immediately met with overwhelming cheers on the political left and a crescendo of outrage on the political right.

The issue that we have as Christians with a national push to normalize and celebrate transgenderism is not that this specific proclamation was released on a religious holiday, wicked as that is, but that it is the continuation of a blatant and blasphemous attack on the Word of God. This evil presidential proclamation represents the predominant thinking of society, that no sexual desires are right or wrong. The world is in lock step agreement that no sexual identity, no gender identity, and no gender expression is to be preferred over another – all are equally loving and acceptable ways to live.

How do we as Christians respond, then, toward President Biden’s immoral and ungodly proclamation?

Many Christians seem utterly incapable of addressing this dilemma biblically. This lack of spiritual courage leads to much confusion for the church.

The good news is God’s Word brings clarity where sin has created complexity. When the church has become confused, Scripture allows the light of truth to shine for anyone with eyes to see it. So, let’s look at what the Bible says about gender and sexuality, and how God’s people should respond to a world in the grip of lies.

First, we should consider what the Bible says about gender.

The discussion around gender has only become confusing because the world, and not God’s Word, has defined the terms. If we have this conversation using the world’s dictionary, then it can quickly get muddled. However, if we want to understand this issue truthfully, we must jettison the worldly terminology and thinking.

To do so, we begin with a simple truth: God created gender, and He only created two genders. This fact is abundantly clear in Genesis, where we see that God created male and female – and that He did not create gender fluidity.

Creation proves gender is not a cultural construct, but a divine design. The culture at large believes there is biological sex and there is gender, and these might be different for each person. This thinking is foreign to Scripture. God created gender, and He created two genders. He did not leave Adam and Eve to figure out who was the man and who was the woman based on some internal introspection of how they felt.

God also determines our gender. He intentionally created two genders that would be different but complimentary, and He decides who will be which gender. This reality comes from the very doctrine of creation itself, which is why this doctrine has been attacked. If people jettison Genesis as figurative or mythological, they pave the way for God’s design for sexuality to be called a myth. When we acknowledge Genesis as creation history, we understand God created gender and assigned everyone’s gender.

That’s why the transgender ideology may be the most blatant attack on the deity of God in our culture. It usurps the place of God and arrogates it to people, deceiving and deluding them into thinking they are gods who can determine their own gender – and yet it ends up destroying them.

God also expects people to live according to the gender He assigns. It is a violation of God’s law to live according to a gender God did not assign. When a man pretends he is a woman trapped in a man’s body, it is an abomination to the Lord, and those unrepentant people will not inherit God’s kingdom.

Today, this activity has been labeled gender dysphoria, when one’s self-identity does not match his or her biology. We don’t deny that people feel this way, but we don’t call it a psychological condition; rather, we look at God’s Word and recognize that those desires are sin and must be put to death by the power of the Spirit of God.

Second, we should think about what the Bible says about sexuality.

God created human sexuality, and He assigned the proper place for expressing our sexual desires to be within the marriage covenant. This truth is made abundantly clear in Genesis, where God performed the first wedding ceremony in human history between Adam and Eve. When Jesus spoke of marriage in Matthew 19, He cited Genesis 1:27, that God created humanity as male and female; and then Genesis 2:24, that the man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife. That’s what marriage is, the union of one man and one woman in a covenant, one-flesh relationship for life.

We see deviations of this biblical purpose – all of which, whether transgenderism, homosexuality, fornication, adultery – are sinful perversions of God’s design. Human sexuality, then, in God’s eyes must be distilled to marriage between a man and a woman in a lifelong covenant union, and everything else is sexually immoral, whether heterosexual or homosexual.

When we think about this in terms of proclamations like Transgender Day of Visibility, we must recognize that transgenderism is outside of God’s design for human sexuality and brings God’s judgment. It’s clear from Romans 1:26-27 that sexual deviation is a judgment from God and brings God’s wrath. Revelation 21:8 indicates that this judgment is eternal condemnation.

Additionally, it must be said that the world, and not the church, is obsessed with gender and sexuality because our perverse and immoral culture is racked with guilt over their sin because they’re made in God’s image and live in God’s world. If we want evidence of this guilt, we can look at suicide rates in the darkest sexual subcultures of society, which are then blamed on Christians. It is a tragedy when anyone commits suicide; however, the reason many of the sexually immoral and perverse are suicidal is not because Christians are obsessed with this issue and make people feel bad. The real reason is because their own consciences inescapably testify that their deeds are evil.

So, how do we respond to all this?

First, our biblical response is necessary. It’s always fallen to the preachers of God’s Word to address sin in the culture. This is what we must do to our government, calling our political leaders to repentance over sanctioning and praising the sins bringing destruction on souls.

Second, our response must be clear. The eternal destiny of sinners is at stake. Christians aren’t here to win accolades from a decaying culture. Rather, we are here to warn people of the dangers of hell and point them to salvation in Jesus Christ.

Third, our response must be motivated by love. We don’t address these issues to preserve our religious liberty or political preferences. Our chief concern is that sexual immorality destroys the soul. We don’t hate people with desires to be a different gender than God assigned to them. We love them, and we want them to be saved from God’s wrath.

Finally, we have to be Christ-centered in our response. People should see their sexual immorality is sin before a holy God, but they must know they can find forgiveness, transformation, love, hope, and joy if they repent and put their faith in Jesus Christ. This is true for everyone, regardless of what sins they’ve committed.

This is what the Bible says about gender and sexuality. God created gender as male and female. He assigned our gender, and He expects us to live according to His design. God created sexuality to be expressed in a marriage relationship, which is a lifelong covenant union of a man and a woman, and all other sexual expressions are sinful and violations of His law. Our job is to be clear, to be loving, and to be Christ-centered as we respond to these issues in our culture, with the prayer that Christ would use that clarity to bring salvation to many sinners.