LM-A signs a new creed
Lutheran Mission-Australia President, Pastor Matt Anker, has signed The Australian Creed for Sexual Integrity. This new creed was developed by people from churches and Christian entities around Australia and beyond. They were concerned about how many churches, their leaders, institutions and members – in response to increasing pressures from society – have given up on confessing and teaching God’s clear directions on sex, gender and marriage. The new creed (reproduced below) isn’t so much a creed to be confessed in worship as a statement pledging what the signatories believe and will teach in this regard.
The Australian Creed for Sexual Integrity
We believe in one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who designed sex as part of His loving plan for humanity, and whose will for sexual integrity is clearly revealed in Holy Scripture.
We believe God created each person in His image as male or female, and any person’s attempt to deny or change this distorts God’s good design.
We believe God blesses sexual intimacy solely between a man and a woman within the holy covenant of marriage, a life-giving mystery that reflects Christ’s love for His church.
We believe God calls a husband and wife to be fruitful and multiply, that every life is sacred, and that children are precious to God and must be protected from sexualisation.
We believe God calls all people to the joy of living a chaste life, by celibacy in singleness and faithfulness in marriage, and that His commands are given for the common good.
We believe sexual activities outside these bounds are sins which grieve God’s heart, injure others, and enslave people to idolatry.
We believe our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, that Christ calls and empowers us to repent from all sin, including sexual sin, that His mercy abounds to forgive and restore, and that by living with sexual integrity we glorify God and humbly embrace His wise and loving plan for human life.
The Sexual Integrity Creed echoes, and complements, paragraph 4.f of LM-A’s Confessional Statement:
We honour marriage as a gift of God, who has:
created human beings as male and female,
created marriage as the life-long union of one man and one woman,
ordered marriage as the means through which he gives his blessing of children, and
reserved his gifts of sexual intimacy and procreation for the context of marriage.
The Creed was deliberately released on Reformation Day last year. Its development shows that – in addition to LM-A – there are many other Christian organisations and individuals who are seeking to be faithful to God’s word in areas vital for churches and society.
LM-A invites readers to sign The Australian Creed for Sexual Integrity by going to https://australiancreed.org/#creed. Congregations may wish to endorse the creed and place copies where worshippers can see it.
The Australian Creed website ‘About’ section provides information regarding the development of the creed. Readers can find an Explanatory Guide and an excellent Bible Study on the Resources page of the site. The Guide includes Scripture references, and arguments supporting each of the Creed’s seven articles.
Links to the creed, Explanatory Guide and Bible Study are also available under ‘Resources’ on the LM-A website on the ‘Faith and Encouragement’ page.