Christadelphians believe that the Bible is the word of God. They also believe that the Bible is a source of moral guidance, and that when the Bible says something is morally wrong, then it is morally wrong and there can be no dispute.
Personal feeling and instinct are poor moral guides. Although they can often lead to making correct moral choices, they can also lead to making incorrect moral choices. If feeling and instinct tell you that something is right but the Bible says it is wrong, then you must listen to the Bible, not yourself. Equally, if personal feeling and instinct tell you something is wrong, but the Bible says it is right, then once again you must listen to the Bible. The same applies to what "society" says: the Bible has authority every time.
Because Christadelphians view the Bible in this way, they believe that it is very important to understand what the Bible says. If we are going to use certain passages to help us make important decisions, then we must thoroughly understand what those passages say. We must also understand the general principles that the Bible teaches. One- or two-verse sound bites are not enough, particularly if those sound bites seem to agree with what our instinct tells us, or if those sound bites appear to tell others how to live their lives.
All Biblical passages must be understood in their contexts: the context of the chapter and book they are in, their context in the Bible, and their historical context. This is not always easy and it sometimes requires a lot of work, but this work is necessary if we are going to use the Bible to make important decisions.
There are really only five or six passages that have been used to oppose same-sex relationships, scattered through the Old and New Testaments. Over the next few pages, I want to show that by reading these texts in context we can see that these verses do not teach that all same-sex relationships are wrong. Finally, some examples of positive affirmation of same-sex relationships are considered.
We start our investigation of what the Bible says in the first book of the Bible, Genesis, with the story of Sodom.
Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world
Matthew 25:34, NIV