We live in a time of radical change in sexual ethics. Indeed, even the very language that we use to represent people and relationships has been turned upside down. Words that used to assure stability of meaning—male, female, wife, husband—are routinely redefined by our secular culture so that they no longer mean what they describe. Our culture is more and more bold in its rejection of the Bible, casting it off as irrelevant or even dangerous. It also dismisses the sovereign power of God, the Creator of the universe and all humanity, who intervenes in the affairs of this world and sustains an intimate personal relationship with His people.

This moral revolt is breaking down our language into alphabet soup. No longer are people understood to be, ontologically, image bearers of a holy God, born male or female by design and purpose. Instead, we are told we are somewhere in the gender and sexuality continuum—LGBTQIAP—lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, pansexual. This arbitrary alphabet is both pervasive and inaccessible; indeed, it is only discernible to a select few. What are Christian parents to do if their covenant child returns from college identifying himself under the umbrella of these letters? How can one respond to a problem that we don’t understand? In times like these, the Bible’s wisdom seems to operate in a parallel universe to the culture’s new rules and norms, and even believers feel unmoored and without hope.

We did not arrive at this problem overnight. The 2015 Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges that gave the constitutional right to gay marriage escalated a problem that started in the Garden of Eden. Because certain categories of reality depend upon exclusivity to exist, gay marriage could not add a new dimension to the integrity of biblical marriage without erupting it. Gay marriage is as much an attack on personhood as it is on marriage. Today, in this era of late modernity, the progressive nature of original sin has degenerated into a world in which declaring that there are ethical and moral responsibilities and constraints to being born male and female is considered by the world to be either hate speech or mere stupidity.

We live in a time where good is called evil, and evil is called good.

And sadly, shamefully, this is the world that I helped create. I lived as a lesbian and advocated for this moral revolution for ten years of my life. And only when I met the risen Lord did I see how woefully and dangerously wrong I had been.

One Man and One Woman is a pastoral guide through the landscape and land mines of this moral revolution, with the light of the gospel leading the way. Because we are all distorted by original sin, distracted by actual sin, and manipulated by indwelling sin, we are an easily deceived people in great need of pastoral shepherding as we navigate the terms and consequences of this mutiny.

Christians who struggle with unwanted homosexual desires will find in this book loving reminders of what union with Christ promises as we fight against indwelling sin. Parents of adult children who identify as gay or lesbian will better understand how to listen to the discerning words of Scripture as they shake the gates of heaven for their children. And all Christians will be better able to understand and defend why the God who created us has exclusive claims in defining what it means to be male and female and designing biblical marriage as an ordinance of creation and therefore, a glorious institution that God made for His glory and our good.

This article is an excerpt from Rosaria Butterfield’s foreword to “One Man & One Woman” by Dr. Joel Beeke and Dr. Paul Smalley.