Jude 3 Project

Can I follow Jesus faithfully while experiencing same-sex attraction, or do I have to choose? You can follow him, and you do not have to choose between the two. Sam Allberry, an associate minister at a church in the UK, has experienced same-sex attraction for his whole adult life. He holds the historic Christian view that sex belongs in marriage between a man and a woman, and he finds his deepest satisfaction in Christ. His life answers the question.

The question usually carries assumptions inside it. One is that the attraction must be the central fact about a person. Another is that obedience means a smaller, lonelier life. A third is that the only people who can speak on this are people for whom it costs nothing. Allberry speaks from inside the experience, and he takes those assumptions apart one at a time.

Is this the biggest thing about me?

Start with the size of the issue. In public debate, sexuality is enormous. Allberry grants that and then draws a distinction many people never consider: “it’s the headline issue in the world today and in the church today, but it doesn’t mean it’s the headline issue in everybody’s lives.”

On any given day, he explains, other temptations may press on him harder than this one, and the attraction moves forward and back in his mind across different seasons. Lisa Fields, who hosted the conversation, recalled that his book names greed as a bigger struggle for him than homosexuality.

That matters for how you see yourself. When the culture and the church both treat this as the master fact about you, it is easy to start believing them. Allberry’s experience shows the attraction can be real and persistent while something else sits at the center. His congregation responded to his story with support and then went back to normal, and he describes the same settledness in himself: “it doesn’t define how I see myself.” He names the attraction openly and places it inside a larger identity, as a man who belongs to Christ.

Wasn’t the hard part deciding what the Bible says?

For many people, yes. For Allberry, it went differently, and his story is shaped by timing. He came to faith around the same time he began to recognize what he was feeling. Early on he learned the historic Christian teaching that sex is for marriage and marriage is between a man and a woman, and it made sense to him from the start.

So his struggle took a particular shape: “I’ve never struggled over whether it’s right or wrong, or whether it’s biblical or not.” The desires have come and gone. The question he has wrestled with is practical: how to say no to ungodly feelings and “seek to honor Christ in this area of life.”

That is the ordinary Christian struggle. Every follower of Jesus has desires that pull against what God calls good. Lisa Fields made the point from the other side when she observed that the call to keep sex within marriage applies just as much to heterosexual people.

Paul’s letter to the Romans makes the same move. In Romans 1 he describes human idolatry and its fruit, and same-sex acts appear in that list alongside envy, deceit, gossip and pride. Readers who nod along are then confronted in Romans 2:1, where Paul tells the one who judges others that he does the same things and condemns himself. By Romans 3 the conclusion covers everyone: “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). The argument is built to remove any reader’s sense of standing above another.

Allberry does not describe the attraction as a choice, and he does not claim it will go away with enough prayer. He describes feelings that have stayed with him for years and a faithfulness that has never depended on their disappearing.

How does anyone actually fight a desire like this?

This is where Allberry’s account becomes most useful. Asked how he resists, he names two things, and willpower is neither of them.

The first is friendship. For many years the attraction was a secret temptation he did not want anyone to know about. That changed when he told trusted Christian friends. His reasoning is simple: “we’re not designed to cope with those kinds of things on our own.” In hard moments he can call someone, say that this is a difficult time, and ask for prayer. Being known by a few faithful people makes the weight bearable.

The second is Scripture, though the passages he leans on may surprise you: “the passages that most help me are not the ones that are directly about homosexuality, but the ones that are about the goodness and sufficiency of God.” The one he names is John 6, where Jesus calls himself the bread of life: “I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst” (John 6:35).

In context, Jesus is speaking to a crowd that has just been fed and wants more bread. He redirects them from the meal to himself, as the provision their deepest hunger points toward. Allberry carries that into the moment of temptation. His feelings insist he has a need that can only be met in sexual intimacy with another man. He answers with what John 6 claims: “my deepest need and my greatest satisfaction is always gonna be found in Christ.”

The difference is practical. A bare refusal leaves an empty space where the desire was. A refusal backed by a greater good fills it. Allberry puts it this way: “I’m answering a negative feeling with a positive truth.” Or more briefly, “I’m not just saying no, I’m saying no, there’s something better.”

He applies this to every kind of sin, which works “if we’re fighting it with something that we want even more than it.” That is a claim about how holiness works for anyone. Someone who simply clenches against a desire is fighting on the desire’s terms. Someone who has tasted something better has a reason to let it go.

Am I signing up for a life without love?

This is often the fear underneath the whole question. If the historic view is right, does faithfulness mean loneliness?

Allberry admits it has been hard. He suspects he will not marry, though he leaves the door open, because “I wouldn’t rule anything out when God is sovereign and I’m not.” He also confesses, “I did go through a little season of being quite unhappy with God about that.” Contentment came over time, after honest complaint.

What changed was where he looked for fulfillment. He came to see that “marriage is not the solution to the problems of life.” He calls marriage a wonderful gift that God chooses not to give to every one of his people, and he calls singleness a gift as well. Then came the turning point: “The key is that I find my contentment in Jesus as a single person.”

He was moving his hope, rather than talking himself into preferring singleness. With his contentment resting in Jesus, “I can live with being single or I can live with being married, but neither becomes ultimate.” Either life becomes livable once neither is asked to be God.

He also points to concrete goods. Singleness has given him opportunities for ministry and friendship he would not have had as a married man. The friends he calls in hard moments are part of that picture. His life includes deep love and close companionship, received through friendship and the church.

Don’t Christians disagree about all this?

They do. Some Christians who love Jesus and read the Bible carefully have concluded that committed same-sex relationships can be faithful. Their strongest argument is historical: they contend that the biblical texts addressed forms of same-sex behavior common in the ancient world, such as exploitative relationships or excess driven by lust, and did not have mutual, lifelong partnerships in view. If that reading were right, the texts would leave today’s question open.

Allberry’s testimony cannot settle that argument. Whether Paul’s words reach committed partnerships is a question about language, history and context, and it has to be answered by reading the texts closely. What his life can show is something narrower. The historic view, which Jude 3 Project also holds, can be lived by someone it costs, with joy, for many years. That answers the charge that the view is only bearable for people it never touches.

That charge is why insider voices matter to him. Without them, he notes, people can always reply that it is easy to say these things as someone who is straight and happily married. He wanted to give testimony from the inside, “just to say that God’s word on this issue is a good word to us.” His ministry, Living Out, began among friends in pastoral ministry who shared this experience and wanted to tell the story of people who can “taste the goodness of God in his word, even when it’s a word that says no to us at times.”

Allberry also thinks the debate runs deeper than any verse. He says the issue is not mainly about particular passages in Romans and 1 Corinthians 6, relevant as they are: “the issue is always about do we trust Jesus? Is he enough and is he good?” That does not replace careful reading of the texts. It does explain why he can hold a demanding teaching without resentment.

What if someone tells me this about themselves?

Allberry’s counsel starts with humility. “I think we need to assume it probably wasn’t an easy thing for them to share,” he says. Being told something that personal is a privilege, and the first response can simply be thanks.

Then slow down. People are in different places. Some are already clear on what the Bible says and need prayer and encouragement rather than another explanation. Others are unsure and would welcome clarity from Scripture. And for some, “the biggest struggle for them with same sex attraction, might not be dealing with sexual temptation, but dealing with loneliness.”

You cannot know which of these you are talking to until you listen. Borrowing a phrase from a man at his church, Allberry urges people to “give them a thorough, good listening to” before offering answers. A quick response may answer the wrong struggle entirely.

If this is your own story and it feels heavy, a trusted pastor, a few faithful friends or a Christian counselor can help carry it. Seeking that care is part of faithfulness. Allberry’s own turning point came when he stopped keeping the secret.