Loving or Aiding Sinners

Is it wrong to lease intentional sinners into my rental property?

Kay: I am a landowner and I am renting to a young woman. She has been renting from me for over seven years and has recently moved in her boyfriend. She knows very well how my husband and I feel about the situation because I have talked to her about it on a few occasions. Should I just ask her to move into another apartment? She came to me last week and said, “Oh, I’m pregnant so I will be moving” and then a few days later she says, “Oh, I’m not pregnant.” So it’s obvious that they’re engaging in fornication. We are saved and I want to live my life exemplary of the Bible. I know it’s wrong what she’s doing and I feel like I’m kind of stuck because our laws are quite different from those of the United States. But in your opinion, should I just ask her to move on?

 

Irvin: Well first of all, I think it was the Apostle Paul who said I wrote to you in an epistle, not to keep company with fornicators. He said, However, I was referring to, if any man claims to be a brother, is a fornicator, not hold company with him and he might be ashamed. But if you’re going to get away from the fornicators of all the fornicators in the world you would have to leave the world. So to say that we cannot associate with anyone who is living a non-Christian life, I don’t think we can say that. Now if you write it into your contract when you rent that house that unmarried couples cannot live together there or that same-sex couples cannot live together there, then I think you have a contract that would support you. But as far as going beyond that, I’m not sure I would be willing to tell you that you have to do that.

 

I don’t want to lead you astray because there are two things involved here. When you have someone especially if it’s right next door to you, then how much will that influence you and your family? For example, I personally would not be comfortable if I owned rental properties to rent to same-sex couples that were living an openly gay lifestyle. It is just so abnormal and perverted and that doesn’t mean that I would not try to get people saved, I would. I would try my best to witness and I have. I actually had ex-homosexuals in the church that I pastored in Richmond, Indiana, and I was very happy to see what God did in their lives. So you know, you’re walking a line here trying to be like Jesus Christ in all of your dealings but at the same time if you have for instance a house right next door, you have a man and a woman living together unmarried and your children get to talking to those people and they think that’s normal then what is that doing? They may begin to like the people. What’s that doing to their moral values? I think those are the types of questions that we have to ask when we make those decisions.

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