What Does the Bible Say About Bisexuality? A Gentle, Honest Conversation

If you are bisexual and trying to figure out what your faith means for your life, or if you love someone who is navigating this — this article is written for you. Not with easy answers. Not with condemnation. But with the kind of honest, compassionate conversation that this topic deserves and rarely receives.

Before anything else, a word about who this article is for — and what it is not trying to do.

It is not a debate. It is not a theological treatise designed to settle every question the Church has wrestled with for decades. It is not written by someone who has all the answers about sexuality, faith, and how every person should live. And it is most certainly not written from a place of judgment toward anyone reading it.

It is written for the person who is genuinely trying to hold two things together — their sexuality and their faith — and finding that the world seems to demand they choose one or the other. For the person who has felt unwelcome in churches that did not know how to talk about this with any grace. For the parent trying to love their child faithfully without knowing exactly what that looks like. For anyone who has asked Google at 11pm what the Bible actually says — and found mostly heat, very little light, and almost no warmth.

This article will be honest about what Scripture says. It will also be honest about the complexity of that conversation. And it will, above everything else, begin and end with the same truth that the Bible itself begins and ends with: that every human being — every single one — is made in the image of God, loved by God, and the object of a grace so comprehensive that nothing in heaven or on earth can separate them from it.

— Romans 8:38–39 (NIV)

What Does the Bible Say About Bisexuality?And What It Doesn't

The Bible never uses the word "bisexual." It never describes bisexuality as a category of identity in the way modern language does. The concept of sexual orientation as a fixed, defining dimension of personhood is a relatively recent framework in human history — one that would have been largely foreign to the world in which Scripture was written.

What the Bible does speak to — consistently, from Genesis through Revelation — is the nature of human sexuality in its created design, the distortions that sin introduced into every dimension of human experience, and the redemptive work of God that does not leave any part of human life untouched by grace and transformation.

There are a small number of passages in Scripture that address same-sex sexual behaviour directly — passages in Leviticus, Romans, and 1 Corinthians that have been the subject of significant scholarly debate about their cultural context, their specific referents, and their applicability to the full range of experiences that contemporary people bring to this conversation. We will not pretend that debate does not exist, and we will not pretend that there are not sincere, Bible-believing Christians who read these passages differently from one another.

What we can say with honesty is this: the consistent trajectory of Biblical teaching on human sexuality is that it was designed for the context of marriage between a man and a woman, and that all sexual expression outside that context — including heterosexual sex outside marriage — is addressed with the same call to faithfulness and the same offer of grace. The Church has not always communicated this with anything approaching consistency or kindness, particularly toward people who experience same-sex attraction. That failure of the Church is real, and it matters.

A Distinction That Matters — Attraction Is Not the Same as Action

One of the most important distinctions that gets lost in most conversations about faith and sexuality is the difference between experiencing an attraction and acting on it. This distinction does not resolve all the questions — but it matters enormously for how someone who is bisexual and Christian understands their own experience, and how the Church should respond to them.

Christian theology has always held that temptation is not sin. Jesus was tempted in every way that a human being can be tempted — and was without sin (Hebrews 4:15). Every human being experiences desires that, if acted on, would constitute a departure from the life God calls them to. For a heterosexual person, that might mean desire for someone who is not their spouse. For a person who experiences same-sex or bisexual attraction, it means something different in form but not different in kind. The experience of attraction — in and of itself — is not a moral failure. It is part of the universal human experience of living in a world where every dimension of human nature, including sexuality, has been touched by the brokenness that Christian theology calls sin.

This distinction matters because it means that a person who is bisexual is not, by virtue of their orientation alone, living in defiance of God or outside His love. The experience of attraction — whatever its direction — does not place a person beyond the reach of grace, beyond the love of the Father, or beyond the community of the Church. Full stop.

The Question of Identity — Who Are You, Really?

Perhaps the deepest question beneath this whole conversation — the one that most people asking about bisexuality and faith are really asking — is a question about identity. If I am bisexual, does that define me? Does that become the most fundamental thing about who I am? What does faith say about the relationship between my sexuality and my identity?

The Biblical answer to this question is one of the most radically counter-cultural claims in all of Scripture. It says: the most fundamental thing about you is not your sexuality, your nationality, your profession, your achievements, your failures, or any other category that human beings use to define themselves and each other. The most fundamental thing about you is that you are made by God, in His image, for relationship with Him — and that in Christ, that identity is restored and secured in a way that nothing else can be.

This does not mean that sexuality is unimportant. It does not mean that the experience of being bisexual is a trivial or dismissible part of a person's life. It means that it is not the deepest thing. And for someone who has been told — implicitly or explicitly — that their sexuality is the most important thing about them, that their orientation is the defining fact of their existence, the Biblical claim can be both deeply liberating and genuinely demanding.

What the Church Has Gotten Wrong — And Why It Matters to Say So

Any honest conversation about faith and bisexuality has to acknowledge something plainly: the Church — in many of its expressions, across many of its traditions — has handled this profoundly badly. People who experience same-sex attraction have been told they are broken beyond repair, that their orientation is a choice, that their pain does not matter, that they are less welcome than other sinners, and that the grace available to everyone else is somehow less available to them. This is not a peripheral failure. It is a serious departure from the posture of Jesus, who consistently went toward the people whom religious culture pushed away.

If you are reading this article because you or someone you love has been wounded by a church's response to their sexuality — that wound is real. The dismissal was wrong. The condemnation was disproportionate to anything the Church applies to the many other ways that human beings depart from God's design. The failure to offer the same grace, the same welcome, and the same honest pastoral care that the Church offers to every other person struggling with every other dimension of human brokenness is a failure that the Church is answerable for.

None of that changes what Scripture says. But it changes everything about how a person who has been wounded by the Church should be approached — with humility, with acknowledgment of real harm, and with the kind of love that Jesus consistently modelled toward people that religion had written off.

What Does Faithfulness Look Like? An Honest Answer

This is the question that a bisexual person of faith is most often really asking when they search for what the Bible says about their experience. Not just "what does the Bible say?" — but "what does God actually want from me? What does a faithful life look like for someone who is wired the way I am?"

We want to be honest with you: there is genuine disagreement among serious, Scripture-loving Christians about how to answer that question. There are Christians who believe that a same-sex relationship, entered into faithfully and covenantally, can be consistent with a life of Christian discipleship. There are Christians who believe that faithfulness for someone who experiences same-sex or bisexual attraction means choosing celibacy or a heterosexual marriage — and who point to the consistent Biblical teaching on marriage as their ground for that belief. Both positions are held by people who take Scripture seriously and who are genuinely trying to honour God with their understanding of it.

We are not going to tell you which of those positions is correct — because we think that is a question that deserves more than a blog article, that it requires ongoing conversation with trusted pastors and counsellors, deep personal engagement with Scripture, and the kind of prayerful discernment that cannot be shortcut by a definitive answer from a website. What we can tell you is that this question is worth sitting with seriously, that there are thoughtful Christians on more than one side of it, and that God's grace is available to you in the middle of the uncertainty, not only at the end of it.

What every tradition agrees on is this: the call to faithfulness — to integrity in how we live our relational and sexual lives — applies equally to every person, regardless of their orientation. Every Christian is called to hold their sexuality with the same care, the same honesty, and the same openness to God's shaping that they bring to every other dimension of their life. That call is not uniquely demanding for people who are bisexual. It is the universal call of discipleship — which is costly for everyone, and which is also accompanied by grace for everyone.

You Are Not Alone in This — And You Do Not Have to Figure It All Out Today

If you came to this article carrying a weight that has been with you for a long time — the weight of trying to hold your faith and your sexuality without feeling like you have to choose between them — we want to say something to you directly.

You do not have to have this figured out. You do not have to resolve every theological question before God accepts you or before you are welcome in His presence. The disciples followed Jesus for three years and were still getting significant things wrong at the end of it. The journey of discipleship — of learning, growing, failing, returning, and being continuously formed — is not a pre-condition of God's love. It is the response to it.

The God of Scripture is not waiting for you to arrive at the correct theological conclusions before He meets you. He meets you exactly where you are — in the complexity, in the uncertainty, in the genuine struggle to understand what faithfulness means for your specific, particular, irreducible life. That meeting — honest, ongoing, and held in the context of genuine community with other flawed and beloved people — is where the real formation happens. Not in having the right answers. In showing up for the relationship. For more on this, our article on how to build a daily relationship with God is a practical starting point that has nothing to do with having everything figured out first.

And if you are a parent, sibling, pastor, or friend of someone who is bisexual and navigating their faith — your most important role is not to resolve the theology for them. It is to stay. To be the person who loves them specifically, who remains in relationship across the complexity, who makes it safe for them to keep asking the questions without feeling that the wrong answer means losing you. The Church has too often made the opposite choice. You do not have to.

If you need a community where you can share what you are carrying without judgment, our Prayer, Wins and Encouragement page is a gentle, moderated space for exactly that. And our team is reachable if you need to talk to someone.

Whatever You Are Carrying — You Are Not Too Much for God

We do not know the full weight of what you brought to this article. We do not know whether you came here in anger, in grief, in genuine curiosity, or in desperate need of someone to tell you that you are not condemned. We do not know whether you are in the middle of a faith crisis or just beginning to ask questions you have been afraid to ask.

But we know this: the God of the Bible has never once turned away a person who came to Him with an honest and seeking heart. The record of Scripture is full of people who arrived at God with their sexuality, their shame, their confusion, and their brokenness — and found not condemnation but invitation. The woman at the well. The woman caught in adultery. The tax collector. The prodigal son. The thief on the cross. None of them had it figured out. All of them were met.

The questions you are carrying about sexuality and faith are worth taking seriously. They deserve honest engagement with Scripture, with wise and pastorally gentle community, and with the kind of patient, ongoing discernment that cannot be rushed. But none of that work has to happen before you are loved. None of it has to be complete before you belong. The belonging — in Christ — comes first. Everything else is worked out within it, not before it.

For more on the hard questions that faith raises and the honest, compassionate conversations they deserve, explore the Daily Motivation TV Blog. You are welcome here exactly as you are. And we are glad you came.