Homosexuality and the
Bible
Preface
My purpose this morning is to run through key biblical texts
that either relate to the subject of homosexuality or are thought to relate to
it. I will do this in three stages. First, I will treat the passages that most
clearly prohibit homosexual sex.
Secondly, I will discuss whether the Bible directly addresses the matter
of homosexual orientation. Thirdly, I
will remind us of the Christian position on how to treat our neighbors and
enemies, no matter who they may be.
Part 1: The Bible and
Homosexual Sex
A. Leviticus 18 and 20
The two classic OT texts on the issue of homosexuality are
Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13:
Lev. 18:22: “With a male you will not lie from the beds of a woman. It is an
abomination.”
Lev. 20:13: “A man who lies with a male from the beds of a woman, they both do an
abomination. Dying they will die. Their blood is upon them.”
These verses both appear in the “holiness codes” of
Leviticus. The first appears in a chapter we might dub, “everything you want to
know about how not to have sex”
(Leviticus 18). The second appears in a related chapter that extends the
discussion of “abominable behavior” to punishments.
Let us identify what these verses are about and what they
are not about. First, it seems overwhelmingly clear that these passages have at
least some form of male homosexual sex in view. The idiom “from the beds of a
woman” seems a clear reference to sexual activity. No comment is made on female
homosexual activity. However, let us
also note that these verses do not address the issue of what we call a homosexual
“orientation.” The prohibition in both
cases refers to a sexual activity and does not address a proclivity.
There is nothing in the context of these two passages to
suggest that homosexual rape or some similar act of violence is in view.
Indeed, Lev. 20:13 implicates both
men in the abomination and consigns them both to death. When rape is involved, Deuteronomy
22 absolves a wife from guilt when some man commits adultery with her 1) if she
screams in town or 2) if she is in the country on the presumption that she
screamed and no one was there to hear her. No clause of this sort appears here.
In short, these verses most likely imply consensual sex between two males.
Further, the context of both verses is general rather than
situational. These passages are laying down sexual activities that are
categorically abominable according to the holiness code. If these verses are addressing situations
involving male prostitutes (Deut. 23:18), they certainly do not make it
clear. The burden of proof is thus on
anyone who would see these comments about something other than general,
homosexual, consensual relations.
Before we move on, we should address arguments made against
the relevance of these verses in Leviticus to today because they are in
Leviticus. The line of argument usually runs something like the following:
there are many other verses in Leviticus that hardly any Christian applies to
today. The chapter in between these two verses, for example, forbids sowing a
field with two different kinds of seed or wearing a garment with two different
kinds of thread woven together (Lev. 19:19). So the argument goes, these
prohibitions have to do with lines the Israelites drew around reality involving
keeping everything “after its kind” and in the right place, considering things
unclean that don’t fit in the right box: birds that don’t fly are unclean; land
animals that don’t walk, unclean; fish without scales, unclean; blood out
rather than in where it belongs, unclean; and thus men who have sex with the
wrong gender, unclean. Yet almost
everyone wears polyester without a second thought, so why do Christians get
upset about homosexual sex because it isn’t in the right box, or so the
argument goes.
Further, very few Christians today would put homosexuals to
death any more than they would stone a disobedient son (cf. Deut. 21:18-21). And
one of the things Christians celebrate is that people who in Leviticus were
forbidden from inclusion in the camp—lepers, eunuchs, the lame, etc.—are now
fully included in the church. So almost
all Christians already acknowledge implicitly that God has somewhat “loosened”
the rules on these things and that not all of these laws are binding on
Christians today. So the argument goes, Christians are inconsistent when they
focus on one of these rules when they are ignoring so many others.
So how might we respond to these comments? The answer is that the New Testament retains
all of the sexual prohibitions of the Old Testament. The NT does not mention anything about woven
threads or mixed seeds, but it does take a strong opposing view toward sexual
immorality of all kinds. While writers
like Paul and Matthew do some serious shifting of the OT’s meaning and
priority, they do not shift any of the sexual prohibitions of the OT. As far as
we can tell, Paul did not change the binding character of any of the sexual
prohibitions of Leviticus 18. Indeed, it seems more likely than not that
Leviticus 18 gives us the basic content of what Paul meant when he referred to porneia, “sexual immorality.” Any change
in the Christian view of homosexual sex thus requires a substantial and
fundamental alteration of the foundational precedents in Scripture.
We conclude Leviticus enjoins a strict prohibition on male,
homosexual sex.
B. Romans 1
I jump to the New Testament into Romans 1, the main NT text
relating to this issue. In Romans 1:18-3:20, Paul is building toward the
conclusion he reaches in chapter 3, variously captured in 3:9, 20, and 23. Paul
concludes that all human beings are “under sin” whether Jew or Gentile.
In building toward this conclusion, Paul begins with some
general comments in Romans 1 with which his audience would readily agree. These
arguments seem particularly targeted at a person who might consider him or
herself a “Jew” and “boast in God” (2:17). “You know the will of God and
approve of things that are excellent revealed from the Law and have become
convinced that you are leader of the blind, a light of those in darkness...” The
person Paul has in mind is someone who thinks they might boast about their
knowledge of the law.
To set up such a person, to catch him or her in hypocrisy,
Paul presents a number of sins in Romans 1:18-32 that such a person might
readily rail against. While Paul never mentions Gentiles explicitly in these
verses, he invokes the two most stereotypical Gentile sins: idolatry (1:23) and
sexual immorality, homosexual sex in particular. This is a sting operation—not
that Paul doesn’t believe these things are sinful—it is just they are not the
point that he is really working toward. His real purpose is to show that anyone
who might boast in their own righteousness stands just as condemned as anyone
else, just as subject to the wrath of God as anyone mentioned in Romans 1.
These facts lead us to our first observation. Before a
person comes to Christ, all sins have the same effect and are thus, for all
intents and purposes, the same. Some of you will know that I do not believe
that all sins are of the same consequence after
we come to Christ. But before we
are justified by faith, all sins may as well be equal: they all imply that we
lack the glory God intended for us (3:23). Similarly, we are all just as easily
and freely justified by the blood of Christ (3:24). For all intents and purposes, homosexual sex is no
different from any other sin when it comes to the time before we have faith in
Christ. When we come to Christ, this sin is forgiven just as
much as any lie we might have told or any stealing we might have done or any
hateful word we might have said.
Romans 1:18-32 itself presents a process of abandonment by
God with a resultant deterioration into darkness and shame. We might capture
the train of thought as follows: First, the wrath of God is against all human
ungodliness (1:18). Paul plays out this general statement in the rest of the
chapter. The starting point for such ungodliness among most humans is as
follows. While the invisible things of God should be clear to everyone (his
eternal power and divinity), humanity has not glorified God or given Him thanks
accordingly. They have exchanged the truth of God for a lie (1:23). They
worshiped idols and images rather than the true God. This comment alone makes
it clear that Paul primarily has Gentiles rather than Jews in view in Romans 1.
Three “He delivered” sections follow. Paul implies that in
response to the Gentile’s failure to acknowledge God as God, in response to
human idolatry, God lets a process of deterioration take place. God abandons
the pagan world to several consequences:
1. Therefore, God delivered them
to the desires of their hearts. This involves dishonoring their bodies among
themselves (1:24) and worshiping the creature rather than the Creator (1:25).
It is possible that Paul then plays out these two comments in the rest of the
chapter. In other words, 1:24-25 seem a kind of general statement whose
particulars appear in the rest of the chapter.
2. So 1:26-27 play out the first comment: Gentiles dishonored their bodies
among themselves. 1:26 says God
delivered them to dishonorable passions. Paul then enumerates
female and male homosexual sex. 1:26 speaks of women exchanging the natural use
for that beside nature (para physin).
1:27 then speaks of males leaving the natural use of the female and burning
toward one another, “males among males doing the shameful.”
3. 1:28-32 then play out the second comment on “exchanging the truth of God for
a lie” from 1:25. God delivered them
(1:28) to a worthless mind. What follows is a list of vices that Paul considers
“worthy of death” (1:32).
What might this passage contribute to the matter of
Christianity and homosexuality? First of all, it seems clear that
Paul believes homosexual sex of both the male and female kind to be shameful,
dishonorable, and unnatural. Paul is not speaking of same-sex rape or pederasty
or violence. He is speaking of a man doing with a man what a man “naturally”
does with a woman. Paul’s language here evokes images of Leviticus 18 and 20.
We might also mention that this is the only reference in the Bible to female
homosexual sex.
Some have argued at this point that the connection between
idolatry and homosexual acts points to male temple prostitution as what Paul
has in mind. Their argument is thus that Paul is only condemning homosexual sex
associated with a pagan temple here and not something like a monogamous
homosexual relationship. This argument seems highly unlikely to me. For one, I’m
not sure how common male-male temple prostitution was in the ancient world, in
fact if it even existed at this time. I have serious doubts about how prevalent
such a practice was.
All the evidence at our disposal indicates that homosexual
sex was considered dishonorable in most of the Roman world even by pagans. The
Roman historian Tacitus speaks with disdain of the emperor Nero’s preference
for “young men” at his court. Ancient
Second, Paul considers such desires the consequence of the Gentiles’
failure to acknowledge God properly. Because the Gentiles do not acknowledged
God as God, God has abandoned them to these desires. It is probably significant
to note a slight strangeness to this train of thought, for Paul makes it sound
like the entire pagan world, as a consequence of their idolatry, ends up
engaged in homosexual sex. The reason this is significant to note is because it
reveals that Paul is not thinking of the small segment of the human population
that we today would classify as homosexual. His argument is about the whole world, and the failure of the whole
pagan world to acknowledge God as God has lead, for one thing, to sexual shame.
One difficult interpretive issue comes from Paul’s comment
that such people were working the shameful “and receiving the punishment among
themselves that was necessary because of their error” (1:27). What punishment
did Paul have in mind? Many turn at this point to something like AIDS or
venereal diseases as the punishment “in themselves.” But no mention is made of
physical consequences. Such a line of thought fits suspiciously with the way we
in a medically, scientifically oriented culture think—it seems anachronistic.
Given Paul’s honor-shame world, I think the most likely
answer is that the action itself is so shameful that it is its own punishment.
In other words, might we dynamically translate the statement something like the
following: “men with men working the shameful and thus receiving among
themselves the punishment of disgrace necessary given their error.” Given the
way Paul’s world thought, this interpretation seems the one that is most likely.
Third, it is not clear that Paul considers homosexual sin here
worse than the viceful individuals he mentions later in the chapter. Indeed, it
is those with vices in 1:29-31 that Paul speaks of as worthy of death—people
like slanderers. There is nothing in the chapter to lead us to conclude that
Paul meant to emphasize the homosexual sinners of 1:26-27 as worse than the
others in the chapter. Indeed, if Paul were giving a downward spiral—and I don’t
necessarily think he is—then the sinners at the end of the chapter would be
worse than those in the middle.
To summarize: Paul considers homosexual sex of all kinds not only
as sinful, shameful, and unnatural, but he sees it as a consequence of a
failure to acknowledge God as God. However, Paul is not writing about a
specific group of people like homosexuals—a modern category—he is making a
universal argument about Gentiles as a whole and homosexual sex as the kind of
thing that results among pagans who do not believe in God. Sexual sins of this
sort are common to all
non-believers in general, not just a particular group with a certain
orientation, because Gentiles are pagan and idolatrous. Finally, Paul gives us
no indication that he considered homosexual sex as more sinful or a greater
object of God’s wrath than the other sinners at the end of the chapter.
The Rest of the New
Testament
There are three final references to homosexual sex in the
New Testament:
1 Corinthians 6:9-11: “Do you not know that he unrighteous will not inherit the
Let us first explore the 1 Corinthians 6 passage. The two
references of greatest interest to us are the terms I have translated as “male
prostitutes” (malakoi) and “those
who have homosexual sex” (arsenokoitai).
The word malakos
basically means “soft,” and there is legitimately room for some discussion of
what Paul specifically has in mind. Given its apparent connection with arsenokoites, the word that follows, it
seems to have some connection to homosexual sex. Unfortunately, there are no
other biblical passages that might shed light on its precise meaning for Paul.
There are two occurrences in the Septuagint and two in the gospels, but they
simply mean “soft.”
All in all, the explanation I have found most persuasive is
that it is a reference to the “passive” partner in homosexual sex as a
particular type of person. It thus has a sense of effeminacy in the sense of
regularly taking the “female’s role” in sex. Although we might think of other
contexts for such a person, a “male prostitute” surely comes close.
The word arsenokoites is
intriguing. Its appearance here and in 1 Timothy 1:10 is the first known use of
the word in all surviving Greek literature, leading some to believe that Paul
himself coined the term. I personally think this unlikely. The argument I find
most persuasive is that this verse is actually composed from the Leviticus 18
passage. In Greek, Leviticus 18:22 reads:
“And with a male (arsen) you will not lie a woman-like bed
(koite).”
You can easily see how Jews might have referred to the
content of this verse by the shorthand arseno-koites.
An arsenokoites is thus someone
who lies with a man as a man lies with a woman. By the way, I notice that one
word that appears over and over in the Greek of Leviticus 18 is aschemosyne (“shamefulness” or some such,
translating the Hebrew word “nakedness”). This is the very same word that
Romans 1 says men with men were “working.” Romans 1 thus evokes images of
Leviticus 18 in its discussion of male-male sex. Thus one cannot simply reject
Leviticus because it appears in the OT—Paul clearly implies that its teaching
on this subject continues into the new covenant. One can of course disagree
with Paul also, but it is not simply a matter of Leviticus.
It thus seems likely that, in some way, Paul condemns the
behavior of those who might either be prone to submit themselves to the passive
role in homosexual sex (male prostitutes?) or who are prone to take the active
role in homosexual sex (NIV: “homosexual offenders”).
Again, let us try to be as precise as possible about what
Paul might be thinking. I believe that Paul is referring to activities, not to
characteristics a person might have apart from having sex. For example, I don’t
think that malakos simply
refers to some man who is effeminate. As
we will mention in the next section, the idea of a person with a certain psychological disposition toward the
same sex is a modern category.
Homosexuality in the ancient world was understood in terms of actions
rather than orientations. It seems
anachronistic to see malakos as
something other than someone who takes the “female” role in homosexual sex.
Second, I don’t think getting drunk once got you on this
list as a drunkard. I don’t think that committing adultery once and then truly
repenting got you on this list as an adulterer (I say this without minimizing
the serious sinfulness of committing adultery even one time). I really believe
that Paul is speaking of people who habitually got drunk or habitually had
homosexual sex. Again, I do not thereby mean that a single instance of greed is
not a sin. But I think Paul is targeting repeat offenders in this list. You can
repent for one sin, but in my theology, you have to wonder how repentant a
person truly is when a person continues to do the same sin repeatedly.
And here let me remind you all that I am an Arminian and do
not believe the Bible teaches unconditional salvation. Paul is speaking to
Christians at
Here let us pause to consider the idea that homosexuality is
a “double sin.” I have heard some suggest that homosexuality is twice as bad as
adultery because it violates two rules at once: 1) sex outside of marriage and
2) same-sex sex. On the one hand, I
acknowledge that I do not think that post-justification sins are all the same
in terms of their consequences—I do think there are bigger and lesser sins
post-conversion in terms of the damage they do to our relationship with God. As
I mentioned above, before we
come to Christ all sins may as well be the same. But I view sin after faith in
quasi-relational terms. So not every “sin” against my wife damages my
relationship with her to the same degree. All “sins” against my wife damage my
relationship with her, but not all sins damage it to the same extent.
Let’s say I forget our anniversary. I have done her wrong, I
have “sinned” against her. I didn’t intentionally forget, so I don’t think she
would divorce me. Of course repentance is in order. On the other hand, if I
were to have an affair (intentionally seems the only option here), our marriage
might have difficulty surviving without a lot of grace from God.
In the same way, some sins damage our relationship with
Christ more severely than others. If I neglect to pray or worship Him for a
couple weeks because I am pre-occupied, I am prepared to call that a sin (I don’t
wish to go down a rabbit trail of psychoanalysis of intentionality here). But I
think the damage can be repaired (in me, not in God) quickly. But if I curse
Christ and burn the Scriptures because an emperor is threatening to behead me,
perhaps the relationship would be severed immediately with Christ (and at some
point I may find myself unable to repent, cf. Heb. 12:17).
So I accept that it is possible that homosexual sex might be
more or less damaging to one’s relationship with God than other sins. But I consider this a matter for us to
wrestle with quite seriously—and one to which I have no authoritative
answer. Why would homosexual sin be more
severe than adultery?
1. Because of motive?
No doubt some engage in homosexual sex with a defiant attitude toward
God. But this is not true of all
homosexuals by any means.
2. Because of character?
No doubt some embrace a lifestyle of defiance toward God in their
homosexuality. But others wrestle with
homosexuality for years before they conclude they can’t wrestle with it
anymore. They live out their lives in a
kind of detached relationship to the church, sometimes attending with a part of
their lives they don’t know how to integrate with Christianity. They sin regularly according to 1 Corinthians
6:9, but they do not do so in defiance of God.
Yet we must take such “repeat offense” very seriously given 1
Corinthians 6:9. These verses imply that
repeat offenders will not inherit the
3. Is homosexuality a sin because of an act that has
negative consequences? God prohibits
some acts because they have negative consequences on individuals or social
structures. I am not qualified to say
what negative implications homosexuality might have on a social structure. I have heard doctors speak of physical
problems that sometimes result from male homosexual practice. Then there are of course various sexually
transmitted diseases. But on the whole,
it is not clear what immediate negative consequences consensual homosexual
relationships have on individuals and societies. This may again be my ignorance.
4. Because of an act that God has declared unclean in
itself? All in all, this domain seems
the one that best explains why God has prohibited homosexual sex. Prohibitions in this category do not need
explanations—they are simply what God has decreed. Uzzah dies when he touches the ark because he
is an unclean individual touching the holy.
His motives or character do not matter.
So by these criteria is homosexual sex a worse sin than, for
example adultery? It depends primarily on
how one weights the final consideration above.
In motive or consequence it could well be less damaging to one’s
relationship to God than an adulterous affair or habitual lying or greed. But it is hard to know how the last category
harms our relationship to God on this issue, and 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 imply
disbarment from the
So let’s return to the “double sin” perspective, the idea
that we have two sins at once because a person is 1) having sex outside
marriage and 2) having it in a homosexual way.
With regard to the sin of
It is a small distinction but nevertheless one that I think
has consequences for this discussion. Paul believed that you should only have
sex within marriage because all other venues of having sex defiled you. Pop
Christian thought today believes that all other venues of having sex defile you
because you should only have sex within marriage. If this distinction is
correct, then homosexual sex is a single act of defilement, not a double
defilement. The intensity of sinfulness
depends only on the degree of “uncleanness” it represents in God’s eyes.
My comment on 1 Timothy will be brief:
1 Timothy 1:8-11: “Now we know that the Law is good if someone uses it lawfully, since we
know this fact: the Law is not in place for the righteous but for law-breakers
and the unruly, the godless and sinners, the unholy and profane, father and
mother-killers, murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice homosexual
sex, slave traders, liars, perjurors, and if there is something else that is
opposed to sound teaching according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God,
a gospel with which I have been entrusted.”
This is a peculiar way of putting things for Paul, for he
basically equates the Law with the 10 commandments in the specific sins he
mentions. Other letters in the Pauline corpus speak of the Law in relation to
boundary markers like circumcision and holy day observance. In any case, in
relation to the 10 commandments arsenokoites
appears either in association with adultery or perhaps covetousness. I’m not
sure that this passage adds much new to our discussion, although one might
argue that this list is more severe than the one in 1 Corinthians and thus that
homosexual sin is more severe in degree than some other sins (but note that
lying is on this list as well).
Summary: Paul considers homosexual sex to be sinful and indeed, if
one does not repent and if it persists, it can disbar one from the kingdom. But
it is not clear that Paul considers it a worse sin than adultery, perhaps even
than persistent greed or lying.
Part 2: The Bible and
Homosexual Orientation
The idea of a sexual orientation seems by all accounts a
rather modern conception whose roots were in 19th century diagnoses of
homosexuality as a medical condition.
These “conditions” were then expanded in the 20th century into the idea
of a psychological orientation. It is thus doubtful that any biblical author
understood homosexuality apart from sexual activity. When the Bible refers to matters homosexual,
it is thinking about sex, not lust toward the same sex apart from sex.
As an aside, this observation does not excuse homosexual
lust. It seems that if it is
inappropriate for a heterosexual to lust after someone of a different sex,
surely it is inappropriate for a homosexual to lust after someone of the same
sex.
Today, we think of homosexuals as a psychological type of person; they
thought of homosexuals as a behavioral
type of person, a person who had sex
with people of the same gender. The Bible thus seems to say nothing directly
about what we might call a “celibate
homosexual.” The biblical authors were not thinking of such a person in any of
their indictments of matters homosexual.
I do not think this passage is as relevant to the topic at
hand as many think, except that it likely presupposes the attitude of Leviticus
18 toward homosexual acts. But I do not think that Genesis 19 portrays the men
of
We gain insight into the nature of
We stop here to mention the nature of ancient virtue in
relation to hospitality of this sort. To entertain strangers was universally
considered a sacred duty in the ancient world, as Hebrews 13:2 reflects. I know
our knee-jerk response to taking hospitality so seriously is usually one of “you
have to be joking.” Such values seem trivial to our modern cultural viewpoint.
Nevertheless, this reaction comes from a lack of awareness of ancient culture
as well as a lack of awareness of our own glasses.
The Greek story of Baucis and Philemon in Ovid’s Metamorphoses is an excellent case in
point, a story that reverberates in the story of Paul and Barnabas in Acts 13.
In this story, the gods Zeus and Hermes disguise themselves as humans and go
around among humanity (cf. Heb. 13:2 here also). An elderly couple finally
welcomes them in after wholesale rejection by the rest of the region. After the
gods have revealed themselves, they destroy everyone in the region except the
elderly couple, whom they reward. The reason is the impious inhospitality of
the region toward strangers.
So when Abraham runs out to welcome the three angels to his
house in Genesis 18, it is not because he recognizes them as angels. Indeed, in
accordance with custom he doesn’t even find out their business until after he
has fed them. In short, Genesis presents Abraham as a virtuous man, a man who
entertains strangers according to the sacred duties of hospitality to
strangers. We notice that this story occurs right before the story of
Back to the story of the Levite and the concubine in Judges.
We note that after the old man of the house refuses to allow them access to the
Levite, they give them his concubine, whom they rape to death. Notice that this
is not a homosexual activity. In short, the central sin of these men in Judges
is their abominable behavior toward strangers, and strangers of their own
people nonetheless. From our perspective, their violent rape of the concubine
is also a massive sin, although Judges does not highlight this element of the
story. These men were not homosexuals,
for they went on to rape the concubine. They were rapists—violent, faithless
men.
So when we return to
A careful reading of the
The gospels confirm these connotations to the story in
Matthew 10:15 and Luke 10:12. In these passages, Jesus is discussing the fate
of cities that might reject the disciples when they go out with the
gospel. In both passages, Jesus tells
his followers that it will be worse for the cities that reject them than it
will be for
Part 3. Wrapping
Things Up
For the last few minutes I have tried to run through the
biblical witness on the topic of homosexual sex as best I could. Here is an
attempt to place that witness into a flow. I would say that there are at least
two primary reasons why things are prohibited in Leviticus and the other codes
of the Pentateuch. One set of reasons has to do with holiness, purity, and
impurity. The other relates to social consequences. In my opinion, sexuality is
a particularly powerful intersection of these two domains, one of the reasons
why the New Testament does not seem to alter its stance very much on sexual
purity issues.
The lines of purity and impurity change on many issues
between the OT and the emergent NT church. For example, Mark says that Jesus
declared all foods clean (Mark 7:19). Paul says in Romans 14:14 that no food is
unclean in itself but if you think it is unclean, then it is unclean. I suspect
originally, many of the reasons for the purity rules had to do with setting
boundaries between
But Paul changes none of the lines of clean and unclean when
it comes to sexuality. Homosexual sex, sex with a prostitute, sex with one’s
step mother, these things meant defilement to him. I have argued a number of things here, which I
will now summarize:
1. It is the unanimous position of all Scripture—at least insofar as the topic
is discussed—that homosexual sex is sinful and defiling. 1 Corinthians 6:9 says
that “homosexuals”—in the sense of those who habitually practice same-sex—will
not inherit the
2. The biblical authors do not directly address matters of “orientation.” Their
comments have to do with those who might habitually and constantly engage in
homosexual acts, not those who have desires on which they never act. Modern “homosexuals”
and ancient “homosexuals” are groups that overlap but that are not exactly the
same. For example, ancient homosexuals were likely married and had children,
even though they favored their own gender sexually.
3. Since Paul believes all sins imply a destiny of death for all, homosexual
sex has the same consequence as any other sin before coming to Christ.
4. Even after a person comes to
Christ, it remains to be demonstrated that homosexual sex is more displeasing to God than other sins
like adultery, greed, or lying. The Bible considers it a sin, but it is a
matter for serious wrestling as to whether it is really the “sin of all sins”
as it is so often treated. The Bible
bids us take all sin seriously, but it is possible that much of Christianity
has it out of focus in terms of its intensity of sinfulness.
I would like to close with a reminder of the Christian
position on our neighbors and enemies.
Jesus considered the commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves the
second greatest commandment on which, along with the command to love God with
all our selves, the Law and the Prophets hang (a command that also comes from
Leviticus). When a young man tried to
wiggle out of the command by debating who his neighbor was, Jesus told the
Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10).
Unlike today, “Samaritan” was not a good word back then to Jews. Jesus picked the type of person that a Jew
would have liked to be the “bad guy” in the story. So if we are to get the feel for this parable,
we have to replace the Samaritan with a type of person we would least want to
love. For many Christians, a homosexual
would be a good replacement. Who is my
neighbor? Who do I need to love as
myself? Homosexuals are some of those.
And what does it mean to love someone as you love
yourself? I think part of what it means
is putting yourselves in their shoes and asking how you would want to be
treated. Let’s say you woke up one
morning and found that you were attracted to the same gender. Let’s say you didn’t want to be, that you
tried your best to change your way of thinking, that you prayed incessantly for
God to change your attractions but that for some reason, He didn’t. The Bible never teaches that because you are
born a certain way that your way is thereby sanctioned by God—in Christian
theology this is a fallen world marred by sin.
In the age to come there will not be things like Down’s Syndrome or
people inclined to harm others. But
loving your neighbor as yourself means that you treat others as you would want
others to treat you if you were in their shoes.
Finally, let me remind us all that Jesus not only enjoined
love of our neighbors, by whom he meant everyone. But talking in a different context, he also
enjoined his followers to love their enemies (Matt. 5). So if we are to love our neighbors and love our
enemies, there is no one left. Any use
of the Bible to support the hatred of others is unchristian and unacceptable
from the standpoint of Christ. Anyone
who would advocate hatred of homosexuals or, what is more subtle, who would
live with an attitude that embodies hatred of homosexuals, needs to repent and
ask God for forgiveness as well.
It is both amazing and sad to me that the world often has
more Christ-like attitudes toward others and advocates more Christian behaviors
toward others than Christians themselves do.
On any host of topics, it is amazing to me that under the smugness of
being “in,” Christians feel at liberty to back stab others and talk behind
their backs, and to condemn others with delight on many issues. Christians in our circles often talk down or
look down on other Christians in the most immature and uninformed fashion. In many of these matters, the ethics and
professionalism of the world consistently puts us to shame, and many Christians
would fail in the secular work place if held up to its standards with regard to
issues like harassment and wholesomeness.
This is something I would like us to ponder long and hard before we
leave the comfy fish bowl of an IWU for the world. After all, we want to be people who are world
changers for the better, not for the inferior.