What if homosexuality is not a threat but an opportunity? Could God use one of the most controversial moral issues in our nation to awaken His church rather than damage it? This requires a seismic shift in thinking, which some of us might not be eager to make. I find it much simpler to issue a commendation or condemnation while keeping a distance. But we need Spirit-empowered love to move toward those struggling with SSA without despising or excusing their sin, because their sin is our sin— our hearts are no different!
Love and tolerance overlap but are not identical concepts. The Bible describes a God who loves the entire world but does not tolerate sin.
The person beset with homosexual temptation should evoke our concern, sympathy, help, and understanding, not our scorn or enmity. Even more, such a person should kindle a feeling of solidarity in the hearts of all Christians, since we all struggle to properly manage our erotic passions.
For homosexuals a denunciation of homosexuality may feel like an indictment of homosexuals. Regrettably, some of this pain may be unavoidable in the hope of doing away with the greater pain of living outside of God's redemptive plan
For though I grieved you in the letter, I do not continue to have regrets— though I used to have regrets, for I see that letter (though only for a short time) grieved you. Now I rejoice, not because you were grieved but because you were grieved into repenting. For you were grieved in a godly manner (lit., in accordance with God ), in order that you would in no way be caused loss or damage by us. For a godly grief (lit., a grief in accordance with God) produces a repentance which leads to a salvation free of all regret; but the grief of the world produces death. (2 Cor 7: 8-10)
Four Basic Reason for Speaking Out The first consideration must always be what God wants. God calls us to live holy lives subject to the divine will and not according to our own desires.
Second, to disciple. Paul writes to those at Corinth with the express purpose of clarifying and educating their ignorance concerning various subjects. Pastors must likewise labor to inform the flock concerning Scriptural teaching regardless of culture norms. Hebrews 13:17 teaches that there is an accounting for pastors and for parishioners.
Third, regarding the horizontal dimension of human existence, it matters how humans act in relation to one another. Here the definitive injunction is to "love your neighbor as yourself (Lev 19: 18; cited in Mark 12: 31, 33 par.; Matt 5: 43; 19: 19; Rom 13: 9; Gal 5: 14; Jas 2: 8). Jesus interpreted love to mean doing to other people whatever you would want them to do to you (the Golden Rule, Luke 6: 31 par.). Such love demands an aggressive search for the lost.
In contemporary society the command to love is often misconstrued as tolerance and acceptance. The concept is richer than that. True love "does not rejoice over unrighteousness but rejoices with the truth" (1 Corinthians 13: 6).
Love and reproof are not mutually exclusive concepts. If one fails to reprove another who is engaged in self-destructive or community destructive behavior, or any conduct deemed unacceptable by God, one can hardly claim to have acted in love either to the perpetrator or to others affected by the perpetrators actions. Without a moral compass love is mere mush. Without taking into account God's will for holy living, love turns into affirmation of self-degrading and other-degrading conduct. This means that true love of one's neighbor does not embrace every form of consensual behavior.
The third justification for speaking out is the urgency of the time we live in. The window of opportunity for speaking out against homosexual behavior is closing. Nothing less than intellectual integrity, free speech, and a potentially irreversible change in the morality of mainline denominations are at stake in this vital area of sexual ethics.
REALITY #1 HOMOSEXUALS ARE LIKE US: WE ARE ALL MARRED IMAGE- BEARERS
If we are true followers of Jesus, we cannot move toward someone struggling with SSA in mercy and compassion— as Jesus would— while still viewing them as “abnormal” or unclean. Is not this struggler made in the image of God, a breathing billboard of God’s creative brilliance? 1 We value her because she is “fearfully and wonderfully made.”2 And her intelligence and affections point beyond her to the Author of thought and the Composer of love. Her Creator defines normal. Calling her “abnormal” dehumanizes and distances her. “Abnormal” also deifies the deluded one who coronates himself as “normal.” What honest human being, other than Jesus, can look in the mirror and see the standard of normality? True Christianity creates a casteless society, because we see people through the lens of God’s particular creation: “you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.”3 Therefore, what God has knitted together, let no man tear apart!
REALITY #2 HOMOSEXUALS HAVE TURNED ASIDE: ALL SIN IS TWISTED
The Apostle Paul did describe homosexual acts as “contrary to nature.”4 However, he was emphasizing that homosexuality is a physical illustration of our spiritual condition. The bodily inversion reflects our spiritual inversion. God does not give a homoerotic person over to his sin because he is a homosexual, but
1 Genesis 1:27 2 Psalm 139:14 3 Psalm 139:13 4 Romans 1:26 because he is an idolater. “Therefore God gave them up in the lust of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator.” 5 Paul’s point is not to rate homosexuality as a “10” on the sin scale, nor to warn the SSA struggler that he is approaching the last train stop on the track to hell, but to highlight the incompatibility and insanity of idolatry. Paul widens the scope of his indictment to include “all manner of unrighteousness” (covetousness, envy, deceit, gossip, etc.) and then ropes in the hypocrite, “You condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things.”6 His argument culminates in chapter 3, “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”7 Once again, we are “together.” Yes, we are all made in God’s image, but through birth and choice we have all turned aside. The image of God is distorted and perverted. Like spiritual zombies, we are “dead in the trespasses and sins . . . following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air . . . carrying out the desires of the body and the mind.”8 We are victims swept along by abductors, marketers, and demonic forces. This is why homosexuality or bitterness or anxiety does not feel like a choice. We have been drafted by strong forces and engulfed by painful experiences. We suffer. But we are also villains. We are “carrying out the desires of the body and the mind.” In other words, we are doing what we want to do. We seek to mitigate our suffering, but end up exacerbating it. My sin always seems reasonable to me, and your sin inexcusable. Left to myself, I can find a way to justify anything I really want, and the choices I make can hurt the people I most love. I sin. This is who we are. Our stories vary in detail as the fall leaves vary in color, but we are made of the same stuff.
8. Resolved, to act, in all respects, both speaking and doing, as if nobody had been so vile as I, and as if I had committed the same sins, or had the same infirmities or failings as others; and that I will let the knowledge of their failings promote nothing but shame in myself, and prove only an occasion of my confessing my own sins and misery to God.
REALITY #3 HOMOSEXUALS CAN FIND A NEW IDENTITY
Our sin goes deeper than our sins: our sin seeks to define, permanently, who we are. We “went after worthlessness and became worthless.”9 In addition, we often give ourselves labels that threaten to define us. We, the image-bearers of the King of the universe, mislabel ourselves “alcoholic,” “loser,” “workaholic,” or
5 Romans 1:24-25 6 Romans 1:28-2:1 7 Romans 3:10-12 8 Ephesians 2:1-3 9 Jeremiah 2:5 “homosexual.” But God refuses to leave us to worthless labels. “For our sake He made Him [Jesus] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.10 Jesus absorbed our sin on the cross and rose again so that we could “put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”11 The gospel of Jesus is not an invitation to do better or try harder; it is a death certificate that unfolds into a new birth certificate, providing us with a renewed identity! The image of God that was marred in the Fall is revived in Jesus. We have been killed in Jesus’ death, buried in Jesus’ tomb, and raised in Jesus’ resurrection. When we turn from our sin to trust in Jesus, our old self no longer defines who we are and what we do. Our old slave masters have been exposed and deposed.12 We have enrolled in the ultimate witness protection program and have been issued a new name, “beloved,” a new address, “in Christ Jesus,” and a new reason to live, “a holy calling.”13 The gospel penetrates to the root of the heterosexual and homosexual dilemma: Who am I? Whose am I?
REALITY #4 HOMOSEXUALS AND HETEROSEXUALS HOPE IN GRACE TOGETHER New identity in Jesus is not simply individual, but communal. In Jesus, we who were enemies are now brothers and sisters.
We who used and abused one another now love one another. We stand together in grace.14 But we also struggle together. Our new identity does not preclude temptation or hardship. Old cravings still-hunt and haunt us.15 New deceptions wait in the shadows to ambush us. If “change” means the homosexual will never hear the voice of homoerotic desire, then maybe metamorphosis is delusionary. But what fornicator, thief, or liar who has turned to Jesus never expects to hear an invitation back to lusting, stealing, or deceiving? Therefore, we “pay much closer attention to what we have heard lest we drift away from it.”16 We “exhort one another every day”17 and set our “hope fully on the grace that will be brought to [us] at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”18 Our current struggles are not the final word! Our ultimate hope is fulfilled in the new heaven and the new earth. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”19
10 2 Corinthians 5:21 11 Ephesians 4:24 12 Romans 6:15-23 13 Ephesians 5: 1; Colossians 3: 1– 4; 2 Timothy 1: 9. 14 Romans 5:2 15 John 16:33, 1 Peter 5:8 16 Hebrews 2:1 17 Hebrews 3:13 18 1 Peter 1:13 19Revelation 21:3-4
Testimony of Pastor Peter Hubbard of North Hills Community Church Greenville, SC Over the past several years, our church has asked God to teach us how to speak faithful and helpful words to those who struggle with SSA. The fruit of this endeavor has just begun to emerge, but it is full of grace. For example, Jill has been a member of our church for several years. Yet only two or three people knew about her lesbian past. As our church began to speak more freely, biblically, and compassionately about homosexuality, she became convinced that God wanted her to share her story— all of it. This was terrifying to her. She was happily married and had grown children, and she feared what her kids would think. She also was actively involved in many ministries in the church.
Would people label her? Would they lose confidence in her and pull away? The Holy Spirit gave Jill grace to share her testimony publicly and privately, and she began to notice a pattern. “Those I have told who have a rich view of grace and a personal understanding of their own sin are the most able to rejoice with me at what God has done. Those relationships have been unaffected or even enriched by my transparency.” Isn’t that exactly what Jesus said to Simon, “He who is forgiven [much], loves [much]”?20 A church characterized by a small experience of forgiveness will be characterized by a small expression of love. As our grasp of the gospel of Jesus grows, our awareness of our own sinfulness deepens, and our experience of the grace of God expands. “Acceptable” sins and “unacceptable” sins merge. Teenagers and adults open up their closets and begin to walk in the light. God uses the very “sinners” who intimidated or threatened us to expose our own hearts and bring us back to Himself.
Jeremiah 23: 21– 22: I did not send the prophets, yet they ran; I did not speak to them, yet they prophesied. But if they had stood in my council, then they would have proclaimed my words to my people, and they would have turned them from their evil way, and from the evil of their deeds. In this chapter, God through Jeremiah is rebuking the shepherds for inventing their own message and preaching as if it came from God. “They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord.”21 “How long shall there be lies in the heart of the prophets who prophesy lies, and who prophesy the deceit of their own heart [?]”22
It is imperative that we speak as Jesus and Scripture; full of grace and truth.23
20 Luke 7:47 21 Jeremiah 23:16 22 Jeremiah 23:26 23 John 1:14 PROHIBITIONS AGAINST HOMOSEXUALITY ARE TEMPORARY
Most biblical discussions of homosexuality begin in Leviticus because the texts are quite straightforward. Leviticus 18: 22 says, “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.” Leviticus 20: 13 continues, “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them.” These verses are part of Israel’s ceremonial holiness code. Are they directly applicable to the church today? Jack Rogers says “No.”24 “When these texts in Leviticus are taken out of their historical and cultural context and applied to faithful, God-worshipping Christians who are homosexual, it does violence to them.” Others like Jay Bakker go further.
The simple biblical fact is that Old Testament references in Leviticus (18: 22 and 20: 13) do treat homosexuality as a sin . . . a capital offense, even. But before you say , ‘I told you so,’ consider this: Eating shellfish, cutting your sideburns, and getting tattoos were equally prohibited by ancient religious law. The truth is that the Bible endorses all sorts of attitudes and behaviors that we find unacceptable (and illegal) today and decries others that we recognize as no big deal. . . . This is not to get down on the Old Testament. It’s simply to point out that these laws reflect social concerns of another time and place. Just as our thinking has evolved in these other areas, so it must evolve on the subject of homosexuality.25 So if a command is in the Old Testament, we can ignore it as an early remnant of our moral evolution? This is a deceitfully haughty attitude about God’s sacred Word, and one that would not be shared by Jesus.
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.26
In short, the law is filled up in Jesus. This does not eliminate all moral boundaries. For example,
24 Jack Rogers, Jesus, the Bible and Homosexuality: Explode the Myths, Heal the Church (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster Knox Press, 2009), 69. 25 Jay Bakker and Martin Edlund, Fall to Grace (New York: Faith Words, 2001), 169– 170. 26 Matthew 5:17-20 The incest laws protect the boundary between parent and child; the bestiality laws protect the boundary between human and animal. Similarly, the homosexual boundaries prohibit intercourse between members of the same sex. These boundaries are not cultural in that they change as scripture develops, but transcultural, prohibiting such activities in any place at any time.27
So how do we distinguish between provisional laws that served a specific function in Israel’s past and transcultural laws that are normative? One way is to compare these laws with the New Testament. In 1 Corinthians 6: 9, we are told, “men who practice homosexuality will not inherit the kingdom of God.” The phrase “men who practice homosexuality” is a translation of two Greek words: malakos, which refers to the passive partner, and arsenokoite, which refers to the active partner. Homosexual scholar John Boswell argues that arsenokoite refers to a “male prostitute.” Therefore, these words condemn prostitution or rape, not consensual homosexual love. This argument collapses when the source of this word is explored. The Apostle Paul coined this term from the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. He was pointing back to Leviticus 18: 22:
“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman.” “meta arsenos ou koimesthese koiten gyniakos.”
The word has no direct relationship with prostitution, rape, or exchange of money. As a Hebrew of the Hebrews,28 Paul’s use of these terms would have been plain to his readers. He, inspired by the Holy Spirit, is simply restating the Bible’s univocal prohibition against homosexuality. He is clearly answering the question, “Does this prohibition apply to Christians today?” Yes.
THE PROHIBITIONS AGAINST HOMOSEXUALITY ARE MISUNDERSTOOD
The most common form of this argument is based on the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah; it is claimed that these cities were not destroyed because of homosexuality but because of inhospitality. The story unfolds as described in Genesis 19: 4– 9.
But before they lay down, the men of the city, the men of Sodom, both young and old, all the people to the last man, surrounded the house. And they called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, that we may know them.” Lot went out to the men at the entrance, shut the door after him, and said, “I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. Behold, I have two daughters who have not known any man. Let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please.
27 John Stott, Issues Facing Christians Today (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006), 452. 28 Philippians 3:5 Only do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof.” But they said, “Stand back!” And they said, “This fellow came to sojourn, and he has become the judge! Now we will deal worse with you than with them.” Then they pressed hard against the man Lot, and drew near to break the door down.
Lewis Crompton argues that Sodom was judged for being “heartless toward the needy.” 29 Boston University professor Jennifer Wright Knust contends, “The Sodomites violated ancient cultural customs in the worst way, attempting to harm the strangers in their midst rather than extending them protection, food and shelter.”30 Are these conclusions legitimate? Yes. The Sodomites were grossly inhospitable. Ezekiel 16: 49– 50 indicts them, in part, for not giving aid to the “poor and needy.” But the language of Genesis 19 is too strong to limit their sin to inhospitality. “Bring them out to us, that we may ‘know them’” cannot be referring to their desire to introduce themselves to the guests. (See Genesis 19: 8, “I have two daughters who have not known any man.”) Some argue that Sodom was judged for gang rape, not for consensual homosexuality. However Jude 7 states, “just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire.” So while it is true that Sodom and Gomorrah were inhospitable and threatened sexual violence, those actions were additional evidence that the people “indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire.” Two of the most significant Jewish writers in the first century, Philo and Josephus, “interpreted Genesis 19: 4– 11 to refer explicitly to homosexual acts, not merely sexual violence.”
THE PROHIBITIONS AGAINST HOMOSEXUALITY ARE IGNORANT Another argument is that the Bible was written before scientists discovered homosexual “orientation ,” so the prohibitions do not apply to committed same-sex couples. Mel White explains his position.
The fact that some people are shaped at conception, at birth, or conditioned in their earliest childhood to a lifetime of same-sex intimacy is a scientific discovery less than a century old. And yet Moses lived approximately thirteen hundred years before Christ, and the Apostle Paul wrote his letter to the churches in Rome and Galatia almost two thousand years ago. The ancient prophet and the fiery missionary-preacher were fighting pagan idolatry, temple prostitution, child molestation, and irresponsible sexuality. . . . They didn’t know about today’s gay and lesbian people living in committed relationships
29 Lewis Crompton, Homosexuality and Civilization (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2003), 39. 30 Jennifer Wright Knust, Unprotected Texts (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2011), 169. who lead normal, productive lives, who love God and cherish and honor their families.31
This argument is often applied to Romans 1. The Apostle Paul explains a physical manifestation of the wrath of God,
For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
Some homosexual interpreters attempt to define “natural” as “natural sexual orientation.” So if you are “naturally” heterosexual, and you exchange your natural relations for unnatural ones (i.e. homosexual), then you will fall under Paul’s condemnation. Also, “Those who have a natural orientation toward the same sex should not be with those of the opposite sex. For them, that would be exchanging ‘the natural for the unnatural’ in just the same way.”32
These arguments fail for several reasons. Homosexual identity in committed gay and lesbian relationships is not new to our day. “There is considerable testimony in ancient sources to the belief that same-sex passions, at least in some cases, are congenital.”33 Lewis Crompton argues, “the idea of a sexual identity is not uniquely modern.”34 Also, to steer Paul’s argument in Romans 1 toward personal sexual orientation is to derail the point of the passage. Paul is not condemning sexual inconsistency or even concerned with individual genetic or environmental propensities. He is using homosexuality as a physical illustration of our universal spiritual depravity.
Several conclusions emerge from this passage. Homosexuality does not provoke God’s wrath, but it is the consequence of man’s idolatrous exchange. Therefore, man’s greatest problem is not homosexuality, but idolatry; we “served the creature rather than the Creator.” The reason Paul chose homosexuality to illustrate the inversion of idolatry is the “particularly graphic image” homosexuality provides as to the way “human fallenness distorts God’s created order.” Paul could assume that most of his readers would have no problem with his argument so far. To argue that the Apostle Paul was ignorant of or friendly toward same-sex couples is grossly inconsistent with the biblical text and the historical context.
Even Lewis Crompton, a homosexual professor, reacts to this theory.
31 Mel White, Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay and Christian in America (New York: Plume, 1994), 238– 239. 32 Vines, 10 33 Gagnon, 384. Hubbard, Peter (2014-01-13). 34 Crompton, XIV
According to this interpretation , Paul’s words were not directed at ‘bona fide’ homosexuals in committed relationships. But such a reading, however well-intentioned, seems strained and unhistorical. Nowhere does Paul or any other Jewish writer of this period imply the least acceptance of same-sex relations under any circumstances. The idea that homosexuals might be redeemed by mutual devotion would have been wholly foreign to Paul or any other Jew or early Christian.35
The reason this is so vital to Paul’s argument is not simply to vilify homosexuals, but to illustrate our fallenness as he builds towards Romans 2: 1: “Therefore you have no excuse, O man, every one of you who judges. For in passing judgment on another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, practice the very same things.” “Consequently, for Paul, self-righteous judgment of homosexuality is just as sinful as the homosexual behavior itself.” This does not justify homosexuality, but it universalizes our fallen state before God and highlights every person’s need of grace.
So if the scriptures cannot be interpreted to legitimize homosexuality, why are so many today still arguing that God is okay with their homosexual lifestyle? Some argue that the overwhelming message of love and forgiveness in the New Testament overshadows the relatively small list of prohibitions. Others elevate God’s desire for us to be happy. “He made me gay, and He wouldn’t want me to be miserable!”
Although the explanations vary, many people today are starting, not with God’s creative intent as revealed in His Word, but with a different authority. Luke Timothy Johnson, pro-homosexual professor of New Testament, explains:
The task demands intellectual honesty. I have little patience with efforts to make Scripture say something other than what it says, to appeal to linguistic or cultural subtleties. The exegetical situation is straightforward: we know what the text says. But what are we to do with what the text says. . . . If we see ourselves as liberal, then we must be liberal in the name of the gospel. . . . I think it is important to state clearly that we do, in fact, reject the straightforward commands of Scripture and appeal instead to another authority when we declare that same-sex unions can be holy and good. And what exactly is that authority? We appeal explicitly to the weight of our own experience and the experience thousands of others have witnessed to, which tells us that to claim our own sexual orientation is in fact to accept the way in which God has created us. By so doing, we explicitly reject as well the premises of the scriptural statements condemning homosexuality.36
35 Compton, 114 36 Luke Timothy Johnson, “Homosexuality and the Church, Two Views,” www.commonwealmagazine.org, 1– 2.
Dr. Johnson believes that God reveals truth to each individual. “We are fully aware of the weight of scriptural evidence pointing away from our position, yet place our trust in the power of the living God to reveal as powerfully through personal experience and testimony as through written texts.” He compares his task to the abolition of slavery and the inclusion of Gentiles in the church. He believes the specific commands of Scripture are “fallible, conflicting, and often culturally conditioned.” Therefore we are left to our own experience, and we define ourselves by that experience.
The Bible describes itself as “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword . . . discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”37 The Word of God is the critic (“discerning” = kritikos, Greek) of the thoughts and intentions of the heart. A follower of Jesus willingly places his reflections and motives beneath the critique of the Scripture and invites the Holy Spirit to search, expose, and transform these thought patterns and desires.
When the Word of God is relocated from discerner to discerned, the role it has played is not left vacant. A new discerner moves in— experience. Worship continues, but the content and object of the worship has changed. Just as in Jeremiah’s day, prophets are still running and speaking, but the message has been updated. The visions are no longer “archaic.” But the words of Jeremiah continue to resound through the centuries, “How long shall there be lies in the heart of the prophets who prophesy lies, and who prophesy the deceit of their own heart . . . ?” 38
37 Hebrews 4:12 38 Jeremiah 23:26