Did
Jesus Speak About Homosexuality?
I keep seeing statements about Jesus and the Bible that are
not actually true. Those trying to
support the gay right to marry are sometimes seen making a statement like “Jesus
did not say anything about homosexuality because he did not care about this
issue because he did not see it as sin”.
I want to address this misguided idea because I do not like to hear
people misusing the information we have about Jesus.
Jesus stood for the
Law of Moses and ALL it said until His death.
The Law of Moses was clear about the sin of homosexuality. It was a national law for Israel and it
carried the sentence of death.
Leviticus 18:22 -
"Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable."
(NIV)
Leviticus 20:13 - "If a man lies with a man as one lies
with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to
death; their blood will be on their own heads." (NIV)
This was to be carried out by a witness system of two
witnesses. Mosaic regulation stated that a person could be executed only if
there were two or more witnesses to the crime (Deuteronomy 19:15). One witness
was insufficient to evoke the death penalty (Deuteronomy 17:6). So, it
was not common to catch people in the act. Such sins were in the closet. People
were hiding fornication, adultery, and homosexuality, and so it was not brought
commonly into the public eye or brought to the death sentence. That did not mean that God would not bring
such sins to judgment. It only meant that such sins often escape the temporal
earthly hand of the Law. It may not be
considered a crime in our country or other countries, but God will bring it
into final judgment. Those who practice such things “will not inherit the
kingdom of God”(1 Cor.6:8-10).
Homosexuality as a SIN was so clear that while Jesus was
preaching in Israel he did not run into this as a common problem that He needed
to address. There were no groups of
people openly trying to teach that it was a righteous thing to do. However, Jesus did address it in indirect ways
when He spoke of “fornication”.
Fornication is a general word that covers all unlawful intercourse
outside the rightful place of marriage between a man and a woman. In Matthew 5:32 and in 19:1-9 Jesus addressed
“sexual immorality” as sex outside a lawful marriage, and He clearly endorsed
the concept of marriage “from the beginning” (Mark 10:1-4). God’s arrangement for “marriage” was and
always will be one man and one woman for life.
God never authorized sex between a man with a man, or with an animal, or
a woman with a woman, or with an animal.
The fact that Jesus did not address homosexuality directly
does not mean it was not considered a sin. It means only that it was not a
common problem He needed to address in specific terms. He was already upholding
all that was true to the Law of Moses.
But, let us remember that Jesus said there were things He did not
address that the Holy Spirit would expand upon (John 14-16) and that the Spirit
would guide the disciples into “all truth” that He did not get around to
addressing. This means that the epistles
were extensions of Jesus’ full teaching.
The epistles are in full agreement with Jesus. If a person does not believe the epistles and
other Spirit-guided letters that form the New Testament, then they simply do
not believe JESUS. Jesus said the Spirit
would guide the apostles into “all truth”.
If you do not believe that, you do not believe Jesus at all.
Therefore, when Paul writes, he writes “the commandments of
the Lord”(1 Cor.14:33f). When he writes, he writes as he is guided by the Holy
Spirit to write (Eph.3:3-5). The Spirit
was telling the will of Jesus Christ.
When Paul wrote about the sin of homosexuality in Romans 1 and 1
Corinthians 6, he was telling us the things JESUS wanted the Spirit to say
through the apostles and prophets of the New Testament.
Let us be careful to be honest with God’s word. Whether people like it or not, the issue is
settled by holy writ. We cannot bend it
or ignore it or twist it. To do so will
be to our own destruction (2 Pet.3:16f).
We must speak the truth in love. We must not compromise the truth to
appease men, for that would not be love at all as God defines love.
Now, while I am addressing this issue, it is because some
are trying to justify this sin. Adultery
is also a sin that will condemn us. If
someone tries to justify adultery, we will have to teach what the Bible
actually says on that issue as well. We
are not to pick on one kind of sinner and ignore other sins. We are only
addressing this particular sin because many are trying to justify it by
distorting the truth about what Jesus believed about this sin. That attempt is not honest with God and His
word, and therefore we are to expose this sinful distortion of Jesus and the
New Testament. Love demands that we
defend the truth of what God’s word says.
–Terry W. Benton
