Revive the Drive Session 44: Homosexuality in the New Testament Art Georges, Daniel Bennett, Dr. Ritch Boerckel Ritch: Welcome to Revive the Drive. We re thankful that you re listening to us again today. We re continuing in our series on the issue of homosexuality. What an important subject to consider today! It seems like every person has to think through how we can respond to a culture that is celebrating that which God calls sin. How can we love those who are enslaved to this sin? How can we encourage and help those who have same sex attraction? How can the church minister? How can we share the Gospel? Last time, we began talking about some specific biblical passages related to homosexuality because we believe that the Bible is very clear. Homosexual behavior, homosexual relationships, these are sins, grievous sins against God that keep us from Him. So we talked last time about some passages primarily in the Old Testament, and a bit in Matthew. But now, we re going to move on to the New Testament passages that teach us much about homosexuality. The first is Romans 1. Romans 1 is the cornerstone, it is the bedrock of biblical teaching regarding homosexuality. It s the passage that speaks most clearly and most in detail. It is the one passage that speaks not only of male homosexuality, but also female homosexuality. And so, Art and Daniel, why don t you lead our discussion on Romans 1. Art: I had mentioned in an earlier session that homosexuality tends to be part of the landscape of sexual immorality when a culture has distanced itself from the knowledge and worship of the one true God. And in Romans chapter 1, Paul makes it very clear that God s wrath is being revealed against mankind because they are practicing such ungodliness, because they have denied not only the Creator, but the worship and glory-giving of the Creator. In Romans chapter 1, it indicates, Paul, the Apostle Paul, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, indicates that sexual immorality in the form of homosexuality is something that God gives human beings over to when they have denied His rightful place as their Creator and the One worthy of their worship. Daniel: Well, we mentioned before that our desire is to kind of see how people have attacked what Scripture says regarding this issue. And this seems pretty clear. I mean, it talks about the theological reasons that this activity takes place. It talks about how it s a deviation from what God intends. Ritch, you mentioned a session or two ago about the danger of talking about how other people approach Scripture, false teachers approach Scripture, because they can cause people to doubt what s pretty clear. And really, for the vast majority of the church s history, people have read this and said, I may disagree with what Paul is saying, but I can understand what he s saying. It s just right here in the text. Art: Maybe it would be helpful if I read a little so our listeners don t have to pull out their pocket Bible. Daniel: Yes! Thanks!
Art: The Apostle Paul says in Romans 1:21, For even though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks. There s the worship and the recognition. But they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. In other words, they began to speculate about what was proper for practice and for life. And verse 22, Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. And then verse 24, Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them, for they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. Verse 26, again a giving over, For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions. For their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural and in the same way also the men abandoned their natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men, committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. Daniel: Thanks Art! I m almost hesitant to do so, but let me kind of articulate the argument that someone comes to with an orientation toward believing in the homosexual lifestyle, but also wants to believe in the authority of Scripture. Here s how someone would, and I m reading from Matthew Vines who we discussed a few sessions ago, an excerpt of his sermon at a Methodist church. He says, Does this passage here (Romans 1) reject the possibility of loving relationships for gay people? And he goes on and he says, What exactly is it that Paul is condemning here? He says, In the passage, Paul is making a larger argument about idolatry. That argument has a very precise logic to it. He says, The idolater s actions are blameworthy because they knew God. They start with a knowledge of God. They chose to reject Him, and then they turn away from those relationships that they re naturally oriented toward, heterosexuality, and then they engage in these lustful relationships. And so, Mathew Vines here says, Look, he s not talking about what we understand as a monogamous homosexual relationship of two people who are oriented that way. He s talking about people who are naturally heterosexual and then engage in these lustful relationships. How do we respond to that interpretation of Romans chapter 1? Ritch: I would respond, you know, we all can read. We all can read the text. The text doesn t say any such thing. There are those who take the Scripture and read into it any idea that they desire to read into it. And unfortunately, this fellow has chosen to do that. And then readers who also desire to justify the sin, the very thing that Paul is addressing, the refusal to embrace responsibility for one s own rejection of God, and give an open door, give an excuse by which they can do that. You know, this passage relates to a rejection of God and God giving them over then to the natural course of rejection. It takes us back again to Genesis 1 and 2 doesn t it? God made them male and female and to reject one s gender and one s identification as that gender according to God s design, is the ultimate rejection of the Creator who created us. Whether that is a transgender individual or a homosexual individual, it s a rejection of the God who created. Again, we re sympathetic because we re born in sin. We are part of this issue of sin. And that s why when Paul writes, he writes as a sinner who has been liberated by the grace of God and he recognizes that. But it begins with an acknowledgement that I m broken from the beginning. Sin has ruined me and I need a Savior because the natural inclinations of my heart will lead me away
from the Creator and from the Creator s good, right, joyful design for me as, for instance, as a man. And what s interesting too to note is that at the end of that passage in Romans 1:28 and following it says, And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God And is there any more basic acknowledgement of God than His design as male and female for us? God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil and he gives this list. And so we want again, our hearers to know that in having a session of Revive the Drive on homosexuality, we re not saying that it is THE one sin that is horrible and soul-destroying. It s among many. And all of these sins are serious. We have this series because this sin seems to be more celebrated and the pressure to celebrate it is intense in our culture. But he goes on to say, They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God's righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. And so, in the midst of this context of talking about homosexuality, there s also this expression of all manners of unrighteousness by which we express our rebellion against God. Daniel: John Boswell is a scholar that many of our listeners may have heard of. As far as I can tell in the research that I have done on this issue, no one before John Boswell, I believe he wrote in the late 80 s-early 90 s, had ever looked at Romans 1 and said, Paul is not condemning homosexuality. There were things they were doing with it and trying to explain it away, but no one was ever arguing that he wasn t actually condemning homosexuality. John Boswell has sort of approached Romans 1 kind of similar to how Matthew Vines does. D. B. Martin wrote an article entitled Heterosexism and the Interpretation of Romans 1:18-32. He kind of took some of these similar lines saying that he opposes homosexuality simply because it involves excessive desire. I think one of the ways, and we alluded to this in a previous session, previous edition of Revive the Drive, sometimes a person can say, Well, here in Romans 1, and it s what Matthew Vines would say and others. Paul is, in this cultural context, he s against homosexuality, but that doesn t mean that homosexual marriage is wrong, because the way that it is expressed in this culture was a lustful expression, and so because it s expressed differently in our culture, it s not wrong. I think an analogy of that would be similar to what some people do with divorce. They say, Well, yeah, in general divorce is wrong in these contexts, but in my context, because of this aspect of how I feel Scripture says adultery is wrong, but it doesn t say adultery is wrong if you really care about the person. In other words, it doesn t expressly condemn my particular expression of this sin, and so therefore, it s not condemned in Scripture. Whereas we look at Romans 1 and say, You know what? Romans 1 is all-encompassing and any type of expression of homosexuality you wish to engage in violates this overarching prohibition against homosexuality. And I think that becomes more clear as we look at some of the other New Testament passages.
Ritch: Yes. And there s another professor of religion at Case Western University who also communicates some of these very ideas that you mentioned. At the end, he writes, Paul does not understand genetics and sexual orientation the way we understand it now as something much more than a choice. He s ultimately giving away everything that he s been arguing about in this text. Ultimately, he s struggling with the text and even the bare words make it difficult for him. He says, Well, Paul just doesn t understand sexual orientation the way we do. Daniel: It s kind of like a back-up argument. I m saying that Paul s not saying what we think he s saying. But even if he did, he doesn t understand. Ritch: And you know, he s right. Paul doesn t understand sexual orientation the way he does. Art: Oftentimes you ll hear that Paul was the only one that spoke on this. Obviously, Peter and Jude mentioned it as well, as we referenced before. But there s often the argument that Paul and Jesus were not on the same page in this debate because Jesus never really said anything. And I believe that we need to give heed to what Jesus says in Matthew 19. Ritch, you referenced it before in an earlier discussion. As Jesus is being pressed on His view of divorce, Jesus again sets the pattern for the image of God and God s design for male and female when he says in verses 4-6 of Matthew 19, Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate. So I believe that Jesus did speak to this discussion by laying down God s design for marital union by reminding us of what God had done in the beginning. Ritch: Sure. And anytime Jesus spoke about sexual immorality it was this broad, general word that described all forms. And every 1 st century Jewish person they talked to would understand all those forms that were comprised within that one statement about sexual immorality. So for instance, with the argument that Jesus didn t expressly condemn homosexuality, you d say well he didn t expressly condemn incest or child molestation or a host of other kinds of sexual perversions that Leviticus talks about. And yet, a lack of specific reference to homosexuality is not a failure on His part. It was understood by the audience at the time. Art: Right! That s good! Daniel: Well, the other passages, and we may just touch on these very quickly. 1 Timothy chapter 1 addresses the issue of homosexuality, a list condemning those who are lawless. He talks about the lawless the disobedience of 1 Timothy 1:10. The sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality And then in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, you have this list of, he says, Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. (verses 9-10) The argument that some make as they come to these texts is that the word homosexual isn t a literal translation of what he is describing there. Unfortunately for that argument, a literal translation is even more graphic in describing what is
taking place here. Men who are lying in bed with other men. And so, it seems pretty clear even if Paul wasn t using the same terminology that we do, that he is describing this practice and denying that it s an orientation. Ritch: The standard, classic, accepted Greek dictionary, Arndt and Gingrich states this word. First to a male who practices homosexuality, was the use of this word in extra-biblical literature of the time? So again, it s not a dictionary that has any particular axe to grind on this subject. It s just recognizing this was what this word meant in extra-biblical literature during the time the New Testament was written. And I do think that it s important to notice as we look at 1 Timothy, 1 Corinthians and Romans, that the issue of homosexuality is brought up, where in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, it s not expressly stated. And I believe it s because who is the audience that is hearing Jesus, for instance? Well, it s Jewish people who understood biblical sexual morality vs. those in Corinth, those in Rome. They had this very problem, and so Paul felt the need to specifically reference it because this very problem was a specific issue in his day. Art: I think there s several beautiful things about 1 Corinthians 6 that are worthy of note. The first being that homosexuality is among other sins, both sexual and non-sexual that are practices prohibited or prohibiting one from entering the kingdom. And again, we talk about the fact that salvation and the gospel severs the stronghold of sin over the practice of the one believing it. And so that s the first thing for us to note. It s that homosexuality is among other sins that are condemnable and we need to remember that as the church. But we also need to remember the rest of this passage where Paul says, Such were some of you. (verse 11) In other words, there were homosexuals, there were those who had formerly practiced same sex union in the church at Corinth who had, as Paul says, Such were some of you, but you were washed. In other words, they were forgiven. They were cleansed by the blood of Christ. And he says, but you were sanctified. In other words, that means set apart. But you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God. And so, there were those who were formerly immoral people, some homosexual practicers who had been saved and now they were no longer practicing. They had been forgiven. They had tasted the grace of God and they had been set apart for God s glory. And what a great message for anyone listening that may be struggling with same sex attraction. In the Gospel is not only forgiveness, but the power, the indwelling power, to overcome those temptations to sin. Ritch: And the church is filled with people whose past was engaged in all kinds of sins. And you know, it s been said that the ground at the foot of the cross is level. We come there on our knees and unworthy beggars. Daniel: Let s develop that a little bit at the next session too, this idea of former sinners. I think one of the real weaknesses of the pro-homosexual movement is it s kind of a biological determinism that I can only operate in a certain way. I think that s a really interesting thing to delve into further. Ritch: Alright! Well, thanks again for listening to Revive the Drive. We trust this has been an encouragement and a help to you. May God bless you!