What does jesus say about homosexuality
What the New Testament Says about Homosexuality
The Fourth R Volume May-June
Mainline Christian denominations in this country are bitterly divided over the question of homosexuality. For this reason it is significant to ask what light, if any, the New Testament sheds on this controversial issue. Most people apparently assume that the New Testament expresses strong disagreement to homosexuality, but this simply is not the case. The six propositions that follow, considered cumulatively, lead to the decision that the New Testament does not provide any direct guidance for understanding and making assessments about homosexuality in the current world.
Proposition 1: Strictly speaking, the New Testament says nothing at all about homosexuality.
There is not a single Greek synonyms or phrase in the entire New Testament that should be translated into English as “homosexual” or “homosexuality.” In fact, the very notion of “homosexuality”—like that of “heterosexuality,” “bisexuality,” and even “sexual orientation”—is essentially a new concept that would simply own been unintelligible to
If homosexuality is a sin, why didn’t Jesus ever refer it?
Answer
Many who aid same-sex marriage and gay rights dispute that, since Jesus never mentioned homosexuality, He did not consider it to be sinful. After all, the argument goes, if homosexuality is bad, why did Jesus cure it as a non-issue?
It is technically true that Jesus did not specifically address homosexuality in the Gospel accounts; however, He did speak clearly about sexuality in general. Concerning marriage, Jesus stated, “At the beginning the Originator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a gentleman will leave his father and mother and be merged to his wife, and the two will become one flesh[.]’ So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has unified together, let no one separate” (Matthew –6). Here Jesus clearly referred to Adam and Eve and affirmed God’s intended design for marriage and sexuality.
For those who pursue Jesus, sexual practices are limited. Rather than take a permissive view of sexual immorality and divorce, Jesus affirmed that people are either to be s
The Bible on Homosexual Behavior
One way to argue against these passages is to make what I summon the “shellfish objection.” Keith Sharpe puts it this way: “Until Christian fundamentalists boycott shellfish restaurants, halt wearing poly-cotton T-shirts, and stone to death their wayward offspring, there is no obligation to heed to their diatribes about homosexuality being a sin” (The Gay Gospels, 21).
In other words, if we can disregard rules appreciate the ban on eating shellfish in Leviticus , then we should be allowed to disobey other prohibitions from the Vintage Testament. But this argument confuses the Old Testament’s temporary ceremonial laws with its permanent moral laws.
Here’s an analogy to support understand this distinction.
I recall two rules my mom gave me when I was young: hold her hand when I cross the street and don’t drink what’s under the sink. Today, I own to follow only the latter rule, since the former is no longer needed to protect me. In fact, it would now do me more harm than good.
Old Testament ritual/ceremonial laws were appreciate mom’s handholding rule. The rea
This article is part of the What Did Jesus Teach? series.
Silence Equals Support?
In a article for Slate online, Will Oremus asked a provocative question: Was Jesus a homophobe?1
The article was occasioned by a story about a lgbtq+ teenager in Ohio who was suing his tall school after school officials prohibited him from wearing a T-shirt that said, “Jesus Is Not a Homophobe.”
Oremus was less concerned about the legal issues of the story than he was about the accuracy of the utterance on the shirt. Oremus suggests that Jesus’s views on homosexuality were more inclusive than Paul’s. He writes,
While it’s reasonable to assume that Jesus and his fellow Jews in first-century Palestine would possess disapproved of gay sex, there is no write down of his ever having mentioned homosexuality, let alone expressed particular revulsion about it. . . . Never in the Bible does Jesus himself present an explicit prohibition of homosexuality.
Oremus seems to hint that since Jesus never explicitly mentioned homosexuality, he must not have been very concerned about it.
There are at least two reas