A magazine article published by the Church of Scotland says that the gospels don’t speak to homosexuality: [… there are many who continue to be bound by a few Biblical verses – none of them in the Gospels – about homosexuality, nowadays understood as a matter of genetics rather than lifestyle."  This is nothing more than the babbling of a Bible illiterate (by accident or design) who makes no effort “to rightly divide” the Word of Truth as Paul told Timothy (II Timothy 2:15). If by accident, then the writer needs to study; if by design the writer knows the unlearned will accept the false teaching. It is even more interesting when the appointment of a homosexual minister in that church is considered.

The one truth that so many overlook is that the Old Testament was written to God’s people of that time, the Jews, also known as the children of Israel. Their sole reason for existence was to preach and teach the people that a messiah would be sent to this earth to save them. The messiah would be a sinless, perfect being, the Son of God, and by his very nature, he would be the essence of purity, without spot or blemish.

In the article, stoning, slavery, polygamy and homosexual matters addressed in the Book of Leviticus were mentioned. But the author missed the point of Leviticus in the foregoing issues. Those acts or behaviors that would require stoning would ruin the purity which God demands of all his people. A people practicing deliberate sin couldn’t bring a sinless messiah into the world. To claim that people wouldn’t publicly advocate stoning and other behaviors, but teach against homosexuality is missing the point of God’s message. In addition, to write that the Gospels don’t address homosexuality is at best ignorance of the Bible, or at the worst, the author is totally dishonest in order to push an agenda.

First, the Bible tells us that sex when engaged in by the unmarried is fornication.  Second, sex when engaged in with others outside of the marriage bond is adultery. Both the Old Testament and the New address both behaviors, and in both, the issue is purity. The penalty for such conduct in the Old was death; in the New, Jesus taught forgiveness instead of stoning as the Pharisees wanted done to the woman caught in the act of adultery. Jesus said go and sin no more.  The letters of Paul teach forsaking the old and living the new. Third, slavery was addressed by Paul when he said to treat the slaves properly, since many of them had become Christians and worked for Christian slave masters. That would mean that sex with slaves was off limits as it was in the Old Testament. To equate slavery with sinful sexual behaviors is disingenuous: illicit sexual behavior is sin and slavery was not. Additionally, slavery amongst Christians fell of its own weight as the years sped by.

 Now let’s go to the Gospels and address homosexual behavior. First, the Gospels contain the history of what Jesus did before the cross and His resurrection as he ministered to the Jews. Second, he came to fulfill the law, which he did without missing a jot or tittle of the law’s demands of perfection. As such, he knew, as did the Jews of the time, that homosexual behavior was forbidden. He most certainly taught against it when he said, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, 5  And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? 6  Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. (Matthew 19:4-6; confer with Mark 10:6-9)  The fact that Jesus stated God’s requirements for the male and female right from the beginning should be proof enough to kill the false teaching about homosexual behavior. (Confer with Genesis 2:20-24) And the sinfulness of homosexual conduct hasn’t been changed. (See Romans 1, and I Corinthians 6)

The false teaching of the author of that article is another example of those who try to twist the truth to fit their behaviors. Peter wrote of Paul’s devotions to Christ in II Peter 2:16 echoing Paul’s warning thusly: As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction. That should be warning enough to the false teachers that they face destruction.

There are always those who claim to know the Bible and all they prove is that they know not Jesus, and consequently they know not God and his holiness. In Sorting It Out, that is called Bible Ignorance.

© 04-19-2009 DEC