Homosexuality and the Bible

The two angels came to Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gateway of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them, and bowed down with his face to the ground. ²He said, “Please, my lords, turn aside to your servant’s house and spend the night, and wash your feet; then you can rise early and go on your way.” They said, “No; we will spend the night in the square.” ³But he urged them strongly; so they turned aside to him and entered his house; and he made them a feast, and baked unleavened bread, and they ate. ⁴But 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; ⁵and they called to Lot, “Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us, so that we may know them.” ⁶Lot went out of the door to the men, shut the door after him,⁷and said, “I beg you, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. ⁸Look, I have two daughters who have not known a man; let me bring them out to you, and do to them as you please; only do nothing to these men, for they have come under the shelter of my roof.” ⁹But they replied, “Stand back!” And they said, “This fellow came here as an alien, and he would play the judge! Now we will deal worse with you than with them.” Then they pressed hard against the man Lot, and came near the door to break it down. ¹⁰But the men inside reached out their hands and brought Lot into the house with them, and shut the door. ¹¹And they struck with blindness the men who were at the door of the house, both small and great, so that they were unable to find the door.

To use Genesis 19 as a means to condemn homosexuality makes as little sense as using 2 Sam. 13 as a means to condemn heterosexuality.

¹⁹You shall not approach a woman to uncover her nakedness while she is in her menstrual uncleanness. ²⁰You shall not have sexual relations with your kinsman’s wife, and defile yourself with her. ²¹You shall not give any of your offspring to sacrifice them to Molech, and so profane the name of your God: I am the LORD. ²²You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. ²³You shall not have sexual relations with any animal and defile yourself with it, nor shall any woman give herself to an animal to have sexual relations with it: it is perversion.

¹⁰If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death. ¹¹The man who lies with his father’s wife has uncovered his father’s nakedness; both of them shall be put to death; their blood is upon them. ¹²If a man lies with his daughter-in-law, both of them shall be put to death; they have committed perversion, their blood is upon them. ¹³If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death; their blood is upon them. ¹⁴If a man takes a wife and her mother also, it is depravity; they shall be burned to death, both he and they, that there may be no depravity among you. ¹⁵If a man has sexual relations with an animal, he shall be put to death; and you shall kill the animal. ¹⁶If a woman approaches any animal and has sexual relations with it, you shall kill the woman and the animal; they shall be put to death, their blood is upon them.

¹⁶Then at evening there was an old man coming from his work in the field. The man was from the hill country of Ephraim, and he was residing in Gibeah. (The people of the place were Benjaminites.) ¹⁷When the old man looked up and saw the wayfarer in the open square of the city, he said, “Where are you going and where do you come from?” ¹⁸He answered him, “We are passing from Bethlehem in Judah to the remote parts of the hill country of Ephraim, from which I come. I went to Bethlehem in Judah; and I am going to my home. Nobody has offered to take me in. ¹⁹We your servants have straw and fodder for our donkeys, with bread and wine for me and the woman and the young man along with us. We need nothing more.” ²⁰The old man said, “Peace be to you. I will care for all your wants; only do not spend the night in the square.” ²¹So he brought him into his house, and fed the donkeys; they washed their feet, and ate and drank.

       ²²While they were enjoying themselves, the men of the city, a perverse lot, surrounded the house, and started pounding on the door. They said to the old man, the master of the house, “Bring out the man who came into your house, so that we may have intercourse with him.”²³And the man, the master of the house, went out to them and said to them, “No, my brothers, do not act so wickedly. Since this man is my guest, do not do this vile thing. ²⁴Here are my virgin daughter and his concubine; let me bring them out now. Ravish them and do whatever you want to them; but against this man do not do such a vile thing.” ²⁵But the men would not listen to him. So the man seized his concubine, and put her out to them. They wantonly raped her, and abused her all through the night until the morning. And as the dawn began to break, they let her go.²⁶As morning appeared, the woman came and fell down at the door of the man’s house where her master was, until it was light.

       ²⁷In the morning her master got up, opened the doors of the house, and when he went out to go on his way, there was his concubine lying at the door of the house, with her hands on the threshold. ²⁸”Get up,” he said to her, “we are going.” But there was no answer. Then he put her on the donkey; and the man set out for his home. ²⁹When he had entered his house, he took a knife, and grasping his concubine he cut her into twelve pieces, limb by limb, and sent her throughout all the territory of Israel.³⁰Then he commanded the men whom he sent, saying, “Thus shall you say to all the Israelites, ‘Has such a thing ever happened since the day that the Israelites came up from the land of Egypt until this day? Consider it, take counsel, and speak out.’”

¹When David had finished speaking to Saul, the soul of Jonathan was bound to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.²Saul took him [David] that day and would not let him return to his father’s house.³Then Jonathan made a covenant with David, because he loved him as his own soul. ⁴Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that he was wearing, and gave it to David, and his armor, and even his sword and his bow and his belt.

1 Samuel 20

¹⁷Thus Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David, saying, “May the LORD seek out the enemies of David.” ¹⁸ Jonathan made David swear again by his love for him; for he loved him as he loved his own life. …⁴¹As soon as the boy had gone, David rose from beside the stone heap and prostrated himself with his face to the ground. He bowed three times, and they kissed each other, and wept with each other; David wept the more.

2 Samuel 1

²⁵How the mighty have fallen in the midst of the battle! Jonathan lies slain upon your high places.²⁶I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; greatly beloved were you to me; your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.

It is common in North America to sexualize relationships. In other cultures men may occasionally walk about holding hands as an indication of their affection and trust in each other without any implication of sexual or romantic love. If North Americans see a romantic or sexual relationship in the relationship between David and Jonathan, it is due more to society’s influence than to the actual relationship between David and Jonathan. If modern readers see “sexual relationship” in this story, it is because they have sexual things on their mind.

If David and Jonathan’s relationship was sexual, that may explain Saul’s words when he reacted in outrage, “You son of a perverse, rebellious woman! Do I not know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your own shame, and to the shame of your mother’s nakedness?”(1 Sam. 20:30). Nowhere in the Bible do we find such strong language celebrating the love between persons of the same gender.

As the Human Sexuality in the Christian Life study guide makes clear, we are sexual beings. Thus, this relationship had sexual overtones even if David and Jonathan did not engage in certain kinds of sexual activity with each other. Nevertheless, “sexual activity” is not important here; what is important is that David and Jonathan had a deeply satisfying and intimate love for each other that is explicitly compared to the love experienced between a man and a woman. At no point does the text imply that this love was improper or that God disapproved of it.

¹⁵“If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. ¹⁶But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. ¹⁷If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.¹⁸Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. ¹⁹Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. ²⁰For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

In the face of a liberal and relativistic society that accepts no absolutes, this passage makes it clear that it is the responsibility of the church to engage in church discipline — not for the sake of the purity of the church, but for the sake of the calling of the church.

³Some Pharisees came to him, and to test him they asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause?” ⁴He answered, “Have you not read that the one who made them at the beginning `made them male and female,’ <sup>5</sup>and said, `For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?⁶So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” ⁷They said to him, “Why then did Moses command us to give a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her?” ⁸He said to them, “It was because you were so hard-hearted that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. ⁹And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for unchastity, and marries another commits adultery.”

       ¹⁰His disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” ¹¹But he said to them, “Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it is given. ¹²For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.”

       A possible paraphrase of v. 12: “Some people have no choice about expressing their sexuality genitally; for some that choice has been taken away by other people; and still others have chosen to refrain from such ‘fulfillment’ for the sake of God’s reign.”

Protestants emphasize that the main purpose of sexual intercourse within marriage is the expression of mutual love, regardless of actual or potential procreation. Consistent with this emphasis is the use of birth control and the approval of homosexual intercourse (within a covenanted relationship) as an expression of love untied to procreation. Thus, the traditional Protestant acceptance of birth control fits with the argument that sexuality is blessed by God totally apart from whether it results in — or could result in — offspring.

       A possible paraphrase of v. 12: “Some people have no choice about expressing their sexuality genitally; for some that choice has been taken away by other people; and still others have chosen to refrain from such ‘fulfillment’ for the sake of God’s reign.”

⁹About noon the next day, as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to pray. ¹⁰He became hungry and wanted something to eat; and while it was being prepared, he fell into a trance. ¹¹He saw the heaven opened and something like a large sheet coming down, being lowered to the ground by its four corners. ¹²In it were all kinds of four-footed creatures and reptiles and birds of the air.¹³Then he heard a voice saying, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat.” ¹⁴But Peter said, “By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything that is profane or unclean.” ¹⁵The voice said to him again, a second time, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” ¹⁶This happened three times, and the thing was suddenly taken up to heaven. 

       ¹⁷Now while Peter was greatly puzzled about what to make of the vision that he had seen, suddenly the men sent by Cornelius appeared. They were asking for Simon’s house and were standing by the gate.¹⁸They called out to ask whether Simon, who was called Peter, was staying there. ¹⁹While Peter was still thinking about the vision, the Spirit said to him, “Look, three men are searching for you. ²⁰Now get up, go down, and go with them without hesitation; for I have sent them.”

In this case, it took an “act of God” to get Peter to reconsider what he always knew to be true. Here God commands Peter to reconsider something that he had believed deeply for all of his life: that purity was central to God’s concern and that for him to be accepted by God, he must avoid contact with Gentiles. This was not an easy lesson for Peter to learn, but God was patient.

This may not be an easy lesson for today’s church to learn, but perhaps God will be patient with us too.

This passage is significant because it represents a Spirit-inspired paradigm-changing event that almost single-handedly reinterprets long-held convictions about the will of God clearly expressed in the Bible.

¹⁸For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth.¹⁹For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. ²⁰Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse;²¹for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened. ²²Claiming to be wise, they became fools; ²³and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.

       ²⁴Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves, ²⁵because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

       ²⁶For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, ²⁷and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.

       ²⁸And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind and to things that should not be done. ²⁹They were filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, ³⁰slanderers, God-haters, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, ³¹foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. ³²They know God’s decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die — yet they not only do them but even applaud others who practice them.

The fact that the term homosexuality as such does not appear in the New Testament says nothing about its ethical propriety. There simply was no term available in Greek that referred to homosexuality specifically as a loving, committed relationship between equals. Because of this, one cannot make much of the absence of such a term. The proper interpretation of Romans 1 is that Paul is using homosexuality as such as an example of the “ungodliness and wickedness” of humanity.

⁹Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, ¹⁰thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers-none of these will inherit the kingdom of God. ¹¹And this is what some of you used to be. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.