Less and More about Homosexuality
Here are a couple of things Christians ought to keep in mind about homosexuality.
First, Christians ought to think a little less of homosexuality. In many discussions where sins get a ranking, homosexuality ends up number one on the list. That conclusion is misguided. There is a strong word used specifically in the Old Testament to emphasize the gravity of some sins, and homosexuality is one of them. “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination” (Leviticus 18:22). But the same word is also used to describe fraud: “Divers weights are an abomination unto the LORD; and a false balance is not good” (Proverbs 20:23); and to identify the idols which so easily distracted Israel (Deuteronomy 7:25-26). So the search for homosexuality’s uniqueness as a sin turns to the New Testament, where it receives special attention in the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Roman believers:
For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet (Romans 1:26-27).
But the point in that passage is not at all that homosexuality is the worst of all sins, somehow the culmination of all other sins over time. Rather, as Paul uses it in Romans 1, it is the epitome of sin, the perfect example of people paying attention to the wrong object; as if to say people should be drawn to worship God rather than themselves (creation), just as they should be drawn to relationships with “others” rather than “sames”. Realizing the place of homosexuality throughout scripture should help followers of Jesus neither to exaggerate its significance nor to underestimate its gravity. It is condemned outright–just as every other grave act of disobedience.
But that realization also sets the stage for the second point: that followers ought to think a bit more of homosexuality than they do. It is important for more reasons than just sexuality, as this previous post indicates. That post covers a few details. Suffice it for here to say only these things. A Christian perspective always includes purpose defined by origin. Genesis 2:18 makes it perfectly clear that the male-female relationship originates as a complementary one. That is, women complete men by opposition and, by definition, men complete women in the same way. But since origin is intentional when there is a Creator, that complementarity implies the purpose of and need for gender opposition. Simply put, the relationship between a man and a woman is a relationship in which each learns to respect, value, and even sacrifice on behalf of the other. It is in this way (intentionally linked to heterosexuality from the moment of creation) that human sexuality serves the purpose of God to draw people to Him. When the complementary “other-ness” of sexuality is lost, so is its value as part of the creation revealing “what can be known of God” (Romans 1:20). It is also this sacrifice and commitment of “each” to the “other” which allows Paul’s statements in Ephesians 5:21ff to be a description of the way things really are, rather than just a literary metaphor.
21 Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God. 22 Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord…. 25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it;… 31 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. 32 This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. 33 Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.
Notice how the passage refers to how each must submit to other in verse 21 and the reference to the creation account in verse 31.
So what is the less and more of it? Homosexuality is as detrimental to the message of God as idolatry and fraud. Enough said.
