Sunday I will begin my preaching series on the significance and superiority of God's Word in a world growing increasingly darker and more confused.
One of the most vicious attacks from the secular culture against our Bible and beliefs is the assault against "traditional" marriage. In my study this week I came across this article written by a fellow pastor that is definitely worth the read because it defends the Christian perspective well and is representative of the fight we face.
5 Myths People Spread About Jesus, Sex and Gay Marriage
There’s an often-used
rationale in the culture with respect to the Bible and marriage that goes
something like this …
Many marriages, and many
aberrations of marriage, are described (not prescribed) in the Bible. So the
question that often gets asked is … “What about Jesus? What did He say about
marriage?”
This week, I watched a popular
“news” person tear into a Bible scholar on live TV with the assertion that
Jesus never said a single thing about homosexuality being a sin, followed by
the question, “So why are you saying that your view against gay marriage is
Christian (insert angry self-satisfied “I just owned you” look right here)?!”
Back in 2008, Newsweek writer Lisa Miller did a piece (edited in 2010) on this very issue where she
wrote (among other things) …
“ … the Bible and
Jesus say many important things about love and family, [but] neither explicitly
defines marriage as between one man and one woman.”
Miller says other things
in the article about Jesus and marriage too, like:
“Jesus himself was single
and preached an indifference to earthly attachments—especially family.”
“The biblical Jesus was—in
spite of recent efforts of novelists to paint him otherwise—emphatically
unmarried.”
“Jesus never mentions
homosexuality, but he roundly condemns divorce (leaving a loophole in some
cases for the husbands of unfaithful women).”
“Jesus reaches out to
everyone, especially those on the margins, and brings the whole Christian
community into his embrace. The Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest and author,
cites the story of Jesus revealing himself to the woman at the well—no matter
that she had five former husbands and a current boyfriend—as evidence of
Christ’s all-encompassing love.”
Quoting James Martin—a
Preist: “ … if Jesus were alive today, He would reach out especially to the
gays and lesbians among us, for Jesus does not want people to be lonely and
sad.”
For the rest of this post,
I want to interact with (and push back on) these ideas, though I invite your
interaction and dialogue about my conclusions in the comment section. There may
be much more that needs to be discussed.
1. Jesus never defined
marriage as one man, one woman.
When Jesus talked about
married people, he spoke of “a man … [and] … his wife” in Matthew 19:5 and Mark 10:7.
Jesus went on to use the
language “ … the two shall become one.”
Jesus quoted the text
of Genesis 2:24 as the foundation of His teaching on
marriage. This is the biblical doctrine of “origins.” Jesus even used
the clause “from the beginning it was not so” when talking about divorce.
What does this
mean? It means that in the teaching of Jesus, if you want to have a true
and pure understanding on the ideals of marriage, you go to “the beginning.”
This is also echoed by the
Apostle Paul in his teaching on marriage in the book of Ephesians 5:31.
What you have in Genesis is one man, one woman and a God-sanctified marriage
covenant that, according to Jesus, is intended to last a lifetime (Mat. 19:8).
2. Jesus never
specifically mentioned homosexuality in His teaching on marriage, so we should
not make a big deal about it either.
People love to do this
with Jesus. Unfortunately, it’s a logical fallacy, and it would be
incredibly inconsistent and even destructive to do this with zillions of other
things that Jesus doesn’t mention either.
Imagine someone doing that
to you. You didn’t say anything about one element of a subject, so that means
that you don’t care or have an opinion about it.
The fact is, Jesus doesn’t
have to disaffirm anything in order to affirm God’s original intent for
marriage.
To suggest that he does
would be kind of like a child asking, “Hey mom, what’s for dinner?” Mom
answers, “Roast beef, but NOT turkey, not pizza, not pudding, not sub
sandwiches, not corn on the cob, uh, not chili—oh
goodness, I don’t want to leave anything out—um, not lasagna. I
sure hope I mention everything that is NOT for dinner so you
won’t be confused about what IS for dinner.”
By affirming “what was
from the beginning,” Jesus is defining marriage in God’s ideal terms!
Jesus doesn’t have to disaffirm anything (which would be impossible since there
are so many aberrations and the list just keeps growing). He only has to affirm
one thing—and Jesus did that.
So the idea that because
Jesus didn’t mention homosexuality somehow means that it isn’t a point of human
brokenness is a fallacy.
Another key observation is
that any time Jesus mentions a husband, He mentions a wife. And any time He
mentions a wife, He mentions a husband.
This should provide the
eager seeker of ”what Jesus taught” valuable insight. He seemed to believe
that a husband belongs with a wife, and a wife belongs with a husband. A
husband is a “he”—and a wife is a “she.”
3. Jesus was never
married, so He was obviously indifferent to marriage.
The argument goes like
this: Jesus, by not getting married, was minimizing the relationship in favor
of a more general value of ”love.” However, in a very general
sense, Jesus explained why He was not married (and why, for that matter, he
didn’t do a lot of other things during His lifetime):
For the son of man has
come to seek and save that which was lost. —Lk.
19:10
For I have come down from
heaven not to do my will but to do the will of Him who sent me. —Jn. 6:38
According to Paul’s
teaching, marriage for Jesus (and even himself) would have been
a distraction because …
… a married man is
concerned about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife. —I Cor. 7:33
It is true that during His
human, earthy ministry, Jesus did not get married. But interestingly, there is
New Testament imagery of Jesus being a “bridegroom” (male person in a marriage
relationship) who is preparing to come for His bride (female person in a
marriage relationship).
Paul the Apostle said that
the human marriage relationship of one man and one woman is the mysterious
symbol of the ultimate consummation of the ages—Jesus (the bridegroom/male) and
the church (the bride/female).
There can be no more clear
indication of God’s ideal design for marriage than the imagery and symbolism
tied to the culmination of the ages in Jesus’ relationship to the church.
Paul’s teaching in
Ephesians actually stresses beyond doubt that a one-man + one-woman relationship
based on love, submission and respect is the best analogy of the kind of
relationship Jesus wants with His church. Indeed, it is the kind of
relationship He will have with her for
eternity.
4. Jesus reached out to
and accepted people into His circle who did not fit the “traditional marriage”
model.
Two case-studies of this
position are often brought up when talking about Jesus and marriage.
The first
is the Samaritan woman at the well (see John 4). The second is the woman caught
in adultery (see Jn. 8:1-11).
What can we make of these
two stories? Is it something like …
Jesus speaking: “Hey,
there’s a serial-divorcee, and an adulteress. I’m going to invite them to
become members of my circle of people just so I can show people that I accept
people like this.”
Yes! The truth is that
Jesus was reaching out to them, but not without a
call to leave their sexual/relational dysfunction behind them.
It’s true that “Jesus
accepted people,” but remember He also called people to accept Him as LORD
of their lives, which is initially done through repenting of the sins that pull
us outside the bounds of God’s created order for our lives, whatever those sins
might be (including adultery and homosexuality).
One need only look at how
the first Apostles called people to Jesus in order to affirm this. The first
evangelistic message in the Bible culminates with the words, “Repent … every
one of you … ” (Acts 2:38).
What’s the point
here? Simply this: Jesus reached out to two women with similar types of
sexual/relational dysfunction in their lives.
He promised that He loved
them, He forgave them, He could fulfill them, and that they should turn away
from their sin as a true evidence of their desire to be in relationship with
Him. This is the opposite of a belief that Jesus wants a church full of
people who go on sinning, who embrace their sexual sin as normal and who can
comfort themselves by being accepted by Jesus, who does not condemn them.
Nothing could be further
from the truth. Jesus called them to Himself, in part, by calling
them out of their particular brand of sexual sin (see
also 1 Cor. 6:9-11).
5. These are the kind of
people Jesus would reach out to if He were here today.
I could not agree
more! And Jesus would do with them just what he did with the Samaritan
woman and the adulteress.
He would call them to
Himself by calling them out of their sin and into a new life. Again, this is
echoed in what the early Apostles understood when they themselves called people
to follow Jesus (see 1 Tim. 1:8-11 for
an example).
How did Jesus define reaching
out to people?
He said, “I have not come
to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (see Luke 5:32).
Yes, Jesus would reach out
to every kind of person. He would tell them of God’s love, and He would call
them to repent of their sins. He would call murderers, thieves, liars,
adulterers, homosexuals, gossips and racists.
And He would lead
them out of their sin and into a new life with Him.
In this sense, we could
say that our churches should be full of ex-sinners who have become
Jesus-followers!
