Christian Ethics and Homosexuality: Theology and Church Practice

In the last three entries in this series, I examined what Scripture has to say about homosexual behavior, and concluded that: 1) the Old Testament forbids all homosexual behavior among God’s people, 2) we have no reason at all to think that Jesus would have been in favor of modifying this Old Testament teaching, and 3) the apostle Paul forbids all homosexual behavior within the Church.  For some Christians, this is the end of the discussion; if Scripture says that homosexual behavior is wrong, then it is wrong.  However, there are a number of theological arguments some Christians have made, arguing that, in spite of Scripture’s prohibition of homosexual behavior, Christians should now tolerate monogamous, committed homosexual relationships within the Church.  We should examine such arguments with an open mind and evaluate whether they constitute a theologically sound reason for the Church approving of homosexual behavior today.  

The Leading of the Spirit

One argument for why the Church should approve of homosexual behavior today runs as follows: Yes, the Bible forbids homosexual behavior.  But the apostles, led by the Holy Spirit, decided to include Gentiles within the Church without requiring them to submit to the ethical requirements of circumcision and Torah observance.  In the same way, the Church today should include homosexuals within the Church without requiring them to submit to the ethical teachings of Scripture regarding homosexuality.  The apostles could see the Holy Spirit at work in the lives of Gentile Christians, and so decided to include them within God’s people without first requiring them to become Jews.  In the same way, we can see the Holy Spirit at work in the lives of homosexual Christians today, and so we should include them within the Church without first requiring them to give up their homosexuality.

This is an interesting argument.  However, it is deeply flawed.  The shift to including Gentiles within God’s people without requiring them to be circumcised was not something the Church just arbitrarily decided to do at some point in Church history.  Rather, the inclusion of Gentiles within God’s covenant people was the result of a decisive turning point in salvation history brought about by the work of Christ and the founding of the Church.  There is no such equivalent decisive turning point in salvation history today.  In fact we know for certain that we are living in “the last days” and there will be no such decisive turning point until Jesus comes again to inaugurate God’s New Creation.  Until that time comes, the New Testament is the normative and Authoritative guide for the entire age of the Church, just as the Torah was the normative and Authoritative guide for God’s people leading up to the coming of Jesus.  We are not apostles, and we do not have the Authority to overrule or overturn their Authoritative teachings on any point.  

Even if we could say that the Church has the Authority to modify apostolic teaching, we would need to hold an Ecumenical Council to do so, like the council the apostles held at Jerusalem to make a decision on the question of including Gentiles within the Church.  No such council has been held, and at present only a small minority within the global Church is in favor of overturning the teachings of Scripture and Church Tradition concerning the issue of homosexuality.  

As for the idea that the Holy Spirit can lead the Church to directly contradict Scripture, this is a quite dubious assertion.  The apostle’s decision to include Gentiles within the Church was based in direct, Divine revelation, and the teaching that the Church should include Gentiles is part of the New Testament Scripture itself, which is God’s Authoritative word.  We cannot possibly say that part of the Church today feeling that the Spirit is leading it to abandon Scriptural teaching on an important moral issue is equivalent to what God’s word teaches about the inclusion of Gentiles in God’s people in the age of the Church.  

Biblically, the Holy Spirit is not a rogue agent who tells us to reject the teachings of God’s word; rather, the Holy Spirit operates in close conjunction with God’s word, empowering the Church for obedience.  Church history shows that Christians are often very bad at discerning whether the “spirit” leading them to abandon Church tradition is the Holy Spirit or merely the “spirit of the age.”  The fact that the Christian movement to approve of homosexual behavior has only arisen in a historical context where the surrounding culture trivializes sexual sin and celebrates homosexual behavior should make us very suspicious of the claim that it is in fact the Holy Spirit leading this movement. 

The Church may look at the lives of homosexual Christians and see evidence of the Holy Spirit’s work in their lives, but this does not in any way prove that homosexual behavior is not sinful.  Very often, there are Christians who show evidence of being godly Christians in many aspects of their lives, but who also commit serious sins such as adultery or domestic violence.^[1]Two examples of this are the great Christian social activist Martin Luther King Jr., who committed adultery numerous times, and the great Christian theologian John Howard Yoder, who sexually molested … Continue reading  The Church is still required to condemn these sins and, if necessary, to discipline those who commit such sins, even if they show evidence of Godliness and holiness in many other aspects of their lives.

Even if it were the case that it is legitimate for the Church to override the clear teachings of the New Testament about sexual ethics in the middle of Church history, in order to justify such a change it would still be necessary to show that there is a theological trajectory in Scripture pointing in that direction, as the apostles did regarding Gentile inclusion. The apostolic Church’s inclusion of Gentiles into the Church was not a sudden, arbitrary decision; it was a logical, organic development of a theological trajectory that was already in place in the Old Testament Scriptures.  There is a clear trajectory from God’s promise to Abraham that all nations of the earth would be blessed through him (Gen 12:2-3), to the prophets’ declaration that one day all the nations of the world would come to learn the ways of the LORD (Isa 2:1-4; Micah 4:1-3), to the New Testament’s declaration that Gentiles can be included within God’s covenant people through union with the Messiah, without being circumcised.  In contrast, there is no indication anywhere in Scripture that God’s standards of sexual ethics will be relaxed.  On the contrary, the New Testament teaches much higher and stricter standards of sexual ethics than the Old Testament did, and Jesus clearly tells us that there will be no marriage at all in God’s future new creation (Matt 22:30; Mark 12:25; Luke Luke 20:34-36). Since the call for Christians to live out their identity as the firstfruits of God’s new creation is central and basic to New Testament ethics, and since all human beings will be celibate in God’s new creation, it is theologically absurd to suggest that the Holy Spirit is now telling the Church to abandon clear biblical teaching about sexual ethics just so some Christians will not have to be celibate. The clear trajectory of the teachings of Scripture about sexual ethics thus points in the exact opposite direction of it being reasonable for the Church to abandon the teachings of the Old and New Testaments about the immorality of homosexual behavior. 

Accommodating Same-Sex Marriage

Some Christians concede the point that homosexual behavior is incompatible with God’s intention for how human beings should express their sexuality, but argue that, in spite of this, Christians should tolerate committed, lifelong, monogamous homosexual relationships within the Church.  There are four main arguments they make in support of this.

One argument is that, if a Christian is exclusively same-sex attracted, and has strong sexual desires, it is better that they act on these desires within a committed relationship, rather than acting on them promiscuously. In response, Christians simply cannot agree with the assumption that giving in to one’s sexual desires is necessary and that celibacy is impossible.  There are many Christians who have strong sexual desires but who, for various reasons, never have the opportunity to marry; being exclusively same-sex attracted would be just one possible reason among many others.  All unmarried Christians, whatever the reason they are unable to marry is, are subject to the same ethical demand that they remain celibate.  It may be difficult, but these are the demands of Christian discipleship.  The Church cannot give its blessing on sinful behavior based on the rationale that it is “the lesser of two evils”; the Church must call its members to continuously seek to avoid all evil.

Another argument is that the Church sometimes blesses the marriages of people who are no longer able to have children, even though their marriage is incapable of fulfilling the procreative purpose of marriage; in the same way, the Church should sometimes bless committed homosexual relationships that are analogous to marriage, even though they do not fully conform to God’s intentions for marriage. In response, it is far from theologically certain that the Church should bless the marriages of people who are no longer able to have children.  To argue that, “We do this, so it must be right,” is highly dubious and fallacious.  In any case, homosexual relationships and childless heterosexual marriages are not really parallel. When Genesis 2 speaks about the origin of marriage, it teaches that marriage is ontologically grounded in the complementarity of the two sexes, without even mentioning procreation. Procreation, then, is merely one aspect of the complementarity of male and female in which marriage is grounded, a complementarity which is lacking in same-sex relationships. We have no explicit Scriptural guidance about whether Christians past childbearing age should marry. In contrast, Scripture is very explicit in teaching that homosexual behavior is a serious sin. 

Another argument is that many churches have become more tolerant of divorce and remarriage, in spite of the fact that Jesus forbids it, so the Church should do the same regarding homosexual relationships. This argument is even more fallacious than the previous argument, but is even more dubious and problematic.  The Lord Jesus Christ very clearly taught that divorce and remarriage is adultery (Luke 16:18), something which the Church absolutely cannot tolerate.  That some Churches have begun to compromise on this important moral issue is egregiously sinful and unfaithful.  It certainly provides no basis for the idea that the Church should be even more sinful and unfaithful by compromising on another important moral issue.

Another argument is that it is demonstrable that committed homosexual relationships result in the development of virtues and other positive goods, and so the Church should bless them rather than leaving same-sex attracted Christians without the opportunity to achieve these goods. In response, it is certainly true that homosexual relationships can result in the development of virtues and other positive goods.  However, the same could be said of incestuous marriages.  For that matter, the same could be said of pious devotion to false gods.  This does not mean that incest and idolatry should be tolerated within the Church.  Same-sex attracted Christians may have to give up certain goods by not being in a sexual relationsip.  However, they can realize many of the relational goods we typically consider unique to marriage by forming committed, lifelong friendships and by being part of a Church community that actually takes seriously the fact that the Church is supposed to be a spiritual family that creates even stronger bonds than biological family.^[2]See Spiritual Friendship: Finding Love in the Church as a Celibate Gay Christian by Wesley Hill (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2015).

Conclusion

God’s word clearly teaches that homosexual behavior is forbidden within the Church.  There is no good theological reason to abandon this Scriptural teaching or to compromise on it by tolerating certain expressions of homosexual behavior within the Church.  While the Church clearly needs to do a much better job loving and supporting its members who experience same-sex attraction, there is no reason for the Church to modify its traditional teaching that homosexual behavior is always wrong and is forbidden for Christians.  

So, why spend all this time discussing a sin which is only a serious temptation for a small fraction of Christians?  Because the controversy over whether the Church should approve of homosexual behavior is the tip of the iceberg that reveals how most modern Western Christians are not actually committed to denying themselves in order to live faithfully as obedient disciples of Jesus Christ.  As David Kinnnaman comments, “When the biblical sexual ethic calls our sisters and brothers attracted to the same sex to deny themselves, they model how the wider church already ought to be living.  Instead of singling out this one area of self-denial, what if we raise the stakes for everyone to live costly obedience?  The lives of single and celibate Christians give testimony to the kind of self-denial many of us have forgotten.  Reflecting on their lives–on the people we love–we ought to be convicted and pressed to consider, What appetites am I denying myself for Jesus’s sake?  Is discipleship costing me anything?”^[3]Good Faith: Being a Christian When Society Thinks You’re Irrelevant and Extreme (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2016).  

We should not overemphasize how significant this one issue is in the big scheme of Christian ethics.  But neither should we say that holding to the biblical position on this issue does not matter.  It matters because it is a paradigmatic example of how being a Christian necessarily means living a life of chastity, self-denial, and costly obedience.

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