Is Homosexuality Still a Sin?
What does the Bible Say about Homosexuality?
By Scott Rohter
What does the Bible say about homosexuality? What did Jesus say when certain religious leaders brought him a woman caught in the act of adultery? After first reminding her self-righteous accusers that they were all sinners too, Jesus then turned his attention to the woman and he said, “Go and sin no more.” Jesus told the woman who was caught in the act of adultery to, “Go and sin no more!”
Why does the New Testament not have very much to say on the subject of homosexuality? My answer to you is simple…. Why do you think that it should have a lot to say about homosexuality? Why do you assume that homosexuality was either so rampant in ancient Judea and Samaria, or so prevalent that it required Jesus to say anything about it.? Why do you think that homosexuality presented such a major problem, or that it posed such a great threat to the inhabitants of Israel in the first century that Jesus had to even address it?
Jesus was concerned with ministering to the actual needs of the people, and not with addressing things that really didn’t matter, or didn’t exist. Since homosexuality was such a rare sin back in those times in that part of the world, why would you presume that Jesus would spend a whole lot of time talking about it?
The Israelites of the first century still had a pretty good sense of right and wrong, and they knew what shame was too, unlike many people in America and across the world today who have no concept of shame or morality. Therefore it would have been extremely difficult to even find two homosexuals in ancient Israel, more less to find two homosexuals engaged in their indecent act of sodomy. Homosexuality was a sin that while we know it existed, nevertheless it was almost unheard of in Israel in Jesus day… If it did occur then it was in going on in secret, and not paraded down the streets of San Francisco in broad daylight, or trumpeted from the political mountaintops of Washington D.C. like it is today.
Homosexuality really wasn’t a big issue in Jesus’ day within Jewish culture. But what would Jesus have really said to a pair of gay men caught in their indecent act of sodomy, or two lesbian women for that matter? He would have said exactly the same thing that he said to the woman who was caught in the act of adultery…. He would have forgiven their past sins if they were truly sorry, and he would have told them to ”Go and sin no more.”
Finally let’s take a good look at what the Apostle Paul had to say about homosexuality in the Book of Romans. Since much of the words in the New Testament were actually written by the Apostle Paul as he journeyed through the Greek and Roman World it is good that we look at what he had to say about homosexuality as he encountered it in Greek and Roman culture. “Wherefore God gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves… For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections. Even the women did change the natural use (of the man) into that which is against nature. And likewise the man 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 for their error which was meet… (Therefore) God gave them over to a reprobate mind to do those things which are not convenient… They which commit such things are worthy of death, yet they not only continue to do these things, but they have pleasure in others who do them also” – Romans chapter 1 versus 24-32.
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