People to Be Loved: Why Homosexuality Is Not Just an Issue

by Preston M. Sprinkle

If the gospel is not good news for gay people, then it’s not good news.

You may find it shocking, but most scholars who have written books about homosexuality in the last forty years have concluded that the Bible does not condemn consensual, monogamous, same-sex relations.4 The debate is not about what the Bible says. That much is clear. The debate is over what the Bible means.

But all evangelical Christians agree that the Bible stands over tradition as our ultimate authority.

If the church is ever going to solve this issue, it needs to stop seeing it as an “issue.” Homosexuality is not an issue to be solved; it’s about people who need to love and be loved.

What would happen if Christians were known more by their radical, otherworldly love for gay people than their stance against gay sex?

need to be thoroughly biblical because we desire to thoroughly love people.

The phrase suitable helper certainly sounds sexist, as if women were created to serve men in all of their wants and needs. But the word translated “helper” (Hebrew ezer) is almost always used of military help and it’s most often applied to God’s actions toward Israel throughout the Old Testament.4 Since God is called Israel’s “helper,” the word certainly doesn’t imply inferiority or weakness.

Together, the word means something like “as opposite him” or “like against him.” It’s a complex word that captures how it is that Eve can qualify as the perfect partner for Adam.

the church as a singular entity—a bride and not a harem—

Clearly, Jesus’ love toward the church is mirrored in a husband’s love for his wife, and the wife’s submission to her husband is mirrored in the church’s submission to Christ. Since Paul roots marital role distinctions in sexual distinctions, I’m not sure what this would look like in same-sex marriages. The relationship between Christ and the church requires a fundamental difference; a man marrying a man would seem to reflect the church marrying the church or Christ marrying

But I don’t think this passage is as chauvinistic as some people think. Yes, Paul says that wives should submit to their husbands. But he also says that all Christians should submit to each other in Ephesians 5:21.16 If submission means inequality,

then are we all unequal since we are to submit to one another? Plus, compared to other marriage manuals of Paul’s day, this passage is radically egalitarian.17 Paul never says that wives are inferior to their husbands, and the overwhelming emphasis in the passage is on the husband’s self-giving, self-sacrificial, unconditional service toward his wife. No one in Paul’s day would have read this passage and thought he was demeaning women. They would have been shocked, actually, at his excessive demands of the husband.

The Christian view of submission assumes equality, not hierarchy. That is, the one doing the submitti...

Jesus rarely started a relationship with the law, and he never offered his “stance” on political issues.

It wasn’t because their behavior was affirmed. It was because their humanity was affirmed.

If we race to form a conclusion too quickly, this only shows that we already had our minds made up before we study the authoritative Word. In which case, the Scriptures are not all that authoritative. Just a handy supplement.

The reference to “sexual impurity” here is not limited to same-sex relations. It’s a general statement that includes sex outside of marriage, adultery, rape, and all sorts of other sexual sins committed by both gay and straight people. So if you’re

straight, let’s make sure you don’t read the next couple verses with a massive log sticking out of your eye. There’s a good chance you’ve already violated Romans 1 even before you get to verse 26:

The entire context of Romans 1–3 is important for understanding these verses. Paul launches into an argument that

sweeps from Romans 1:18 all the way to 3:26, which basically says we’re all damned without Jesus. Literally.

it’s not about being affirming or nonaffirming; it’s about being biblical. It’s about submitting to God’s Word even if it critiques and offends what you’ve always believed.

What’s the point? It seems that Paul draws attention to God’s creation of humans into different biological sexes. Therefore, Paul considers same-sex relations to be a departure from God’s intention in creation—

This can’t be anything other than intentional. Paul pens Romans 1:23 with an eye on Genesis 1:26. His logic is not too

far from Genesis 1, where God commissions mankind (male and female) to rule over the earth. In Romans 1, Paul says that instead of worshiping God by ruling over the earth, they have idolized the things of the earth and turned their back on their Creator.

what is wrong with same-sex relations transcends culture. Violating God-given gender boundaries is universal and absolute. They go against the way God created males and females and intended them to relate to each other sexually.

I’ve always been struck by Paul’s high view of women, especially when measured against his environment.

Even if Paul advocates for different roles in marriage (Eph. 5:22–33, for example), he commands men to self-sacrificially

serve their wives, and he never suggests that females should submit to their husbands because they are inferior to men. Instead, Paul says that submission reflects the beauty and equality of the Triune God. And I don’t think Paul had a low view of Christ and the Spirit.

The word abomination is only used to describe the male-male

sex act,

not gay or lesbia...

Para physin was simply stock language used by other Roman and Jewish writers to condemn same-sex relations. Extramarital or marital,25 consensual or nonconsensual,26 pederastic or peer27: para physin was used to critique same-sex relations as against the design of nature or, in Paul’s view, against the design and intention of the Creator. The fact that Paul uses para physin in a context saturated with allusions to Genesis 1–2 suggests that this meaning is most likely what Paul has in mind.

“Desire” (epithumia) and “passion” (pathos) are considered wrong in Romans 1 not because such desires are excessive—Paul never says they are excessive—but because they grow into sinful sexual actions.35 Both epithumia and pathos are considered wrong in Romans 1 since they are satisfied in an object contrary to God’s will.36 It is the action, not the desire, that Paul considers para physin.

If I have rightly interpreted Paul, then this would logically mean that it would be more destructive, not less, to encourage people to fulfill their desire for sexual intimacy with a person of the same sex. It may seem to satisfy a person’s felt needs and desires. It may appear to be the most loving thing to do. It may feel like you’re looking out for the person’s best interest and

wanting them to flourish as human beings. But what if the opposite is true? If God is love, and if God wants humans to flourish, and if Romans 1 accurately reflects the will of God, then it is not loving nor would it cause a person to flourish as a human to encourage them to pursue same-sex sexual intimacy.

But let’s remember the context of Romans 1. Paul doesn’t write this chapter to condemn gay people. He wr...

Any discussion, debate, sermon, or lecture on homosexuality that doesn’t showcase the scandalous grace that beams from the rest of Romans is itself a scandalous disregard of the gospel. Until we find our own self-worth in Jesus, cling to his righteousness and not our own,

pry every log from our eyes right down to the last splinter, assault every species of judgmentalism and hypocrisy lurking in the corners of our pharisaic hearts, trumpet the majesty of the cross and the triumph of the vacant tomb above all our good deeds—which are by-products of God’s grace, though salted with our own sin—and pummel the insidious notion that we straight people are closer to God than “those” gay people over there—until we do these things, we will never view homosexuality the way God does.

all the laws in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are in some way connected to one of the Ten Commandments.

most people experience little or no sense of choice about their sexual orientation.

“nature and nurture both play complex roles.”

“What people want, and what they do, in any society, is to a large extent what they are made to want, and allowed to do. Sexuality . . . cannot escape its cultural connection.”

Because people will gravitate to where they are loved the most. And if the world out-loves the church, then we have implicitly nudged our children away from the loving arms of Christ.