Posted on 08/12/2012 1:27:48 PM PDT by CHRISTIAN DIARIST
Today it is popular among those promoting same sex marriage to say that Jesus never addressed the issue, that He was silent on the subject. Those who affirm the historical and traditional understanding of marriage between a man and woman often are admonished to go and read more carefully the Bible. If we do so we are told we will see that Jesus never addressed the issue. So, the question that I want to raise is, “Is this assertion correct?” Is it indeed the fact that Jesus never addresses the issue of same sex marriage?
When one goes to the gospels to see exactly what Jesus did say, one will discover that He addressed very clearly both the issues of sex and marriage. He addresses both their use and misuse. And, as He speaks to both subjects, He makes it plain that issues of the heart are of critical importance.
First, what did Jesus say about sex? Jesus believed that sex is a good gift from a great God. Jesus is pro-sex! He also believed that sex was a good gift to be enjoyed within a monogamous, heterosexual covenant of marriage. On this He is crystal clear. In Mark 7 Jesus addresses the fact that all sin is ultimately an issue of the heart. Jesus was never after behavioral modification. Jesus was always after heart transformation. Change the heart and you truly change the person. Thus when He lists a catalog of sins in Mark 7: 21-22, He makes it clear that all of these sins are ultimately matters of the heart. It is the idols of the heart that Jesus is out to eradicate. Among those sins of the heart that often give way to sinful actions He would include both sexual immorality and adultery (Mark 7:21). The phrase “sexual immorality,” in a biblical context, would speak of any sexual behavior outside the covenant of marriage between a man and woman. Therefore, Jesus viewed pre-marital sex, adultery and homosexual behavior as sinful. And, He knew that the cure for each is a transformation of the heart made possible by the good news of the gospel. The gospel changes us so that now we are enabled to do not what we want, but what God wants. Here we find real freedom and joy.
Second, what about the issue of marriage? Is it truly the case that Jesus never spoke to the issue in terms of gender? The answer is a simple no. He gives His perspective on this when He addresses the issue in Matthew 19:4-6. There, speaking to the institution of marriage, Jesus is clear when He says, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” That Jesus was committed to heterosexual marriage could not be more evident. A man is to leave his parents and be joined to a woman who becomes his wife. This is heterosexual marriage. That He also was committed to the permanence and fidelity of marriage is clear as well.
So, how might we sum up the issue? First, Jesus came to deliver all people from all sin. Such sin, He was convinced, originated in and was ultimately a matter of the heart. Second, Jesus made it clear that sex is a good gift from a great God, and this good gift is to be enjoyed within heterosexual covenantal marriage. It is simply undeniable that Jesus assumed heterosexual marriage as God’s design and plan. Third, Jesus sees all sexual activity outside this covenant as sinful. Fourth, it is a very dangerous and illegitimate interpretive strategy to bracket the words of Jesus and read into them the meaning you would like to find. We must not isolate Jesus from His affirmation of the Old Testament as the Word of God nor divorce Him from His 1st century Jewish context. Fifth, and this is really good news, Jesus loves both the heterosexual sinner and the homosexual sinner and promises free forgiveness and complete deliverance to each and everyone who comes to Him. John 7 tells the story of a woman caught in adultery. The religious legalists want to stone her, but Jesus intervenes and prevents her murder. He then looks upon the woman and, with grace and tenderness, He tells her that He does not condemn her. Then He says to her, “go and sin no more.” In Matthew 11:28 Jesus speaks to everyone of us weighed down under the terrible weight and burden of sin. Listen to these tender words of the Savior, “Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.” This is the hope that is found in Jesus. This is the hope found in the gospel. Whether one is guilty of heterosexual or homosexual sin, one will find grace, forgiveness and freedom at the foot of the cross where the ground is always level.
When I came to fully trust Jesus as my Lord and Savior at the age of 20, I determined that I wanted to think like Jesus and live like Jesus for the rest of my life. When it comes to sex I want to think like Jesus. When it comes to marriage I want to think like Jesus. That means I will affirm covenantal heterosexual marriage. It also means loving each and every person regardless of their lifestyle choices. It means, as His representative, proclaiming His gospel and extending the transforming grace of the gospel to others that takes us where we are, but wonderfully and amazingly, does not leave us there. That is a hope and a promise that followers of Jesus gladly extend to everyone, because we have been recipients of that same amazing grace.
If we go too far down that line of reasoning, we could claim that Jesus approved of King Solomon's "six hundred wives who were princesses and three hundred concubines," so get with the program, Christian men!
“There is also His statement that He did not come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it, which incorporates, as it were, a great deal of Old Testament moral teaching into Christianity.”
Exactly.
Well, there is a difference in recording historic events and expressing doctrine. But your point is taken.
The truth is that we are sure that every word of Jesus was not recorded, only that which the Holy Spirit caused the authors of the gospels to remember. It was obvious to the Holy Spirit that homosexuality and marriage and “homosexual marriage” had been addressed.
Answer: It was not necessry as the conduct speaks for itself.
He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. (Matthew 19:4-5)
Matt. 5:17-19. I think that pretty well answers it.
To the extent that our analysis emphasizes "It's good because it feels good," without considering a purpose built into our creation, we're likely to go astray.
He established Natural Law by which the Universe exists, the 10 Commandments, written with the finger of God, Himself, (Exodus 31:18) and the Law of Moses (Book of Leviticus).
Christ came not to abolish the Law but to fulfill the Law (Matthew 5:17).
Homosexual behavior and promotion thereof is directly proscribed in Leviticus, a proscription affirmed directly by the Apostle Paul (Romans 1) -- the student of Jesus Christ, and something for which God directly destroyed two cities, Himself, namely Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19).
Jesus Christ established Natural Law, gave us our first, and only heterosexual parents, Adam and Eve, even as He the Creator designed them, gave us the Law of Moses, affirmed only heterosexual marriage (Genesis 2:24, Matthew 19:5, Ephesians 5:31), and directly punished the perversion of practicing homosexuality (Genesis 19), even as we see Natural Law punishes the practice emotionally and physically today.
As Christ is the One who came to fulfill the Law, what more must one honestly need to hear about such a twisted notion as homosexual "marriage," unless one simply chooses to remain willingly ignorant? (II Peter 3:5).
Practicing homosexuals have been lying to themselves about themselves for so long that honesty rarely enters the discussion and willful ignorance invites the certain condemnation of Natural Law by their own choice. Paul writes that it is a sin against ones self and a sin against nature (Romans 1:26, 27).
Homosexuality destroys all that it touches.
Common sense is usually the first casualty, as one chooses to defy Natural Law.
That one needs an answer to such an obvious question, "Is It True Jesus Never Addressed Same Sex Marriage?" is evidence that the questioner does not recognize Jesus Christ as the Creator of the Universe and that He is the ultimate Law giver that allows this Universe of ours to exist at all (Colossians 1:16, 17).
For those who never read the bible, they will listen to these clowns. For those of us who do read the bible, we know what it says and that these people are blowing steam.
Maybe it's because:
THERE ISN'T SUCH A THING!
Exactly. At the time of Jesus Same sex marriage wasn’t an issue.
The fags were smart enough not to push their sickness.
Good reply.
Further when Jesus dictated the Book of Revelation to the Apostle John, He clearly stated that people who practice sexual immorality cannot qualify to receive His free gift of eternal life. This is found in Revelation 22:14.
This is also stated in similarly direct language by the Apostle Paul in Ephesians 5:1-7.
Notice that Paul includes coveting in his list in Ephesians, which he defines as idolatry. In Revelation 22:14, Jesus states that those who practice idolatry are also disqualified from eternal life.
Socialism, by its very structure, is built upon coveting and theft. Socialists cannot qualify for eternal life. Sadly the vast majority of churches in this age are corrupted by socialism just as the early Church was corrupted by Gnosticism. It should come as no surprise that there is a direct philosophical trail from Valentinian Gnosticism to the theologian Hegel and then via his dialectic to Marx and socialism. In other words, socialism is the modern secular form of the same spiritual values that animated people who were drawn to Gnosticism.
see the book: Gnostic Return in Modernity, by Cyril O’Regan
We are seeing spiritual warfare in secular form being waged against humanity before our very eyes.
This Absurd concept was never in the minds of anyone until the last ten years. It is an absurdity on its face.
Now that is not the same as saying that the idea of marriage was not different in the past. Marriage for love is also a modern innovation.
As far as I know --- and somebody correct me if I'm wrong -- in Scripture there isn't a single instance of married, man-woman sex in the procreative form which is ever condemned, nor a single instance of sex in a non-procreative form, which is ever blessed.
So why do some Biblical-minded people support contracepted sex while drawing the line at homosexual sex?
Both contracepted sex and homosex treat fertility as a discarded option, a design flaw, a bug, not a feature.
I think that once you erode (via conraception) the implicit understanding that sex is connected to fertility and that that's a good thing, heterosexuality has been corrupted and homosexuality is the obvious next step.
I know that Jesus approved of sex and the union of man and woman and saw it blessed. I just don’t think he was sex-focused as much as transcendent-meaning focused. Just my interpretation.
Probably not inconceivable to God, though.
Besides, there was plenty of homosexual behavior in the ancient world. They don't call ir "Greek love" for no good reason.
Does a man divorce a sterile wife because its a sin to be with her?...if so King Henry the 8 in fact had a point with the Church
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