Shellfish, slavery and same-sex marriage: How not to read the Bible

Virtue Online ^ | 9-9-13 | Glenn Davies

[ReformationFan]

Jesus affirms the moral integrity of God's laws expressed in the Old Testament, and their abiding character and application for us today, but re-establishes them for his disciples in a non-ceremonial and non-cultic manner, as befits the age of fulfilment that Jesus came to bring.

When Jesus taught his disciples about the sanctity of marriage, he reminded them that marriage was not a human invention but God's idea: an exclusive relationship between a man and a woman for life. Yet he also recognised that in a fallen and broken world, some marriages may end in divorce, due to the unfaithfulness of one or both parties. While this was not the original intention, Moses's law provided for divorce in certain circumstances, and so did Jesus.

While Australians wrestle with the implications of redefining marriage to include a union of two persons of the same sex, it would be a much more enlightened debate if proponents of this novel redefinition did not misuse the Bible in mounting their arguments. It would be more honest to declare their disagreement with biblical teaching, rather than pretend by shallow, ill-informed exegesis that they are following the Bible's primary theme of love. Here again, Jesus's words are instructive: "If you love me, keep my commandments" (John 14:15).

[ReformationFan]

Good article. I'd have more intellectual respect for homosexualist activists who just admit that the Bible does not endorse homosexual acts and that they disagree with that fact rather than lie and say the Bible "approves of it".

[Boogieman]

I try not to get too upset about it. Look at it as a testament to the power of God’s Word, that even those who rebel strongly against Him seek to find some approval, however contrived, from it.

[RobbyS]

The German Protestants have come out with a new statement which says, in effect, that marriage is not divine in origin and is therefore subject to the state. Once the state was regarded as divine in origin, but no more. But the state still retains the right to regulate marriage.

[Ransomed]

That’s a good point.

Freegards

[count-your-change]

But the Bible goes a step further than acts, it demands a change of motive, of one’s heart. If Jesus could say that lusting after a woman not one’s wife was the commission of adultery in the heart what can be said of one male lusting after another in his heart?

Therein lies the supremacy of the Bible’s moral code...it demands attention to not only to the external but to the internal person.

[Uri’el-2012]

Jesus affirms the moral integrity of God's laws expressed in the Old Testament,

This denies the Divinity of Yah'shua.

YHvH uses marriage as a metaphor
for His love for His Bride.

shalom b'SHEM Yah'shua HaMashiach