I was talking with a woman who was a minister in a progressive denomination. She said, “We don’t get involved in controversy; we preach to unite people.” I wanted to see how far she would go with this thinking, so I asked her about same-sex relationships. I said, “What would you do if someone in your church was a practicing homosexual?” Her immediate response was: “Jesus didn’t say anything about that.”
This statement is common. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said, “Homosexuality was well known in the ancient world, well before Christ was born, and Jesus never said a word about homosexuality. In all of his teachings about multiple things—he never said that gay people should be condemned” (HuffPost, March 19, 2012).
Given that reasoning, a person could say the same thing about any number of sins Jesus didn’t specifically mention. He never said a word specifically about pedophilia. He didn’t condemn rape or incest in explicit terms. Does that mean the Bible is silent about these sins or that Jesus approved of them?
We might as well say that Jesus never said one word against abortion or human sacrifices. But we know He did. He condemned these things when He talked about murder! This is poor Bible interpretation to say the least.
The truth is Jesus did address the sin of homosexual relations. He used a word that covers that sin. That word is porneia. This Greek word means every kind of unlawful sexual union. It includes premarital sex. It includes adultery. And it includes homosexuality.
How do we know this word includes same-sex relations? A verb form of this word is used in Jude 7. That verse says the people of Sodom and Gomorrah went after strange flesh and gave themselves over to “fornication” (KJV; ASV). That is the verb ekporneuo. It is a form of the verb porneuo which means to commit fornication. The sin of Sodomy is a type of fornication. Homosexuality is fornication!
Not everything Jesus wanted us to know is in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. In John 16:12-13 He told the disciples, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth…” Even if Jesus hadn’t said anything about this sin, the rest of the New Testament does. Paul condemned the sin of sodomy and said that same-sex relations are “against nature” (I Cor. 6:9-11; I Tim. 1:10; Romans 1:26-27).
-Kerry Duke, Vice-President of Tennessee Bible College
