by Tom Hill
If homosexuality is forbidden, why do people say Jesus never mentioned it?
This question strikes at the heart of this explosive and relevant topic. A recent internet search revealed 1.5 billion, with a B, searches on “homosexuality,” which proves its impact and importance in our daily lives. We confront its claims and influence every day. To protect its practices, politicians enact new laws which change our lives. Businesses and places where we work alter their advertisements and adjust their employee practices to avoid offending homosexuals yet upset non-homosexuals in the process. Social media and public press agencies report every hostile confrontation on this issue, further inflaming attitudes and reactions to it. Families, perhaps even your family, experience their children who practice it, placing additional stress upon parents and siblings with the dilemmas that accompany homosexuality. I know first-hand this stress: my oldest brother announced his homosexuality to me a few years ago.
Pastors debate and often disagree on the interpretation and implications of the Bible’s instructions on homosexuality. They join homosexuals and non-homosexuals who ask this question: if homosexuality is a sin, why didn’t Jesus warn against it?
He did and here’s the proof.
The Bible Is A Sex Manual
Yes, it is true that the Bible gives instruction on sex and its illicit practices. In fact, the Old Testament and the New Testament abolish every form of prohibited sexual relationship, common then and now: adultery, fornication, homosexuality, incest, and bestiality. Jesus spoke against each of these sinful practices, which this chapter explains later in the section on Matthew 19.
Jesus’ Commands For Biblical Sexual Relationships
Matthew 5.27-28
In the Sermon On The Mount, Jesus taught his followers the fundamentals of the life he demands, including rejection of homosexuality and its modern day defense. Here he referenced the seventh commandment from the original 10 commandments: “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” (2) In Bible times, this sin constituted sexual intercourse between a married man and a married woman other than his spouse. The Bible treats both participants as adulterers. (3)
To the shock of everyone at this Sermon and who have read it since then, Jesus expanded the definition of adultery from actual, physical sexual intercourse. He declared that, if a man looked upon any woman other than his wife with sexual desire and lusted after her in his heart, that man committed adultery with that other woman.
In other words, in addition to actual, physical adultery Jesus commanded against the desire in a man’s heart to commit sexual intercourse with any woman other than his wife.
This same principle applies to same sex attraction (SSA). The homosexual community condones same sex partnerships and same sex sexual longings as not breaking God's law if the partners do not commit actual sexual intercourse together. They encourage and endorse same sex partnerships, especially among professing Christians, that include all manner of physical and emotional interaction between same sex partners if they do not commit literal sexual intercourse.
But if Jesus called a man’s sexually lusting after a woman not his spouse a sin, then he certainly calls it a sin among same sex attractions with one’s desire for a sexual relationship with another person of the same sex, even those who do not commit actual sexual acts together.
Jesus further attributed homosexual desires as springing from within the heart of a person as described in Matthew 19.
Matthew 19.3-9
Currently, the LGBTQ community (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) asserts forcefully that Jesus never spoke against same sex marriage, unmarried same sex partnerships, nor homosexuality. They allege that since Jesus never spoke against these issues, he clearly found them irrelevant. This group asserts that since Christ found them unimportant, people today should respond favorably to the LGBTQ agendas. They believe that the Church must follow Christ's example of noninterference and indifference toward homosexuality.
To arrive at any position, logically or biblically, based upon the absence of information, i.e., silence, causes an illogical, inaccurate, and false conclusion and therefore not a defensible one.