The law (Torah) came from God on Mt Sinai, and Jesus agreed with everything the Torah said, including everything about sexual immorality, because it all points to him (Luke 16:29-31, John 5:45). He followed God’s Law (the Torah) was given to Moses from God on Mt Sinai. Jesus agreed with everything the Law said, including everything about sexual immorality, because it all pointed to Him (Luke 16:29-31, John 5:45). He followed the law perfectly, which made Him sinless, and that qualified Him to die for our sins (Romans 5:12-17, 2 Corinthians 5:21). The law says that incest (Lev18:1-18), adultery (Ex 20:14, Deut 5:18), same-sex intercourse (Lev 18:22, Lev 20:13), bestiality (Lev18:23, Lev 20:15-16), and fornication (Ex 22:16-17, Deut 22:28-29), are all sins. Most of those listed were punishable with execution. Sex between a married man and woman who have no conflicting familial relationship with other family members is the only legitimate way to have sex. Jesus agreed with this because he followed the Torah and believed it to be the word of his Father, God.
Consider what Jesus said about the law in Matthew 5:17-19:
Matt 5:17 “Don’t misunderstand why I have come. I did not come to abolish the law of Moses or the writings of the prophets. No, I came to accomplish their purpose. 18 I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not even the smallest detail of God’s law will disappear until its purpose is achieved. 19 So if you ignore the least commandment and teach others to do the same, you will be called the least in the Kingdom of Heaven. But anyone who obeys God’s laws and teaches them will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Leviticus can be divided into eight sections; the first 7 are the specific details of the law, and the 8th declares the terms and conditions of keeping faithful to the covenant. The seven sections of Leviticus: Sacrificing Rituals (Chapters 1-7), Priestly Ordainment (Chapters 8-10), Ritual Purity laws (Chapters 11-15), The Day of Atonement (Chapters 16-17), Moral Purity Laws (Chapters 18-20), Priestly Consecration (Chapters 21-22), Festivals, Feast, and Sabbaths (Chapters 23-25), and Terms and Conditions (Chapters 26-27).
In Acts 15, the council at Jerusalem determined that Gentiles didn’t need to follow Jewish ritual purity laws like circumcision or the rules for sacrifices, holidays, and priestly structures. The book of Hebrews explains how Jesus fulfills the law regarding any laws that involve the priesthood or sacrifices. Hebrews chapters 5-7 discuss Jesus’ role as our High Priest under the New Covenant. Hebrews 8-10 states that Jesus is the greatest sacrifice that cleanses us of sin, rather than merely covering us, as the animal sacrifices under the law did. Furthermore, we don’t need to be in a clean state (ritually pure) to interact with God’s presence anymore. This is because he no longer resides in a Temple or Tabernacle. In the New Covenant, believers have God’s Spirit within them because they were made pure through the sacrifice of Jesus. So, Jesus is our priest and sacrifice, covering parts of the law that only apply to Israel, such as the ritual purity laws. The Apostles concluded that the moral laws still had to be followed, so idolatry, blood-drinking, and sexual sin are still forbidden (Acts 15:19-29).
Notice how the Jerusalem council in Acts 15 didn’t mention lying, cheating, stealing, and killing? While Gentiles were coming from pagan religions, most of those religions already agreed that those things were bad and even had legal codes and laws against those things. The same is true for most unbelievers today. However, most non-believers both today and back then disagreed on sexual sin, because that is one of the most potent human desires. Gentiles had sex deities and their temples had prostitutes; they had sex with animals and same-sex intercourse, all of which would fit in the Torah’s definition of sexual immorality. So the council had to specify that sexual sin is an issue because many Gentiles didn’t see free sex as sinful, with the exceptions of adultery, rape, and incest (1 Cor 5:1). The Jerusalem council also mentioned idolatry and blood consumption, because only Jews had a complete revelation that these things were sins. If a Christian doesn’t believe what the Bible says about sexual sin, then how are they different from a pagan or an agnostic? Therefore, under the New Covenant, non-Jewish believers were to abandon those ideas altogether and let the Torah serve as their guide for morality. After all, Jesus said that all of the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms pointed to Him (Luke 24:44).
There is a difference between moral and ritual purity. Ritual purity was about the physical states of a person’s body and contact with unclean things like bodily fluids and certain animals, which is inevitable. On the other hand, moral purity is about behavior, which is something we have control over and accountability for. So we must choose righteous actions to be considered morally pure. A person can’t take pride in sin and be repentant at the same time. Moral purity laws apply because everyone, since the first human, Adam, has an instinct to rebel against God called sin nature. Everyone is born with this nature, so breaking God’s laws is inevitable, and everyone is guilty (Rom 3:9-23), which is why everyone dies (Rom 5:12, Rom 6:23). Believers are promised a resurrection with new bodies that have eternal life. Those bodies won’t have sin nature. This means that after Judgment Day, believers will live in a sin-free world with no suffering. Since there is no suffering and sin, there will be no death, which is why life will be eternal (1 Cor 15:35-58, 2 Cor 5:1-10, Phil 3:20-21). However, in the mean time believers who have the Holy Spirit inside of them, can overcome sin nature by living under the influence of the Spirit instead of the flesh or sin nature (Gal 5:16). Gal 6:7-8, says if we sow into the flesh, we reap corruption; if we sow into the Spirit, we reap eternal life. That’s why Paul said to flee fornication in 1 Corinthians 6:18-20 because it defiles our bodies as temples of God.
In Matthew 4:17, Jesus’ first sermon was “Repent of your sins and turn to God, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.” The Greek word translated as “repent” in Matthew 4:17 is “Metanoeite” (Μετανοεῖτε). It is a compound word made up of two words: metá (μετά), meaning “changed after or “begin with,” and noiéō (νοέω), which means “consider, perceive, think, understand.” Essentially, it means to “change your mind”. True repentance is acknowledging a specific action, like fornication, as sin and making the effort to avoid it because you no longer agree with that behavior. 1 John 1:9 says, “if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.” So if you are fornicating or adultering, then stop, repent, and “go and sin no more”, as Jesus said in John 8:11 to the women caught in adultery. In John 5:14, he even says to someone he healed that if they don’t stop sinning, something worse will happen. Jesus NEVER gave us a license to sin all we want.
Ezekiel 18:23-32 states that those who repent receive mercy; God doesn’t take pleasure in punishing people. The righteous are the ones who are repentant, and the wicked are the ones who keep sinning. If the wicked repent and turn to God, they are shown mercy, but if the righteous start sinning, their sins will be counted against them, and their good deeds are worthless. The worthlessness of good deeds in the face of sin is echoed in Isaiah 64:6. Pride is what prevents people from repenting, regardless of whether it is pride in their sex, sexuality, race, ethnicity, or nationality. Christians secure their identities in Christ, not their flesh. The Holy Spirit is here to aid us in overcoming sin nature and following the moral laws (John 14:15-17). This will continue until the new kingdom, when we will have a new world where sin will no longer be a part of us.
Let’s talk about the elephant of this subject, same-sex intercourse. The word homosexual is not an ancient word that is used in the original language of the Bible, and all the scriptures mentioning it describe the sex act, not the desire. The New Testament continues the definition of sexual immorality from the Torah (Leviticus 18:22, 20:13), and that is why same-sex intercourse is still listed as sin, just like every other kind of sexual sin in the New Testament (1 Tim 1:10, 1 Cor 6:9-10, Rom 1:26-27).
Christian author, Jackie Hill Perry, who is an ex-Lesbian, once pointed out in an interview that Christians typically don’t handle this subject properly because they focus too much on the action and not the person. She said (paraphrasing), “In response to this subject, Christians often read from 1 Cor 6:9-10 and stop, but verse 11 is the most crucial part. Then she read from the NIV translation of 1 Corinthians 6:9-11.
1 Cor 6:9 (NIV) Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men 10 nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And that is what SOME OF YOU WERE. But you were WASHED, you were SANCTIFIED, you were JUSTIFIED in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”
Galatians 5:16 says, “Let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves.” This means the flesh will always lust against God’s plan, but with the Spirit, we can choose not to fulfill it. I don’t believe temptation is sin. Jesus was tempted in the garden, but he didn’t sin. If you have the temptation, you can either resist it or give in. Remember sowing into the Spirit reaps eternal life, but sowing into the flesh reaps corruption (Gal 6:7-8). Temptation/attraction isn’t a sin, but it is a sin to act on the temptation. Therefore, if a gay person is celibate, they are not guilty of sexual sin in that way. This means a gay person can receive Jesus and be a Christian and make their goal to follow the Holy Spirit rather than submit to sexual sin. 1 John 1:9 is there if they mess up, but the goal is to draw closer to God [the light] and away from sin [the darkness] that Jesus talks about in John 3:20-21. This means their identity should be secured in Christ and not in their orientation because they are a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17).
In Matt 19:4-6, which quotes Genesis 1:27 and 2:24, Jesus says heterosexual marriages are the only legitimate ones. So anything sexual outside of that is sin. Genesis 2:24 says that the definition of marriage is when a man leaves his parents and cleaves to his wife. Gen 1:27 declares that God made humans male and female. This points to the two complementary sexes that God created as necessary for them to be fruitful and multiply. Lastly, Jesus says in Matt 19:6 that no man can separate what God has joined together, in response to the Pharisees who were inquiring about divorce. Redefining marriage is a form of separating what God has joined together, since it contradicts the definition Jesus gave. Jesus said no man should do that since it was God who defined marriage.
What kinds of temptations we get are not a choice, but our behavior in response to those temptations is always a choice. In the same way, a lustful heterosexual desire may not be a choice, but sinful sexual behavior, like fornication or adultery, is a choice. Think of King David, he lusted after Bathsheba as she bathed herself, took her, and sexually assaulted her even after finding out she was married (2 Samuel 11). He was drawn to her by his own lusts, and he could have stopped his lust and asked God to forgive him, but he didn’t. He made a deliberate choice to commit adultery. It’s incorrect to suggest God makes us sin because he does not tempt anyone, but rather, temptation comes from our own desires (James 1:13-15). God made Adam and Eve without sin nature, but they chose to sin, corrupting all of their descendants (all of humanity). So we are all “born that way” (the way of sin) because we inherited Adam’s sinful nature (Romans 5:12-17), and living in it is not God’s will.
The word “sin” is derived from the Hebrew word chatah (חַטָּאָה), meaning “failure.” Therefore, sin is simply a failure to love God and keep his commands. However, Christ died so that we could be “born again” (John 3:5-7). Remember those who are BORN AGAIN can receive the Kingdom of Heaven, but those who reject are rebels against the king of heaven (John 3:18-21). We are all born sinners, but we can be born again and free from sin because of Christ. So, being born any particular way is not an excuse, because the first way we were born was corrupted by sin, and we all need to be born AGAIN, according to Jesus.
The Bible tells us, “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked” (Jeremiah 17:9). According to the Bible, sexual lust is just one kind of sin among many different sins that people gravitate toward, which will prevent them from inheriting the kingdom. People struggle with lying, gossip, jealousy, stealing, adultery, fornication, and some fornicators have sex with the same sex. Just because a person struggles with same-sex attraction doesn’t mean God made them to have same-sex intercourse, any more than a person struggling with anger means God made them a murderer. We all have a choice about how we respond to every temptation. We may not choose which desires tempt us, but we do choose what we do with them.
Believers are called to respond in love towards everyone, which means not wanting them to perish in their sins, but rather leading them to repentance and freedom in Christ. This is the Great Commission that Jesus gives in Matthew 28:18-20. If a believer is damning a person to hell for their sins then that contradicts the point of the gospel (which is good news). The gospel (good news) comes in contrast to the bad experiences of sin and death in the world, and the gospel is supposed to give people hope in God’s salvation through Jesus. Believers are supposed to show the world the way out of slavery to sin. However, consider some believers condone sin by embracing moral relativism and the idea that humans can redefine sin. In that case, those believers become accountable for misleading others into condemnation on Judgment Day. If someone rejects the gospel, that is their business, but if a Christian misleads them into believing a false gospel, then that is a judgment on the Christian’s head. If someone told you some food you were eating was safe when they knew it wasn’t, because they didn’t want to upset you, and you died, wouldn’t that make them liable for your death? Same thing. Now, if a person is warned but doesn’t believe and eats it anyway, then only they are accountable for not heeding the warning.
God says this in Ezekiel in Ez 3:18-21. God says, (NLT) 18 If I warn the wicked, saying, ‘You are under the penalty of death,’ but you fail to deliver the warning, they will die in their sins. And I will hold you responsible for their deaths. 19 If you warn them and they refuse to repent and keep on sinning, they will die in their sins. But you will have saved yourself because you obeyed me. 20 “If righteous people turn away from their righteous behavior and ignore the obstacles I put in their way, they will die. And if you do not warn them, they will die in their sins. None of their righteous acts will be remembered, and I will hold you responsible for their deaths. 21 But if you warn righteous people not to sin and they listen to you and do not sin, they will live, and you will have saved yourself, too.”
James 4:4 You adulterers![and adultresses] Don’t you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God? I say it again: If you want to be a friend of the world, you make yourself an enemy of God.
A Christian’s job is not to judge people but to judge actions (1 Cor 5:9-11, Matt 7:1-6). Making everyone aware of God’s laws by which we will all be judged by God one day is not judging; it’s proclaiming God’s word, which is what Jesus instructed us to do for all nations in the Great Commission. That way, when we all stand before God, no one can use ignorance as an excuse. We will all be held fully accountable for our words and actions concerning His will and laws (Matt 12:36). The Holy Spirit can free us from the power of sin (Galatians 5:16-26), so there is no excuse for anyone who follows Christ and has the Holy Spirit. Those who are not born again are slaves to sin (John 8:34-47, Romans 6:20), and in John 3:18, Jesus says they will be condemned because they reject salvation, thus rejecting God.
Here are some resources on the subject of same-sex attraction and the Bible by people who have struggled with it and overcome it:
Jackie Hill-Perry, author of “Gay Girl, Good God: The Story of Who I Was, and Who God Has Always Been”, talks about this issue in a 6 part interview with Focus on the Family.
https://youtu.be/vHDHhi_z_Wo
An article about Beckett Cook, author of “From Gay to Gospel”
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/gay-gospel-becket-cook/
A blog post by Samuel Abraham Perez on the subject of same-sex attraction
https://www.samuelabrahamperez.com/post/is-my-same-sex-attraction-a-sin
In his book 101 Frequently Asked Questions About Homosexuality, Mike Haley said:
“I can tell you from personal experience that virtually no one chooses homosexuality and the resulting pain and rejection that comes with it. No child or adolescent approaches the smorgasbord of sexual orientations and says, “Hmm…I think I’ll take that one.” On the contrary, most homosexuals try to deny the existence of their same-sex attractions, pray it away, or repress it until they become so discouraged by their inability to master the desires that they “come out”…No one chooses to feel attracted to someone of the same sex. However, men and women do choose how they will act on those feelings.”