Homosexuality and the Bible

The Importance of Careful Biblical Teaching

Let's pray and we'll begin the lesson. Father in heaven, I thank you for your Word. I pray that as we seek to open the Word today, that we would be true to what your Word teaches us, and that you would keep us from error.

I pray especially, Lord, on a subject like this, that you would anoint me with your Holy Spirit, that I would have Him as the guide and the teacher, and that ultimately you would use this as an opportunity for your people to be edified.

And it is in Christ's name we pray, amen. There is something that I think a lot of people do not realize. It only takes a second to speak an error, but it can sometimes take hours to correct the error that has been spoken.

This happens a lot in politics. Someone will say something, and you have to go back and really dig to demonstrate why what they said was an error, or why what they said was in opposed to the truth. And this is very difficult when you only have a minute with someone.

I remember there was a lady, a Jehovah Witness had a little stand set up in a Hardee's. I do not know why Hardee's. The owner, I guess, just did not care, but she had all her little tracts and literature there at the table.

And I sat there, I was eating breakfast with my wife. I sat there looking and seeing what she was doing. So I said, you know what, I know she will not take a Gospel tract from me that is typical of the Jehovah Witnesses.

They will not receive literature from you. I said, but maybe she would read some Bible verses if I gave them to her. And so I wrote some Bible verses down. I walked up and I played the Apostle Paul for a minute.

I said, I can see you are very religious. This is the Acts 17 statement. And I handed her a Gospel tract. I said, would you please read these Bible verses and spend some time thinking about them. And then she said, well, if you will read this.

And she wrote down a Bible verse of her own. And when I got back later, I opened up what she gave me and I read it. And I just remember thinking, this is an easily refutable verse that she has handed me.

But in that second or two of interaction, I would not have been able to fully expound to her the error that she was assuming in the verse. Because the verse was based on an assumption of her Unitarian view of God, which is what the Jehovah Witnesses hold to.

And so I just remember thinking, you know what? That's the problem with our world. Everything comes in sound bites. And people have become more willing to be taught by quick, short statements, which may or may not be true, than they have fully fleshed out ideas and thoughts.

And we really have seen a dumbing down of society where it really has become that people only receive information if it comes to them in 140 characters or less. And if you're not familiar with that, that's a tweet.

Tweets come 140 characters. That means spaces and everything has to be less than 140 characters. Yes, sir?

Video age versus the print age.

Absolutely.

We don't take the time to sit and read. We want everything given to us. You know, a lot of the arguments that go out about theology out in our world are all based in things people hear from newsmen or television shows.

The West Wing Argument Against the Old Testament

One of the most popular arguments, and we're going to be talking in a moment about homosexuality, one of the most popular arguments from those who would support homosexuality being something that's not unbiblical or something that Christians can participate in is from the TV show, The West Wing.

You guys familiar with The West Wing? I've never seen the show. I've never watched an episode, but you know what it is. It's a television show about the presidency. In the television show, a woman comes up and says something about the Bible says homosexuality is wrong, and he turns around to her and he says, well, holding pigskin is wrong, so you can't play football, and wearing mixed fibers is wrong, so you can't wear that outfit you're wearing, and this and this and this, and he starts naming off all of these Levitical laws.

And that has become, from that show, it really has become what we call the West Wing answer. If we're talking to someone about homosexuality, they will a lot of times bring out that answer, and it's interesting to know from where it came.

That really was taught to thousands of people at one time simply from watching a television show.

But they have nothing to say about Roman Catholicism.

No, they do. Absolutely, they do. Matthew Vines has an entire book that he takes and twists Romans 1 on its side, so don't say. They don't have anything to say.

I got into it yesterday with two at the same time, and they were saying things like, you know, they were using the, and they were saying, one girl said, God made homosexuals. And I'm like, no, God didn't have it.

And then finally, after arguing with them on a natural level for a while,.

I did Romans 1, silence.

There was nothing after that.

In TV sitcoms, the canned laughter affirms everything that's going on.

Absolutely, absolutely.

It gives affirmation to it. Just humorous.

Absolutely.

So, what I want to do today, there's a graphic that has floated around cyberspace and says, the title of the graphic is, So You Still Think Homosexuality Is Sinful? And then it goes on to say, here are some things to think about.

If you think homosexuality is sinful, here are some things to think about. And so what I want to do is, I'm going to read what they say we need to think about, and then I want to respond. And try to give a biblical response, try to give a thoughtful response, not just a quick, you know, quick response.

Whether Jesus Condemned Homosexuality

The first one is, Jesus never condemned homosexuality, so it must not be a sin. That's, if you've never heard that, it's a very common argument. Well, I don't believe the Apostle Paul. I believe Jesus.

That's what people say. I know Paul said it in Romans 1, and Paul said it in other passages, but I believe that Jesus is my model. And this is the groups that will say, you know, the red letter is the most important part of the Bible.

And they'll say that Jesus is my answer, and Jesus never condemned homosexuals, so homosexuality must not be wrong. So, how do we respond to such a question? Well, the first thing that we have to concede is that it is true that Jesus never spoke specifically to the issue of homosexuality in the sense that he never condemned homosexuality as a practice specifically, but he also never condemned rape as an issue specifically.

He never said, you know, thou shalt not rape, and yet no one would argue that Jesus would say that rape was not a sin. I mean, you know, if we're going to be silly and start saying that Jesus didn't condemn such a thing or Jesus didn't address such a thing, what we have to say is that there are so many things that aren't addressed.

Tax evasion. Well, I guess you could say Jesus had to render under Caesar what's Caesar's, but, I mean, there's all kinds of things that you could say Jesus never addressed. We don't have every word of Jesus Christ in the Gospels.

We have what the Holy Spirit ensured that we would have so that we would understand his teaching and his ministry, but let me just say this. On top of that, the Bible does tell us that Jesus spoke about things that involve the relationship of husband and wife, and I would point to Matthew 19, and I would invite you to open your Bibles there.

Hi, Leandra, how are you? In Matthew 19, Jesus is confronted by the religious leaders of the day, and he's being confronted about the relationship of man and wife and the subject of divorce. During the time of Jesus, there were two competing schools of thought.

There was the Hillel school and the Shammai school, which both taught different things about marriage and divorce. One believed that divorce was legal in any circumstance. They were pretty much the liberals of the society.

They said, you know, even if your wife's cooking didn't please you, you could divorce her because that was just... it was whatever was necessary, you could divorce. And then there was the more conservative school that said that there was no reason for divorce outside of, you know, adultery, you know, extreme circumstances.

So Jesus was basically challenged to ask, is there a reason for divorce? Can this happen? And so he was asked in verse 3, and the Pharisees came to him and tested him by asking, is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?

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 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. I've said those words many times when preaching funeral, marriage ceremonies, sorry. And he goes on to talk about divorce and the issue that Christ calls us to fidelity in marriage and to not divorce, that's later in the text.

But right here, what we see is Jesus' outline for what marriage is supposed to be. He gives the outline for the natural way in which God created man and woman to interact with one another in the bounds of marriage.

So you could say that Jesus never condemns homosexuality in the sense that there's never a phrase where Jesus says, you know, homosexuality is a sin. But we can say that he gives the positive perspective as to what is a proper and wholesome marriage relationship.

And certainly there are other passages which would say that any type of intimacy outside of the marriage relationship, meaning any sex outside of marriage, would be considered fornication and would itself be a sin.

So certainly the marriage relationship is where this act of sex is supposed to be bound within and Jesus says that that is done between a man and a woman and he gives us a very clear identification here.

However, I want to just add another thought because the question when someone says Jesus never condemned homosexuality, to say that is to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the doctrine of the Trinity.

Because the doctrine of the Trinity says that God is one in essence and yet he is three in person. That God is Father, that God is Son, that God is Spirit. These three are co-equal, co-eternal. They have always existed.

There was never a time when Jesus was not. Do we understand? Do we agree? There was never a time when Jesus came into being. Jesus didn't come on the scene in Bethlehem. Jesus has always existed. The Holy Spirit has always existed.

The Father has always existed. And these three have always existed in one accord. So when we go back into the Old Testament and we see the judgments which were leveled against homosexuality, Jesus stood in full agreement with the Father in giving those judgments.

So to say that Jesus never condemned homosexuality is to make the argument that Jesus was not present in the Old Covenant or in the Old Testament. It's to say Jesus was separate from the Father when Leviticus 18 was written.

It's to say Jesus was separate from the Father when Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed. It's to say that Jesus was separate from the Father when these moral laws were given. And so we do have an issue with their understanding of simple Christian doctrine.

So again, like I said, it's quick to say an error and it may take a few minutes to expose the error, but the error is there. By the way, Landry, I know you just came in. A few years ago, this graphic came out and it says, you think homosexuality is sinful and it gives what they call biblical arguments to say that it's not.

And I made this as a response. It's a little graphic that I created. And I just brought it in with me this morning. I'm not the normal teacher in here. Mr. Byron is out. So I thought I would do something a little different and obviously this week, with everything that's going on, I felt this is an appropriate lesson.

Yes, sir.

It's also ignorance of the doctrine of inspiration because when Paul was speaking, it wasn't just Paul just going thick in his mind. He's speaking the words that God gave him this week.

That is absolutely true. And I've had this conversation. I've actually argued. I don't like to argue, but it happens. And I've argued very firmly with folks who would say that Jesus' words are more precious or more important than are the words of the Apostle Paul or John or anyone else.

And I say, first of all, Jesus didn't write anything. Everything that Jesus said was written by one of the Apostles or by Luke. So we know that what Jesus said because of these men who were given by the Holy Spirit to write these things down, Jesus never wrote anything.

And two, the same Holy Spirit that inspired the writing of those books, the first four, was the same Holy Spirit that inspired the writing of Joel and inspired the writing of Jude. That little short book was inspired by the same Holy Spirit.

So yes, that's a very good argument, a very good point, that to say that Jesus' words are more important than the Apostle Paul's are to say that the Holy Spirit gave us levels of revelation, which I don't think we have.

I don't think that we can set one part of Scripture up and say this part is the most important and this part here is not important because this is what Jesus said and this is what everyone else said. And they're not contradictory.

The Scripture doesn't contradict itself. All right, we'll move on to... I get warm. Move on to another. Those who use the Old Testament, this is objection two, those who use the Old Testament to argue against homosexuality do also themselves reject it in other places, specifically in dietary laws, issues of slavery, clothing, etc.

So they're hypocrites. This was the West Wing argument. This is what we talked about earlier. I want to read to you what I wrote because, again, this is... I want to make sure that I'm clear. Theologians have long believed that the Old Testament law can be divided into three different types of law.

Moral, Ceremonial, and Case Law in the Old Testament

Moral law, ceremonial law, and case law. Moral law would constitute the command or condemnation of moral actions. Ceremonial law governs the way in which worship and sanctification were to be maintained.

Case law gave specific descriptions of circumstances by which judges can ensure their decisions were just. The ceremonial laws were specifically given to Israel as a nation to show that they were separate from other nations around them.

There's some debate as to which laws fall into each category. However, these are of secondary importance when the entire law is understood in context. God's law was given to Israel to make them a sanctified people.

His law was based on His covenant with them as a people. There were certain aspects which the New Testament clearly tells us were not intended for all people at all times, like circumcision or dietary restrictions.

However, this does not mean that the moral commands forbidding repugnant actions like murder, theft, incest, bestiality, homosexuality, or anything else are abrogated. These prohibitions still describe the heart of God regarding issues of personal moral holiness.

So, the issue becomes one of when we look at the Old Covenant, we certainly see that there are laws which were intended to be ceremonial in nature and to separate Israel as a nation. But that we could never say that murder, thou shalt not commit murder, the Sixth Commandment, was simply a ceremonial law.

Murder is a moral law. And why is it a moral law?

Because we're made in God's image.

Yeah, well, that's what Genesis 9 tells us. That's why the capital punishment was enforced upon murder because the person killed somebody who was in the image of God. And because they're in the image of God, the highest penalty comes for murder because they have taken the life, they've affronted God by killing another human being unjustly.

So, yes, that's absolutely true.

God said, thou shalt not murder.

Yeah, thou shalt not murder. But we could say that's not a ceremonial law, that is a moral law. Moral law is simple, and I'll give you how I understand, how we understand moral law is very simple. Moral laws are the laws which are innate in our conscience and given to every man, even those who don't have the Scripture.

The Bible says the law of God is written on our hearts. That does not include anything about mixed fabrics. That does not include anything about dietary restrictions. But what laws do people know naturally?

Don't steal, lie, murder. Those things which are natural. Now, somebody might argue and say, well, what about homosexuality? Let me ask you this. In every culture from the beginning of the world, homosexuality has been seen as a diversion or a divergence from the natural.

Why?

Well, you say a perversion, yes, but it's divergent from the natural, but why?

Preservation of mankind.

Yes, because it's a violation of the created natural order. You have to force certain things in certain ways that are not designed to do those things. And I'm not wanting to get in any way graphic, but you understand that the body is not intended to behave in the way that it is forced to behave in these acts.

And thus, even up until the 60s, in the psychological textbooks, homosexuality was seen as a mental disorder. Only as recently as the 60s was it changed to no longer be considered a mental disorder. Why would it be considered a mental disorder?

Because it's not natural. It's the same as the person who says that I believe that I'm a woman. And I don't want to get into the whole transgender thing, but the person who says, I believe that I'm a woman, what do we do with that?

Well, now we celebrate it, and we say, well, of course you're a woman. You don't have any of the woman parts. We have to take scientific extremes to make you appear like a woman. We have to use Photoshop to make you look like a woman.

But, okay, you say it, so it's so. And it's only recently that we've had to say, okay, there's nothing abnormal about it. Did you know there's a mental disorder where people get angry and upset with their limbs, and they demand certain body parts be removed?

I knew that.

No, no, it's a serious thing. There are people who have demanded that their arm be removed because their arm causes them distress. If I'm lying, I'm dying, you can look it up. It's obviously a mental issue.

There's nothing wrong with their arm. It doesn't have any physical ailment. There's no cancer. Their arm's not broken or damaged or messed up. But they've demanded the removal of completely healthy body parts because these body parts bring them mental distress.

And, you know, there's whole groups that are intended to support their right to do that because who are we to tell them they're wrong? And that's where moral relativism has brought us. I didn't know about that, but, yeah.

Wow. Well, like I said, to simply go to the Old Testament and say, well, God commands that we can't, you know, the same book that says homosexuality is an abomination is the same book that says that clothing with mixed fibers is something that God's people shouldn't do.

So because you're wearing mixed fibers, you're a hypocrite. We can say that this is not something that we invented as Christians. It has been that we have always understood God's law to have been given to us with certain purposes.

And the one purpose of the ceremonial law of God was to separate Israel as a nation and to demonstrate their sanctification as a nation. And one of the ways they did that was eating differently. Another way was dressing differently.

Another way was worshiping differently. These were all done, and they were given these restrictions and a codification of that in the law of God. But it was not intended for all nations at all times.

Yes?

Would stoning be under case law?

Yes, case law... Yes, case law is law that would, you know, the Bible says if a man's ox tramples another man's field, then he is to pay him whatever restitution. And that becomes a standard of law by which judges can look at it and say, here is how this is to be treated and how it is to be appropriated.

So it might not be an ox. It might be a horse or a camel or something else that tramples instead of his field, it might trample his, you know, the garden in his backyard or something. So it becomes the case.

It's just like, you know, in our modern times, you'll hear... They'll say, well, in people versus Johnson, this sets a precedent. And that's what case law was intended to do in Scripture, sets a precedent.

Now, on the issue of stoning, we could say, yes, there were times where stoning was necessary. It's interesting that it says stoning was even necessary for disobedient children. Disobedient children could be murdered, not murdered, put to death, executed for having disobeyed their parents.

You know, it never says it happened. Maybe it's because it was... Maybe it's because children read that and said, whoa, better straighten up, fly right. But we know that it was possible, that the issue of stoning was possible.

Yeah.

We would still say adultery was wrong, but we would say because we are no longer under a theocracy, we are no longer under... And we're not. Now, the church is a theocracy in the sense that the church is ruled by God.

But we live under the rules of the nation of America, and the Bible tells us in Romans 13 that we are to obey those laws. So because of that, we no longer live under the theocratic system whereby adultery is punished by God.

Stoning. Adultery is now punished by what? Nothing. And what happens? Adultery is rampant.

Yes?

I have a question. So if we're trying to defend the word of God, in that instance, is it still God's heart about the sin?

No, and that's what I'm saying. Adultery is still a sin. The church would put out someone if they were committing adultery unrepentantly. We would exercise church discipline, but we would not stone them because it wouldn't be legal to do so.

Okay, so then in the case of children...

Well, that's not the only reason. I do think that we are, in the New Covenant and under the New Covenant, we are given an expectation of grace and that we are no longer to live with the demand of... You know, in the Old Covenant, if you did not live under the demands such as the man who was cutting wood on the Sabbath, he was stoned for having cut wood on the Sabbath.

In the New Covenant, under the New Covenant, we no longer would practice that, even though there are some... Have you ever heard of theonomy? Theonomy simply means God's law. Namas is the word for law.

Theos is God. Theonomy is a system. Rustuni and Bonson and a few other guys who are very supportive of it argue that the law of God, the entire Old Covenant, is still bound on the New Covenant believer just in a different way, but that all the laws, the Old Covenant laws are still in force.

And because of that, things like stoning are still... would still happen if the laws allowed it, but they don't. So their view is that, yes, stoning would still happen. My perspective, looking at Scripture, looking at the heart of Christ for the sinner and the call to repentance and the gospel in Christ would be that because we are no longer under the theocracy of Israel, because there's not an attempt to sanctify a nation, but rather we're sanctifying God's people within a nation, that the sanctity becomes pursued through the call to repentance, sanctification, and church discipline, not the sword of the government, which is what Israel had.

We no longer have the sword of the government, and I think the purpose is that we don't... the necessity of exercising it is not there. We don't have the sword of the government. We have the sword of church discipline, and even that has become somewhat tenuous because how can you exercise discipline if the church down the road willingly receives someone who's put out of the church?

I mean, that's a serious issue. Let's say a person in our church was committing adultery and was unrepentant, and a person went to them and said, you know, Sister Sarah... We don't have a Sarah, do we?

We do, well, a little one, but... I don't want to make sure nobody thinks I'm calling out Sister Sarah. Or Sister whoever, they go to Sister Sarah and they say, Sarah, you're committing adultery, and she says, I'm not going to repent.

Two or three witnesses go, talk to her, call her to repentance. She refuses to repent. She's brought before the church, and she's removed for having committed adultery and doing so unrepentantly. That is how church discipline is supposed to operate according to Matthew 18.

And that's supposed to be how the sword is exercised by the church. The sword of cutting away the cancerous person, as Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians, that the person becomes like a cancer. They're harming the body by participating in the body, and that we're not even supposed to eat with that person.

See, that's the thing we don't think about a lot anymore in church is the idea of excommunication, to put a person out, not even eat with such a person. You know, that's, we don't often practice that, but that's what it says.

And that's how the sword is exercised under the New Covenant. Not in physical stoning, but in the practice of separation.

But with Jesus' actions here in Matthew, where, you know, he told, under the New Covenant in which he brought us, is he then separating that this is the way it should be from here on out?

I would argue so, and that's where I would have issue with things. Some of the things, I like Greg Bonson, so we'll make sure my Theonomist friends, if they ever hear this, don't freak out on me. I'm not saying they're wrong on everything, but that's one of the issues I would have, is the logical extension of the law came through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

What do we see in Christ is grace. So if a person comes to me in sin, I'm not going to condemn them to my punishment of stoning or whatever else, but I will call for their repentance, and if they refuse to repent, I will have to separate from them if they're identifying themselves as a believer.

Now, if they're not a believer, and this is another thing Paul addresses, if a person's not a believer, and they're committing sin, they're simply living in accordance with their nature, we can't expect them to do anything else.

And that's the thing about the homosexuals. People say, what would you do if a homosexual came into the church? Well, I wouldn't welcome them into membership if a person's living in outright sin, but I also wouldn't tell them to leave necessarily if they're not a believer, if they're looking for the truth, if God is working on their heart to bring them to us to hear the truth.

My prayer is for their repentance, and I wouldn't say leave, and I hope none of us would. I hope we would say, we call you to repentance. But in the same way that I had a couple come to me once, a man came, sat in my office, and he said, I want to join your church.

And I said, that's great. Tell me about you and your wife. Well, she's not my wife. This is an old man, an older man. He said, she's not my wife.

I said, do you guys live together?

Yes. I said, do you live as husband and wife? I mean, you're not roommates. I was thinking, maybe they're roommates. You don't know. Maybe they're both just an older couple. He said, no, we live as husband and wife, but we're not married.

I said, why aren't you married? Well, we don't want to get married. She doesn't want to give up her name. It was a really odd circumstance. And I just told him, I said, well, as much as I like you, you're a nice person.

I really do think you're a nice individual. We cannot welcome you into membership unless you repent. And I would do the same thing with a homosexual. If they came, I would say, you may be a nice person.

You may be a lovely person, a person that I would want to be friends with, but your sin is an affront to God, and we cannot say that it's not simply to placate your conscience or to say it's okay.

Or to gain a new member.

Or to gain a new member, and that's what's happened in a lot of churches. What's my time? I'm out of it, aren't I?

It's 15 after.

Yeah, we're out of time. Well, let me get just a few more things. This is the last one. There's a couple more on here. If anybody would like a copy, I'll give it to you. This is the last objection I'm going to deal with.

Why Churches Must Not Celebrate Sexual Sin

All people who call themselves Christians sin, how is it different to be gay than it is to be a person who tells lies or gossips or has divorced? These things are allowed in the church. Why not homosexuality?

Here's the simple answer. This one's huge. You will hear this one a lot. Here's the simple answer. While all Christians do sin, there are no movements to create churches which glorify theft, lying, gossip, or divorce.

These behaviors are all identified as sinful and discouraged in the church. No one is attempting to establish the first church of liars or the first church of thieves or murderers or anyone else. That's what makes the homosexual movement different.

People who are engaging in homosexual behavior and their supporters want the sin welcomed into the church and glorified by the church. That's the difference. It's not that the sin is worse than lying or gossip or anything else.

In fact, when I teach on Romans 1 this morning, I'm going to show that there are a lot of sins that are in the same list as homosexuality, such as gossip, hatred, disobedience to parents, all kinds of things that we would say are equally sinful.

But the difference is this. No one's trying to start the first disobedient church of America.

But some of them, too, look into relationships in the Bible to call them homosexual, too.

And that's eisegesis, the relationship of Jonathan and David. There's a lot that are there. And that's really the main one that I'm familiar with. And again, it's eisegesis to argue that David was a homosexual, especially after his issue with Bathsheba.

Yes, sir?

It doesn't say that when you commit sexual immorality, you're sinning against your own body.

Yes, there is a difference. And let me close with this because I do get a good point. I'm not saying all sin is the same in the sense that every sin is equally repugnant to yourself or even is equally repugnant to God.

The Bible says that all sin is the same and that all sin is a breach of the law. But we know, as we all would know, I would rather somebody punch me in the face than stab me in the heart. There are sins that are, in themselves, in what they cause in guilt and what they cause in pain and what they cause in suffering, are more than others.

And this is why when Jesus talked about the Pharisees and he talked about the Sadducees, when he was talking to Pilate, he said, those who turn me over to you have the what? Greater sin. Isn't that amazing that Jesus would use the term greater sin because you did this in ignorance and you're doing this coerced politically.

But they did it fully knowing what they're doing and hating me. You wash your hands of this. They are doing this saying, put the blood of him on our heads and our children. So Jesus said their sin is greater.

So we have to take that into consideration not to say that all sin is not a breach of God's law because it is. But not all breaches of the law are the same. And so that's a whole other issue that we could spend time with.

But just to simply say this, Paul says that sin which is done sexually is sin which is done against the body and makes it a specific type of sin that is not only repugnant to God, but is harmful to us.

Yes.

Marriage.

Yes, sir. I think that marriage, and this is going to take a little time. Remember, question, come up and take a little time. Marriage is, I believe, a divine allowance or we could say a divine gift to all men, not just to believers.

This is why I have practiced the right of marrying two unbelievers together. I won't marry a believer to an unbeliever, and I won't marry a believer to a person who is of another faith. But if two unbelievers come to me, and I'm confident that neither one of them know Christ, I will exercise the ordinance of marriage for them simply because I believe that it was given in the Garden and thus is universal.

It's something that all men can participate in. You might want to argue with me at some point, but I do believe that the gift of marriage is given to all people.

So when we say what God has given together, would we say that God...