What does the Bible say about homosexuality? Is the Bible being misinterpreted? -Podcast Episode 150

The Sodom and Gomorrah Account and the Sin of Homosexuality

Welcome to the Got Questions podcast. So you'll remember a while back when we first launched the podcast, we went through like the top 20 questions of all time, but there were actually two of them that we kind of put off, not because we wanted to avoid the issues, but just because we wanted to make sure we covered it the right way.

And so episode 19 in that series was a few episodes ago. And today we're talking about the last question, the top 20, not last because it's the least common. It's actually one of the most popular questions.

And today's question is, what does the Bible say about homosexuality? So the reason we put this off specifically is it's a very, it's a sensitive issue. It's a controversial issue. It's an issue where a lot of the conversations produce far more heat than light.

So what we wanna do, we wanna go through the various passages in the Bible that talk about homosexuality, explain what we believe to be the correct biblical interpretation, but also focusing on homosexuality is not a greater sin than any other.

Homosexuality is a sin that Christ died for, just like every other sin that's out there. Start diving into the specific biblical passages. And what's interesting is just a couple of weeks ago, I was in an email dialogue with someone who, about the passage we're gonna deal with first, in Genesis 19, the account of Sodom and Gomorrah.

And we'll be talking about this more later. It's so interesting that the trend today is to interpret this passage in a completely different way than it's been interpreted for the past 2 ,500 years, where every interpreter, whether Jewish or Christian, has interpreted this a certain way to have a certain meaning, a certain implication.

And now it's suddenly a new meaning or a new focus of the passage that's been discovered. So just very briefly, Genesis 19, two angels sent down from God to investigate the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, discover that it is indeed thoroughly wicked cities.

And the two angels come to stay with Lot, who is Abraham's nephew, while the two angels who were disguised as human men were in Lot's home, that all the people from the town come to the door, pound on the door and say, Lot, send these two men out, because we want to essentially homosexually rape them.

Lot refuses to do so, says, you can even, and this could be a whole nother episode. Here's my two daughters, why don't you take them instead? But then the angels step in and stop them in, strike them with blindness, tell Lot and his family, get out of here.

God is going to destroy these two cities. And that's what proceeds to happen. God brings down fire from heaven. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are completely destroyed. And so for, again, the entire history of interpretation of this passage is being interpreted as homosexuality was a major reason for why God destroyed these two cities.

Now there's a passage in Ezekiel, in Ezekiel chapter 16, verses 49 to 50, that speaks a little bit more about this passage. And these verses again, Ezekiel 16, 49 to 50 say, now this was the sin of your sister Sodom.

She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned. They did not help the poor and needy. So some people today like to stop right there, that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was inhospitality, not being kind to strangers.

Well, I will readily grant that wanting to homosexually gang rape visitors to your city is very inhospitable, but that's not where the verse ends. The next verse, verse 50 says, they were haughty and did detestable things before me.

And this word detestable, Kevin's gonna cover these passages in Leviticus in a minute, is the exact same word used in Leviticus to refer to homosexuality as detestable. And then also Jude, verse 1, 7, says that Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding towns gave them up to sexual immorality and perversion.

Again, pointing to there was a sexual perversion taking place in Sodom and Gomorrah, which was a part, a major factor in why God destroyed these two cities. Now, no one is claiming that homosexuality was the only sin taking place in Sodom and Gomorrah.

Clearly these were wicked cities and many, many different things, but the one sin that is specifically identified in the passage in Genesis 19 is the sin of homosexuality. Others will point to, well, this is talking about homosexual rape, not just, not the loving relationships that homosexuals claim to be involved in today.

And I will grant that that's true, but that does not change the fact that God referred to homosexuality as a perversion, something that is detestable. And two cities that were known for this particular act were destroyed in large part due to their participation in this one particular sin.

So again, this passage seems very clear. Homosexuality was a major part of the reason why God destroyed these two cities. Obviously a lot more going on, many, many sins taking place there, but this passage has always nearly universally been understood as homosexuality was a sin that was taking place there and was a major factor for why God destroyed the two cities.

It is also not the only place in the Old Testament or in scripture where those ideas are brought up. There's a moment in Judges where a very similar situation happens, similar language, similar condemnation.

It's important to remember that in Jude, it says that they had unnatural desires and sexual immorality. Men of Sodom didn't know that these were angels. So it's not like Jude was talking about them being interested in something other than human beings.

So as you said, this has been a pretty clear interpretation for pretty much all of Judeo-Christian history. It's very difficult to say that people interpreted that as anything different.

God’s Mercy in Abraham’s Intercession for Sodom

Guys, I wanna point out in that same passage in Genesis, we also see the grace of God at work in the previous chapter in Genesis 18, as God is speaking with Abraham and Abraham starts bargaining with God, as it were.

He's actually interceding for Sodom and Gomorrah and Abraham starts off saying, well, Lord, what if there are some righteous people there in Sodom? What if there are 50 righteous people living in Sodom?

Surely you would not destroy the whole city with the righteous there, far be it from you to judge the righteous with the wicked. And God says, no, for the sake of 50, I would not destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.

And then Abraham starts whittling down that number. He goes to 45, then 40, then 30, 20, and then finally to 10. And God still says, for the sake of 10 righteous persons in the city, I will not destroy it.

So I think two things there. One is the grace of God is so evident. He is slow to wrath. He is slow to anger and he is abundant in mercy. And also I think it's very evident there, the fact that the righteous person has quite an impact in society.

If you are a godly person, you're a believer calling on the name of the Lord and you're surrounded by wickedness, you're living in the midst of a sinful culture, you have an impact. You may not even know what that impact is, but be not weary in well-doing because the Lord sees and you are having an impact in your society.

Leviticus, the Septuagint, and the Meaning of Detestable

There are a couple other places here in Leviticus that I wanted to point to. There are a couple passages here, one in Leviticus 18, one in Leviticus 20, that deal with homosexuality. Although some people today are trying to reinterpret this and saying, well, it's really about pedophilia.

It's really about idolatry. These are sins that are attached to pagan rituals and idolatry. And here are the passages though, here are these two verses. Leviticus 18, verse 22 says, do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman that is detestable.

Now it is true that the previous verse mentions Molech worship and the sacrifice of children to Molech. And then we also have Leviticus 20 in verse 13. If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable.

So that word detestable, that's the same one that is used in Ezekiel. They did detestable things. And again, in Leviticus 20, we do have Molech worship mentioned in the same context up in the previous part of that chapter.

So is it true that these two prohibitions of sexual relations, man on man, are actually prohibitions against idolatrous practices, stuff that's connected with Molech worship? Well, no, not at all. The whole of Leviticus 18 is a list of different practices that were engaged in by the Canaanites.

And God said, for this reason, you are not to have anything to do with any of these things. And yes, Molech worship is mentioned as one of the things that they did that was committed as a sin against God.

But then we have a whole lot of other things. God deals with incest and bestiality and homosexuality here in these two verses that I've just read. The Septuagint was a Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures that was done some 200 years before the New Testament period.

And so before the New Testament ever came about, before Paul ever gave any prohibitions against homosexuality, we had the Septuagint, which was the Greek version of these passages. And in the Greek translation of Leviticus, we have very clearly a reference to homosexuality.

In fact, it uses the same two Greek words that are combined in the New Testament to refer to a male-only bed. That is a man in bed with another man. Homosexual sex. It's very clear in the New Testament that that's what it's talking about.

And the Septuagint translators use the same Greek term to refer to these particular practices in Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20. These passages were clearly understood by the Jews of the ancient world as being a prohibition of homosexual acts.

The rabbinical literature all points to the same thing, that this was very clearly understood as being a prohibition on man-on-man sex. Yeah, Kevin, definitely, great explanation. It's similar to the Sodom and Gomorrah passage to hear these two verses being interpreted differently today due to a cultural context, differently than they've been interpreted throughout history.

It's frustrating to the point that it's like, how can you even get there to think that that's what this passage is about? And one thing that I've seen with increasing frequently is pointing to these two passages in Leviticus, the ones you quoted, and saying they have to do with pedophilia rather than homosexuality.

This is talking about an adult male having sexual relations with a child, a young male. Now, the two Hebrew words in both of these passages, if I remember correctly, it uses different words. If a man has sex with a male.

And the second word can sometimes be used to refer to younger men. And so that's what people will like to focus on. You will see this is talking about pedophilia, not homosexuality. Well, the first word in the passage can also be used to refer to young men.

The second word can be referred to just males in general, if a man has sex with a male. So you're not gonna get anywhere if you actually look to see how these words are used throughout the Old Testament, and that both of them could be used to refer to an old man, a young man, a middle-aged man, or a male.

The age is not inherent in either of the two terms here. Neither one of them is used exclusively or even predominantly to refer to a male of a certain age. So this is the sort of reinterpretation I'm seeing a lot that people are gonna focus on the different words being used, but if you actually study the different words that are being used, you will see that they both, in their inherent definition, are just referring to males, human males.

So if a human male has sexual relationships with another human male, this act is detestable in the Lord's sight. That's what these verses are saying, and that's how they've, again, always been interpreted up until very recently.

Romans 1 and the Meaning of Natural Relations

When we start to bring this into a New Testament context, that is good to keep in mind, that scripture is talking about something that's relatively easy to see, understand, or to grasp. Which body parts of which persons are interacting in which ways.

Even if somebody considers that to be none of their business or oppressive, that's what it's discussing. So it's not that we can't try to impose other ideas. So for example, we'll hear people say, that writers in the Old Testament and into the New Testament didn't understand what we would now call sexual orientation.

The idea that somebody has a natural proclivity to those things, and that because those writers did not understand that, they weren't really speaking of what we see today. But there again, they weren't speaking about natural inclination per se, they were discussing the actual actions in question.

So when we get to like the Book of Romans, we have Romans 1, 26 and 27, where Paul talks about this. And one of the things he says there in verse 26, he says, for this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions, and he's talking about non-believers.

For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to the nation, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another. Men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

So here Paul is talking about men and women in this sense, and he makes the reference to this being something that's not natural. And there again is this idea that it does not have really anything to do with an orientation.

Paul throughout the Book of Romans, especially chapter seven, makes it pretty clear that he's not a man who believes that anything that's normal, natural is automatically good, just because it's natural.

So there's no reason to think that Paul in this case is saying that something is unnatural in the sense that it goes against your preferences or it goes against your instincts, which is how some people want to interpret that, to say that Paul is merely saying, well, he's just saying that if you are inclined towards same-sex romance, that's what you should pursue.

If you're inclined towards opposite-sex romance, that's what you should pursue. That's not what he's saying. He's making the point that the natural, the thing that God would want, is the thing that's being moved away.

Some people also try to interpret that as saying that it has something to do with forcing intimacy on people. But there again, we see that he talks about being consumed with lust for one another. So Paul can't be accused of not understanding sexual orientation because he's not discussing the question of are you going with or going against your nature in that passage.

He says elsewhere that there's times that things that we want are things that we would prefer, things that we like are not the things that God wants us to do. And that continues with other things that Paul has to say when we get into 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy.

1 Corinthians 6, 1 Timothy 1, and the 1946 Translation Claim

A major claim that we will sometimes hear is that in 1 Corinthians 6, 9, the term homosexual was only added to the Bible in the 1940s. And that's part of the rolling argument that claims that prior to that, that was not how people interpreted scripture.

As we've discussed, there is no way to sort of take that argument seriously. We can be mature, we can be respectful, but the suggestion that Judeo-Christianity did not view homosexual behavior as a sin until sometime in the 1940s or 1950s is simply historically absurd, it's false.

And what we see in here is that the terminology that's in there really does echo things we saw before. As Kevin was mentioning, the Septuagint was a Greek translation of the Old Testament that was made hundreds of years before Jesus was born, that was hundreds of years before Paul wrote what he wrote, but it used two words.

So the Greek scholars of that time looked at the idea of intimacy between men and they used arsenos and koitin as the two words. Well, Paul sort of puts those together in some of his terminologies. And he says arsenokotai, and he's talking about that basic idea.

He's using the same language that Jewish scholars of centuries before had used in reference to males having sex with males. And it was translated in the Old Testament as to have intercourse with a man the way you would with a woman is the meaning of that.

So when we try to pull this into the New Testament context, it's important to recognize that there is still clarity that what's being discussed and talked about is understood. In other words, it's not that Paul doesn't understand what he's saying, or that he's saying it in a different way or in a different sense, or that he doesn't grasp something that we now today understand that he did not mean.

He's being very direct. He's being very clear about something that's specific. This is something that God has said is not part of his plan, not part of his design. And we are supposed to put that in that category of saying, who's gonna rescue me from this body of death?

Thank God, Christ can help me overcome that.

Amen. Jeff, excellent explanation there. And like you said, the whole thing with the homosexuality not being in the Bible till 1946, and that's another one I'm hearing again and again and again. And it's just like, is ludicrous a strong enough term to address the concept that Christians weren't against homosexuality until 1946?

I mean, it's just, it's crazy to think that. You can look at Bible translations that are translated centuries before, even the King James Version, or you can go all the way back to Wycliffe, the first English Bible.

While it does not use the term homosexuality, that term does not exist yet, it is very clear in the passages we just discussed what it's talking about and it's condemning it as a sin. So the whole idea that just because the word homosexual did not occur in the Bible until 1946 is irrelevant in determining whether the act that the term homosexuality refers to is condemned in scripture.

And you don't even have to go to English. You can go to Martin Luther's translation in the 1500s. You can go back to the Latin Vulgate, translated 400-ish AD, you can go back to the Septuagint. Every translation of the Bible in the history of Bible translation in all these passages we've discussed today has clearly identified homosexual behavior as something that is sinful.

So the whole 1946 thing, it would make me laugh and it didn't make me cry that people were so buying into something that's so clearly false and yet trying to find any and every possible way to explain away the clear teaching of scripture on this issue.

And if you didn't know, if you don't have a sense of that history, I can understand why a person who doesn't have much grounding in the idea would say, oh, well, that does make sense. Why would anybody have a problem with it up until that point in time?

But just because the word doesn't exist in a particular culture does not mean that the idea in and of itself is not there, especially when we remember that these are people talking about specific behaviors.

An analogy I've used, I think we use it in one of our articles talking about this subject is if you read some 12th century account where a knight was criticizing his squire because the squire went and sort of arrogantly explained to a seamstress the right way to sew, even though he sort of knows, but she's really the expert.

Well, today, that's what we would refer to as mansplaining. And whether you like that term or not, that's the way that people use it. It wouldn't make sense for us to say that, well, no, the knight wasn't condemning mansplaining because that word, it didn't exist.

He knew exactly what he was saying and what he was talking about. It's very much the same thing with these passages that we see. The term specifically in English didn't come around until we translated the Bible in English, which is no different than things like murder, rape, and everything else.

Those English words weren't there until we put them in in English, but people understood what they meant.

Why Christians Keep Returning to This Issue

Good point, Jeff. One thing that I've been brought to my attention a few times recently is, so we've covered today the six main passages that deal with homosexuality. That's again, Genesis 19, Leviticus 18 .22, and Leviticus 20 .13, Romans 1 .26 -27, 1 Corinthians 6 .9, and 1 Timothy 1 .10.

So a question that we've received several times, especially recently, is if the Bible only talks about homosexuality six times, why are Christians so fixated on it? Why do Christians want to talk about it so much?

And as I said at the beginning, I really don't think we do. At this point, we'd very much like to be able to move on to other things, but right now, this is the primary cultural issue where there is a significant divide between what the Bible teaches, what most Christians believe, and the culture that surrounds us.

If for some reason, I think Jeff, we talked about it before the show, that if the culture around us were suddenly embracing adultery, that cheating on your wife's husband is something to be celebrated, well, Christians would definitely be fighting and arguing against that, but that's not what's happening.

What is happening is a view that Christians have held for the entire history of Christianity, that homosexuality is immoral, it's unnatural, it's not something Christians should participate in. Culture is now saying that this is okay, and not only is it okay, it's to be embraced, it is to be celebrated, so that's the reason why it at least seems like Christians want to spend so much time talking about homosexuality, because that's the primary issue where there, in terms of Christian morality, Christian ethics, and ethics of the culture around us, there's a huge difference of opinion, or difference of interpretation, so if we are confronted with this issue, and it got questions, if we're asked about this issue, we are going to do our best to give, here's what the Bible says, and here's why we believe what we believe, and here's why we have to talk about it.

It's not like, this is something we enjoy. It's like, this is not something, like telling people they're engaged in immoral behavior is really not my favorite thing to do, not even close. I'd much rather be focusing on the gospel, on how you can serve Christ, how you can love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, those type of things, than continually having to deal with people who are trying to justify a sinful behavior.

Homosexuality, Sin, and the Hope of Forgiveness in Christ

I mean, Kevin, why don't you close us out, and just talk just briefly about the idea that many Christians struggle with on viewing homosexuality as some greater sin, as some sin that God can't forgive, because that is a question that we receive quite a bit, and it's definitely something that needs to be addressed.

Yeah. Well, the blood of Christ covers all sin, and if we, and scripture says that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. There are no exceptions to that statement. There are no caveats that are listed there.

It's whoever calls on the name of the Lord, in faith, is gonna be saved, and the sin is forgiven. When Paul wrote to the Corinthian church, he made a list of sins, and he said, all of these things are wicked things, but, and he said to the Corinthians, you practiced some of these things, but now you are washed, now you are cleansed, now you are sanctified.

And so, all of those sins were, and homosexuality is listed among those sins. They were all sins that had been practiced previously by the Corinthians in their pre-Christ state, but once they came to Christ, those sins were forgiven.

And my mind goes to the Pilgrim's Progress book by John Bunyan, where the interpreter is speaking to a man who thinks he's beyond hope. He sees himself as locked in an iron cage, and he has no hope of salvation.

Forgiveness has passed him by, and the words of the interpreter to this man are, the son of the blessed is very pitiful. That is, Jesus Christ shows great compassion and mercy. You need to call on him.

Your focus needs to be on the Savior who can take away your sin. And there's a promise, that is the promise of Scripture, that when we call on the name of the Lord, we will be saved. Amen, and well said.

So, we'll include some links to the articles that we have on these issues, because they go into further depth than we are able to in the limited time we have here today. But this has been the Got Questions podcast episode on what does the Bible say about homosexuality?

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