Much of the news today is about the announcement that President Obama made yesterday that he is personally in favor of gay marriage – the first standing President ever to do so.
(I wasn’t able to follow the news coverage yesterday because a lawnmower severed our cable. Our house is on a golf course and the cable inexplicably was above ground and on the grass.)
While Americans discuss whether or not they agree with the President, I’d like to present a brief summary of why I cannot support gay marriage.
I am a follower of Jesus Christ before I am anything else. Jesus is my Lord. I do my best to live for Him every day.
I tend to be conservative politically, but I don’t take marching orders from any party, politician, or political philosophy. In fact, I disagree with conservatives on issues like guns, caring for the poor, and the minimum wage, just to name a few.
In fact, I think it’s a disgrace when followers of Jesus superimpose their faith over their political philosophy and act like Jesus approves of all their political viewpoints. The truth is that Jesus never addressed a host of political issues, including abortion, voting rights, or the war in Afghanistan … and it’s dishonest to act like He did.
And that includes homosexuality. Jesus never said one word about it.
But He didn’t have to, because Jesus preached and practiced the Old Testament, and Scripture had already laid out God’s directives in the sexual realm: sex belongs inside a married heterosexual relationship, which rules out sex before marriage and sex outside marriage.
There was still a cultural consensus on sex in the late 1960s: sex belongs inside marriage. By the late 1970s, the consensus was largely gone.
But Jesus’ teaching on this topic, found in Matthew 5:27-30, stands for all time for those who follow Him. Jesus had the chance to say, “The Old Testament teaching on sex is wrong. I’ve come to enlighten everybody. It’s okay with God if you have sex with anybody at anytime! Go for it!”
But instead of loosening God’s sexual standards, Jesus tightened them when He said that both physical sex and mental sex are wrong outside the bonds of heterosexual marriage.
And Jesus’ words are 180 degrees different than the thinking of our culture.
The same idea holds true when it comes to marriage. Please read Jesus’ words carefully as recorded in Matthew 19:4-6:
“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”
Please notice three things:
First, Jesus’ authority was Scripture. He asked His audience, “Haven’t you read …” and then quoted from Genesis 2:24.
The authority for settling disputes for Jesus wasn’t a poll, or a politician, or personal feelings, or how His friends felt.
Jesus’ authority is what God designed … and what God felt … and what God said.
We may be able to disagree on our interpretations of baptism for the dead (1 Corinthians 15:29) and the meaning of Hebrews 6:4-6, but if Jesus was clear on anything, He was clear that Scripture is authoritative on marriage for His followers.
Second, Jesus went back to creation for His verdict on marriage. He specifically refers to God’s original intent in marriage. Paul goes back to Genesis 2:24 as well when he writes the church at Ephesus about marriage (Ephesians 5:31).
Genesis 2:24, according to Moses (the author of Genesis and the Jewish lawgiver), Jesus (our Savior, Lord, and Messiah) and Paul (a Jew who was apostle to the Gentiles), is the definitive text on marriage for both Jews and Christians.
You can try and reinterpret Genesis 2:24, but then you’ll have to try and reinterpret the explanations of Jesus and Paul as well. It’s far better to admit and submit to the authority of Scripture than to try and fashion 3,500 years of Judeo-Christian teaching on marriage to fit a modern cultural or personal viewpoint.
If God wanted men to marry men and women to marry women – being an infinitely creative God – couldn’t He have done so from creation … before Jewish or Christian cultures came along? And if He intended same sex marriage, couldn’t His position have evolved over the 1,500+ plus years that Scripture was written?
But it never did. Scripture is consistent on marriage from Genesis through Revelation.
Third, Jesus specifies that God intended both parents and married partners to be of the opposite sex. Jesus doesn’t mention two fathers or two mothers in a family, but one father and one mother. (I realize he doesn’t mention one father or one mother, either, but we’re talking about God’s intent from creation.) And He doesn’t mention two men or two women, but one man and one woman in marriage.
I realize the context here is marriage and divorce, not heterosexual and homosexual marriage. But the basic principles of marriage for Christians come from both Scripture and the Son of God, and Jesus speaks more clearly here about God’s intent for marriage than anywhere else in the Gospels.
Gay marriage first became legal in Denmark in 1989. Was everyone before that time misguided or unenlightened? Until 23 years ago, not a single moral or philosophical system had ever supported the idea of gay marriage. Were those thousands of moralists and philosophers wrong?
Today, most world religions oppose gay marriage, including Orthodox Judaism, the Mormon Church, Islam, all evangelical Christian groups, and the Roman Catholic Church.
If I am one of the millions of people in those groups who believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman, does that automatically make me a bigot, a neanderthal, or someone filled with hate?
But for me, this whole thing boils down to one question:
Who is my Lord?
If it’s Jesus, I must believe that marriage is intended to be between one heterosexual man and one heterosexual woman.
If it’s Barack Obama or George Clooney or my friends at work or my own feelings, I’ll go a different direction.
But I have no choice. I invited Jesus into my life, not just to save me from myself, but to guide and direct my life.
So there are two words I can never say together when it comes to Jesus:
“No, Lord.”
Biblical Christians have not changed their position on marriage for two thousand years. While the culture changes around us, we believe that to change with it would be disloyalty to Jesus Christ.
You’ll have to decide if you’re going to follow a politician, or a poll, or a political party, or your pals.
I’m going with Jesus.
Thanks Jim for sharing. We are all sinners and have fallen short. I thank God every day that he is a loving God, that loves us unconditionally. He is the best Dad. We can sin and he forgives. On this subject….I think we need to get back to the basics…The word of God is our text book and we need to obey what he commands. This is what i think about this issue. Sodomy is a type of Fornication/Lust of the Flesh. Thou Shalt Not commit Adultery is the 7th commandment (Exodus 20) and the particulars of God’s hatred for the sin of sodomy is expressed as an Abomination before the Lord, (Leviticus 20, Romans 1 and elsewhere.) Marriage being an institution ordained by God, (Genesis 2, Matthew 19:4 and elsewhere.) to be corrupted by a life style the same God has called an Abomination, is wickedness.
There are more sins in the Bible than just sodomy. We are all sinners and guilty before a Holy God, (Romans 3:23 and elsewhere.) The solution is humbling yourself before God, to admit your sins and ask The Lord Jesus Christ to forgive you and save you from your wicked ways. (John Chapter 3 and elsewhere.) I come in love to share with you the Truth, would you hate a man for telling you the Truth, even if the Truth was something hard to bear?
This is sure a hot toppic, and will be for a long time to come. I do enjoy reading your posts and thank you for continuing to write for us.
LikeLike
Thank you, Sara, for your biblically-based thoughts. In the eyes of many people, same sex marriage would legitimize sex between the sexes (too much sex in that phrase!), but Jesus’ words in Matthew 19 rule out same sex marriage. If God wanted it, wouldn’t He have made a way for it in Scripture? We’re not “evolving” – we’re “devolving.” Thanks for your input.
LikeLike
As always, Jim, you make an excellent point on the topic of gay marriage. I remember being confused on the issue. You had a seminar at BFCC and shared information that forever enlightened me. It’s not the “popular” thing to do these days – opposing gay marriage – but who are we to go against God’s word? We are not intolerant haters. We are followers of Jesus Christ who uphold God’s word.
LikeLike
Vicki, you said it perfectly. To support gay marriage – even if we want to emotionally – is not only against 2,000 years of Christian teaching, it is against the intent of creation as specified by Jesus Christ. I cannot understand how so many professing believers can be disloyal to their Lord. Stand strong!
LikeLike
Thanks for the clarity, Jim.
LikeLike
You are welcome, Dave. Thanks for linking the article on Facebook!
LikeLike
I was so glad to read the part where you said you don’t take your marching orders from any political party. No matter what the issue is we have to apply biblical principles to it. Many people do not understand me politically, and I have to explain that though I am fairly conservative I can’t agree with everything a particular party does. But politicians must if they want the support of their party. When Joe Biden spoke about gay marriage he wasn’t supposed to, not yet anyway, so White House strategists had to go to work to “fix” what he had done. It’s all a big game, and guess who loses-we do, because in reality in an election year we are hearing what strategists for the candidates think we might want to hear, not necessarily what the candidates really think. President Obama has been waffling on the issue, waiting for the right time, testing the waters before he gave a definitive opinion, but his VP messed things up. It’s not about right and wrong, it’s about getting elected.
LikeLike
I guess people will do anything for a job … especially one that cements your legacy in history.
Years ago, I read a question that someone asked British theologian F.F. Bruce. The implication of the question was that Bruce was a conservative theologian and that this outlook colored his interpretations of Scripture. But Bruce countered by saying that he didn’t hold a position because it was conservative or non-conservative but because he believed it to be true … regardless of where that puts him on the theological spectrum.
I favor a biblical view of life and then I vote accordingly. I have voted for Democrats and against Republicans in the past. (And I once wrote in “Bozo” when I didn’t like any of the candidates.) I cannot and will not vote for any politician who favors abortion or gay marriage, and for the life of me, I can’t understand why some professing Christians would do that. Why are we voting to undermine our faith and our heritage?
While Christians are not exempt from being political, we need to be more biblical and less political or we’re going to lose our freedom to practice our faith in America. In my opinion, gay marriage is one of the biggest threats to Christian churches that we’ve ever seen in this country. Every Christian should vote against it, speak up against it, and stand against it … or we are betraying the Creator of marriage, Jesus Christ.
And that’s the way I really feel!
LikeLike
[…] (If you’d like, you can read what I wrote about this issue last May: https://blog.restoringkingdombuilders.org/2012/05/10/thoughts-on-gay-marriage/) […]
LikeLike