Introduction
The Christian who agrees
that homosexual unions are sinful still faces the question of how he or she is
to relate to homosexuals, and this comes to a head when the invitation to his
or her wedding arrives. The challenge is
particularly acute when the person inviting one to celebrate such a marriage is
a close relative. Is there any advice
from Scripture on such an issue? Very
much.
Holiness
for God’s People
In the Old Testament,
God’s missional purpose is to form a righteous people. This is stated clearly when Israel is formed
as God’s people at Mt. Sinai:
Exodus 19:5-6 Now therefore, if you obey my
voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the
peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine,
6 but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy
nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the Israelites."
This calling requires
Israel, and the foreigners sojourning in her midst, to separate from the
practices of her neighbours:
Leviticus 18:1-4 The LORD spoke to Moses,
saying: 2 Speak to the people
of Israel and say to them: I am the LORD your God. 3 You shall not do as they do in
the land of Egypt, where you lived, and you shall not do as they do in the land
of Canaan, to which I am bringing you. You shall not follow their
statutes. 4 My ordinances you
shall observe and my statutes you shall keep, following them: I am the LORD
your God.
The call to be different
from Egyptians and Canaanites, to observe God’s ordinances and statutes,
involved, among a number of practices, not having sex with one’s father’s wife
and not engaging in same-sex acts:
Leviticus 18:8 You shall not uncover the
nakedness of your father's wife; it is the nakedness of your father.
Leviticus 18:22 You shall not lie with a male as
with a woman; it is an abomination.
Beyond
the prohibition from doing such things is the stated penalty for Israel, a
theocracy, to enforce should anyone break such laws. Two chapters later, Leviticus rearranges the
laws of chapter 18 in a new way, around the penalties. The penalties mentioned are (1) being cut off
from God’s people—ostracism—(2) the death penalty, (3) burning to death; (4)
‘punishment’, and (5) dying childless.
In the case of the two laws noted above, the stipulation calls for the
death penalty (Leviticus 20.11, 13).
The
rationale for such a law code is that God’s people are to reflect God’s
holiness:
Leviticus 20:7-8 Consecrate yourselves therefore,
and be holy; for I am the LORD your God.
8 Keep my statutes, and observe them; I am the LORD; I
sanctify you.
Paul
turns to these laws when dealing with a case that arose in the church of
Corinth. He uses the actual wording of
Leviticus and, therefore, leaving us wondering if the man’s lover was his
actual mother or a second wife of his father:
1 Corinthians 5:1 It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of
a kind that is not found even among pagans; for a man is living with his
father's wife.
Paul
also applies the penalty for this sin, but not literally. He says,
1 Corinthians 5:5 … you are to hand this man over
to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in
the day of the Lord.
Instead
of a literal death penalty, Paul suggests a ‘death’ for the man’s ‘flesh’—his
sinfulness—and an ostracism from the church by turning the man over to the
realm of Satan. (After all, the church
is not a governing authority in society that can mete out a death
penalty!) There are two reasons for
Paul’s teaching on this matter to the church: (1) the holiness of God’s people;
and (2) the man’s own need for the Church’s redemptive judgement. The second concern is seen in the passage
just cited, 1 Cor. 5.5. Paul understands
that the man will not be encouraged to repent of his sin if the church
continues to accept him as a brother in Christ.
He needs the church’s
judgement so that he might realise that what he is doing will be judged ‘in the
day of the Lord’. By being put out of
the church, there is a hope that the person will repent of his sin and wish to
be restored to God’s people. Thus, Paul
interprets the penalty for this sin in Leviticus metaphorically: not the
destruction of the person’s actual life through the death penalty but the
destruction of the person’s ‘flesh’ in a moral sense—his sinfulness. An example of such a process of judgement by
the church and subsequent restoration appears in Paul’s following letter to the
Corinthian church—whether or not this is the same case:
2 Corinthians 2:5-8 But if anyone has caused pain, he
has caused it not to me, but to some extent -- not to exaggerate it -- to all
of you. 6 This punishment by
the majority is enough for such a person;
7 so now instead you should forgive and console him, so that
he may not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.
8 So I urge you to reaffirm your love for him.
As
to the second concern for the holiness of the church, God’s people, Paul says,
should
1 Corinthians 5:7-8 Clean out the old yeast so that
you may be a new batch, as you really are unleavened. For our paschal lamb,
Christ, has been sacrificed. 8
Therefore, let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of
malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
This
comports well with the repeated concern in the Holiness Code in Leviticus and
throughout the Old Testament for Israel: they are to be a holy people (cf. Lev.
20.7-8, quoted above).
So,
if Paul applies Leviticus 18.8 to the situation in Corinth of a person living
with his father’s wife, he most certainly would have made the same sort of
argument from Leviticus 18.22 were he dealing with someone in the church who
continued in a homosexual relationship.
He would have said that this person needs to be judged by the church and
put out of the church into the realm of Satan for the destruction of his ‘flesh’—meaning
his sinfulness. He would have said that
the church, as God’s people, was to be holy, as Leviticus 20.7-8 said, and
therefore the church needed to cleanse itself by putting the person out of the
church. For both the sinner’s and the
church’s sake, then, judgement needed to be enacted. And, once the person repented, he would have
encouraged the church to forgive the person and receive him back into
fellowship.
Relating
to Sinners Inside the Church and Outside the Church
The
previous section addressed the issue of a person continuing in sin in the
church. Paul makes a distinction in 1
Corinthians 5 between a sinner claiming to be a Christian who is part of the
church and someone who does not claim to be a Christian and is not part of the
church. He says,
1 Corinthians 5:9-13 I wrote to you in my letter not
to associate with sexually immoral persons --
10 not at all meaning the immoral of this world, or the
greedy and robbers, or idolaters, since you would then need to go out of the
world. 11 But now I am
writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother or
sister1 who is sexually immoral or greedy, or is an idolater,
reviler, drunkard, or robber. Do not even eat with such a one. 12 For what have I to do with
judging those outside? Is it not those who are inside that you are to
judge? 13 God will judge
those outside. "Drive out the wicked person from among you."
From this passage, we can
see that Paul draws a clear line between believers and unbelievers. If one should not fellowship with a person ‘who
bears the name of brother or sister’ in Christ and continues in some sin,
certainly Paul would not have endorsed any attendance of a homosexual
celebrating his or her union or ‘wedding’ with someone of the same sex. The problem is not only ‘fellowship’ but also
‘celebration’ of something that is a sin.
But what of someone who
is not a believer? After all, Paul says
that he is not saying Christians should not associate with the sexually immoral
who are unbelievers. He does not tell
believers not to eat with such a person.
Would he say, then, that believers may celebrate their homosexual ‘wedding’? Certainly not.
Paul does not say, in the
paragraph quoted above, that believers can share in the unbeliever’s sinful
practices. He does not say, ‘Go with
your friend to her temple’ or ‘Get drunk with your unbelieving friend’ or ‘Help
your neighbour who is a thief if he needs somewhere to hide his goods’. Just because Paul allows association with
unbelieving sinners, he certainly does not encourage changing one’s own ethic
when doing so.
In fact, we have Paul’s
words on such subjects. In a passage
that may have in mind attendance of an unbeliever’s temple for some idolatrous
worship but that is written in general terms such that it might have broader
applications, Paul says,
2 Corinthians 6:14 - 7:1 Do not be mismatched with
unbelievers. For what partnership is there between righteousness and
lawlessness? Or what fellowship is there between light and darkness? 15 What agreement does Christ have
with Beliar? Or what does a believer share with an unbeliever? 16 What agreement has the temple
of God with idols? For we1 are the temple of the living God; as God
said, "I will live in them and walk among them, and I will be their God,
and they shall be my people. 17
Therefore come out from them, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and
touch nothing unclean; then I will welcome you,
18 and I will be your father, and you shall be my sons and
daughters, says the Lord Almighty."
7:1 Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from
every defilement of body and of spirit, making holiness perfect in the fear of
God.
Note
the use of the Old Testament again in Paul’s counsel (cf. Ezekiel 37.23,
27). This passage, Ezekiel 37, pictures
the people of God who were dead in their sins—a valley of dry bones—coming to
life with the Spirit of God. Christians
as people of the Spirit are not to enter into the celebration of someone’s
sinful acts. The issue is not simply
attending another religion’s worship service; it is also avoiding a context
that defiles the people of God were they to share in a sinful celebration.
Drawing Conclusions
In
light of all this, we can see that Paul would follow Old Testament reasoning
about sin and God’s people in advising us about any attendance of a homosexual ‘wedding’. First, he would say that this is a sin to be
judged in the church rather than celebrated.
Anyone continuing in a sinful relationship who claims to be a brother or
sister needs to be put out of the church not only because the church is called
to holiness but also for the person’s sake, that he or she might realize that
this is sin that neither the church nor God will accept. Even fellowship with such people is to be
withheld. Two passages by other New
Testament authors concur with this:. 2 John 10-11; Jude 12).
Jude 1:12 These are blemishes on
your love-feasts, while they feast with you without fear, feeding themselves.
2 John 1:10-11 Do not receive into the house or
welcome anyone who comes to you and does not bring this teaching [that Jesus
Christ has come in the flesh]; 11
for to welcome is to participate in the evil deeds of such a person.
Second,
Paul would allow fellowship with
unbelievers, but not participation in
their sin—let alone celebration of
their sin in a homosexual ‘wedding’. As
John says, ‘to welcome is to participate in the evil deeds’ (2 John 1.11). Paul would not have approved any such
interaction of Christians with unbelievers in their sins: eating meals in temples during a celebration, for
instance (1 Corinthians 8.10; 10.19-21).
One might eat in an unbeliever’s home,
even if the food has been sacrificed to an idol (1 Corinthians 10.27). In such a case, there is no celebration—no temple
context, no idolatry. Similarly, one
might eat a meal with a homosexual ‘couple’, we might reason from Paul, but a
believer should not join in the celebration of their sin, such as in attending
their so-called ‘wedding’.
The
challenge for believers engaging an increasingly post-Christian world will be
to do what one can to act ‘for the glory of God’ (1 Corinthians 10.31). The toleration of unholy, sinful persons in a
church because one is trying to be gracious is nothing more than, as Jude says,
perverting the grace of God into licentiousness and denying our only Master,
the Lord Jesus Christ (Jude 4). To
celebrate sin with unbelievers is likewise a denial of God’s glory, a
distortion of divine grace. Be assured,
God does not approve the sin of homosexual ‘marriage’: we cannot imagine Jesus
celebrating such a sinful act in any way as he did celebrate the couple
marrying in Cana (John 2.1-11). By
stating that one will not attend the wedding of two homosexual unbelievers, one
can testify to the holiness of God—his glory.
They may not want to hear it, but such a witness is the calling of God’s people in the world:
Isaiah 66:18 For I know their works and their thoughts, and I am
coming to gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come and shall
see my glory….
and
Isaiah 2:3 Many peoples shall
come and say, "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the
house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk
in his paths." For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of
the LORD from Jerusalem.
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