By Stephen Green
First published in Christian Voice May 2012
Romans 1:22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, 23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.
24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: 25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: 27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
Days ago, an Anglican lay reader, Mr Peter Gowlland, had his license to preach withdrawn by the acting Archdeacon of Croydon because he suggested to the congregation of All Saints church in Sanderstead, south of Croydon, that they might sign the Coalition for Marriage petition. Defending heterosexual marriage is Church of England policy, but that made no difference.
In March, the Government published its proposals to overturn the God-given definition of marriage as a heterosexual institution, and last month London Mayor Boris Johnson banned a bus ad being published by a Christian healing ministry. With so much going on, it could be good to look at the so-called ‘Pauline texts’ about homosexuality.
In July 2010 Christian Voice carried my article on Sodom in the context of God’s design and intention for the mankind’s sexual expression and in March 2011 by the grace of God I investigated the universal application of the prohibitions on sodomy in Leviticus.
In Romans 1, Paul described the contemporary idolatrous pagan Graeco‑Roman world. Their godlessness manifested itself in homosexual activity. The arguments made by apologists for sodomy are that Paul could not be referring to those whose homosexuality comes ‘naturally’ to them, that he could not know what he meant by ‘natural’ in any case, and that the involvement of idolatry ‑ ‘worshipped … the creature’ ‑ must at least exclude Christian ‘gays’ in monogamous loving relationships. Neither can a God who has ‘given them up’ possibly be the Christian God, or so the argument goes.
Firstly, in all honesty, the monogamous homosexual is a figment of the imagination. The best that is usually achieved in the homosexual network is serial monogamy, and even within this, the homosexual psyche drives constant ‘affairs’ or ‘cruising’ which happen outside the relationship. Male homosexuals in addition really do worship the image, in the shape of handsome young men, and their organs, rather than God, and are thus guilty of idolatry as well.
The argument is also made that ‘natural’ is merely what is usually observed and that Paul could not have known about individuals with bona fide homosexual tendencies. The Cambridge academic Norman Pittenger also claimed that heterosexual people act ‘naturally’ when they practice heterosexuality, and that homosexual people act ‘naturally’ in homosexual sex.
These arguments ignore all the modern knowledge of the roots of homosexual orientation and homosexual activity, and are in any case disingenuous. Gay rights advocates never condemn anyone with broadly heterosexual feelings who has a homosexual fling. The idea of seducing a heterosexual youth or adult into homosexual activity is a regular ‘gay’ fantasy.
One of the observed roots of homosexuality is a deficiency in parenting and another is sexual abuse. We might have more dysfunctional upbringing and more sexual predators today, and hence more individuals with what Paul describes as ‘vile affections’ than he observed in his day, but although modern Europeans may have defined homosexuality, we hardly invented it. The Roman Emperor Hadrian was well-known for his homosexual dalliances, and even though he post-dates Paul by a couple of generations, homosexuality, mostly of the pederast variety, was well known in ancient Rome and in Greece before it. That Paul also writes about lesbianism is totally inspired and perceptive.
As for the other argument, that the more people indulge in unnatural activity, the more natural it becomes, that is hardly what Paul means by ‘natural’ in the context of Romans 1 or any of his letters. When the Apostle uses the word ‘nature’ or ‘natural’ he always refers to what has been set in place by God. Things that are against ‘nature’ are therefore against God. He is not ‘condemning people who are acting against their own truth’ a claim drawing on humanism and situation ethics, but people who act against God’s truth, the objective truth, in other words.
When Paul tells us in Romans 1 that God ‘gave them up’ to their perversions, he is not immediately concerned with how they got the inclination in the first place. They are certainly part of an evil society that condones such debauchery, but it is their own behaviour, giving in to temptation and stepping outside God’s plan, that requires God in sadness to ‘give them up.’
Paul goes on to write of the ‘due penalty’ that men involved in homosexual activity will receive ‘in their own bodies.’ This again sounds ‘unchristian’ until we realise that it is not God who puts the penalty there, but the actions of the men themselves. There is a well-known analogy with some pottery which is clearly marked as not suitable for a dishwasher. If I should overstress the potter’s creation by putting it where it is not designed to be, there is a ‘judgment’ revealed in the cracks that occur in the pot. God has simply not designed men and women emotionally or physically to be promiscuous or designed our bodies for homosexual acts. If we dishonour our bodies by acting outside nature, damage will occur.
In the other two texts, Paul lists those involved in certain sinful practices as being outside the kingdom, and in this he follows the example of the Lord Jesus, who warned his hearers to watch for the day of his coming and not be ‘overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life’ (Luke 21:34). This is what Paul says:
1Cor 6:9 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, 10 Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.
1Tim 1:9 Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, 10 For whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine;
In 1 Corinthians 6:9, two Greek words are used to refer to homosexual men, ‘malakoi’ and ‘arsenokoitai’. In 1 Timothy 1:10 only ‘arsenokoitai’ appears. The word ‘arsenokoitai’ is an combination of the Greek word ‘arsen’ which means ‘male’ and the word ‘koitai’ which means ‘a couch’. Literally ‘arsenokoitai’ means ‘male in bed’ in a sexual context. Paul would have been well aware that the Greek Septuagint version of the Old Testament used both ‘arsen’ and ‘koitai’ in Lev 18:22:
Lev 18:22: Thou shalt not lie (‘koitai’) with mankind (‘arsen’), as with womankind: it is abomination.
‘Arsenokoitai’ is the clearest word the Apostle could have used both to express an active male homosexual and to link back to the Law. Malakoi is literally ‘soft to the touch’ and Strong says it means figuratively a catamite or passive homosexual.
It is impossible to ascribe to malakoi the meaning ‘people who will not stand up for what is right,’ as has been suggested, or to say that Paul is referring only to prostitution, and to child prostitution in particular. Malakoi was well-known Greek slang term for males, not necessarily boys, who took the passive role in buggery. It would be analogous to our own words ‘fairy’ or ‘pansy’. The word ‘dogs’ in Revelation 22.15 in a list of people excluded from the New Jerusalem is commonly understood to be a similar slang term.
As yet, we haven’t considered the wonderful little clause in 1Cor 6:11: ‘And such were some of you’. This means that there were ex-fornicators, ex-idolaters, ex-adulterers, ex-thieves, the ex-covetous, ex-drunkards, ex-revilers and ex-extortioners in the Corinthian church. It also means there were ex-homosexuals. All these sinners were delivered from the chains of spiritual oppression by the Holy Spirit. The blood of Jesus Christ delivers us not just from the stain of sin, but from the power of sin. The New Covenant of the Cross and Resurrection of the Lord Jesus means sin has no dominion over those who believe and confess his precious name (Rom 6:14).
In today’s rebellious world, where righteousness is turned on its head, deliverance from homosexuality by the blood of Jesus is a message to which Londoners may not be exposed. The proposed advertisement from ‘Core Issues Trust’ said: ‘Not Gay. Ex-gay, Post-gay’ and mimicked the infamous Stonewall ads by inviting opponents to ‘Get over it’. Mayor Boris Johnson banned it.
It is not politically-correct these days to hold that there is anything wrong with homosexuality, that there is a heterosexual goal beyond it, that sexual orientation is not fixed, that people can be released from it and that no-one is ‘born that way’.
And yet, both theologically and practically, as ex‑Lesbian Jeanette Howard pointed out in Out of Egypt: Leaving lesbianism behind (Monarch Publications Ltd, Eastbourne 1991) a homosexual orientation cannot be given to anyone at conception. God would not create someone homosexual and then proscribe homosexual activity. God is just. He does not make fun of us. There is a way back from sin and there is healing and restoration in Christ as much for the individual caught up in homosexuality as for the society which condones and encourages it. Realisation of sin and repentance from it is the necessary condition.
Of course, the clear negative prohibitions on homosexual practices in the Old and New Testaments must be seen in the light of the positive teachings about human sexuality and heterosexual marriage which are found at the beginning of Genesis and which are part of God’s created order:
Gen 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
It was the division of the sexes in God’s creative act which the Lord Jesus said was the foundation of marriage with its mystical ‘one-flesh’ union:
Mark 10:6 But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. 7 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; 8 And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh. 9 What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.
The last verse is normally taken to refer to divorce, and man is putting asunder what God hath joined together on an industrial scale inBritaintoday. A massive divorce industry depends upon it. And yet David Cameron and Her Majesty’s Coalition Government are going one step further by threatening to put asunder the whole institution of marriage.
That is not something Christians can stand idly by and watch. The Apostle Paul described a civilisation in the process of disintegration. Rome fell for many reasons, and sexual depravity may only have been a symptom of its decline. Nevertheless, living as we are in a society dedicated to rebelling against God and re-enacting Romans 1, the very survival of our nation could well depend on whether the church and the Christian men within it stand up to be counted.
Having the boldness to do so was ironically the subject of the sermon Mr Gowlland was giving to All Saints Sanderstead when he suggested they sign the petition. Christian witness of the sort I am suggesting could easily come at a price. Thank God the reward is a crown of glory.
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