Does jesus accept gay people

Many who support same-sex marriage and gay rights argue that, since Jesus never mentioned homosexuality, He did not consider it to be sinful. After all, the argument goes, if homosexuality is bad, why did Jesus treat it as a non-issue? It is technically true that Jesus did not specifically address homosexuality in the Gospel accounts; however, He did speak clearly about sexuality in general. None of these couples was perfect, but each is an example of heterosexual marriage.

What Did Jesus Say about Homosexuality? While Jesus did not explicitly address homosexuality, when it comes to how society treats individuals who engage in homosexual relationships, Jesus’ attitude is the benchmark. For instance, Christian men can follow Jesus by having a friendly water cooler chat with the gay guys in their office. Refusing to do so — or conveniently avoiding these people — is certainly not acting like Jesus.

What would Jesus say to the LGBT community? The Lord seems to have the same instructions in His word for all sinners.

With that in mind, consider the following seven things, and may they begin to move us to action. God will not judge a Christian guilty for his or her involuntary feelings. Sometimes it is said that the Bible does not record any words of Jesus about homosexuality, and therefore it must be acceptable to God. However, the Bible does not record sayings of Jesus about a number of other specific sins either.

This article is part of the What Did Jesus Teach? Oremus was less concerned about the legal issues of the story than he was about the accuracy of the statement on the shirt. He writes,. Never in the Bible does Jesus himself offer an explicit prohibition of homosexuality. Oremus seems to suggest that since Jesus never explicitly mentioned homosexuality, he must not have been very concerned about it. Take a 1-minute survey to join our mailing list and receive a free ebook in the format of your choosing.

Read on your preferred digital device, including smart phones, tablets, laptops, and desktop computers. First, there are many ethical issues about which Jesus made no explicit statement. That observation hardly means that his moral vision has no relevance to those issues.

what does the new testament say about homosexuality

Jesus never said anything explicit about abortion, same-sex marriage, or child molestation. Second, Jesus did speak explicitly about sexual immorality in general and the nature of marriage. He denounced the former e. Mark —8. Jesus affirmed the covenanted union of one man and one woman as the only normative expression of human sexuality.

It is incredible to suggest that these words from Jesus have no bearing on the question of homosexuality. They surely do. He writes:. Even if Jesus viewed homosexuality as a sin, he had a penchant for reaching out to sinners rather than shunning them. In Romans 1, Paul denounced gay sex as unnatural—an egregious example of pagan decadence—and said it would bring the wrath of God.

Here is another iteration of the hermeneutical cage match that is so popular today—the view that Jesus and Paul are fundamentally at odds over a variety of ethical issues. On the one side is Jesus: peace-loving, enemy-forgiving, egalitarian, and inclusive with regard to homosexuals. On the other side is Paul: war-loving, death penalty—supporting, patriarchal, and exclusionary with regard to homosexuals.

And so the slogan from the T-shirt appears to be vindicated. Despite the hang-ups of people like Paul, Jesus was not a homophobe. Sex was created by God for his glory. Those who stage hermeneutical cage matches between Paul and Jesus are staging a contest that neither Jesus nor Paul would ever have tolerated. At the end of the day, this argument is not about the color of letters but about the nature of Scripture.

Those who wish to establish biblical authority over the long haul will avoid the cage-match approach. And those who truly wish to be red-letter Christians will heed the words of Paul and the other apostolic authors of Scripture as the very words of Christ. This article is adapted from What Is the Meaning of Sex?

Notes: 1. He keeps a popular blog at DennyBurk. What Did Jesus Teach about Politics?