QUESTION: “Many people today are challenging conventional ideas about Jesus. For example, I have heard that, unlike today’s Evangelical Christians, Jesus never denounced homosexuality. I also heard that Jesus Himself might very well have been gay, as evidenced in verses like John 19:26 which says that John was ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved.’”
I’ll begin my answer with the bottom line: Jesus was not gay; neither did He promote a homosexual lifestyle. Would He have shown compassion to homosexuals? Certainly. He showed compassion to anyone, and He offered forgiveness to anyone willing to turn from sin. But He was not gay.
It’s true that our gospel accounts do not record Jesus speaking about homosexuality directly. But Jesus did confirm the divine inspiration of the Jewish Holy Scriptures (referred to in those days as The Law and The Prophets) and insisted that the Israelites continue to honor God’s Law.
Matt 5:17-20
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
Since Jesus was authenticating the entire law, that authentication included the specific law about homosexuality:
Lev 18:22
“‘Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detestable.
The Apostle Paul also condemned homosexuality in the New Testament:
Rom 1:26-27
Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
“Wait a minute. Should we trust Paul’s words? Paul wasn’t one of the original disciples of Jesus.”
True, but he encountered the resurrected Christ later (Acts 9). Now, it’s true that the original disciples were given special authority by Jesus (John 20:22-23). But keep in mind that one of these authoritative disciples, Peter, later authenticated the words of Paul, even to the point of equating Paul’s letters with scripture!
2 Peter 3:15-16
Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. 1He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.
In summary, although Jesus did not directly comment on homosexuality, He did comment on it indirectly by speaking of the entire Law of Moses as a command of God. And Paul (authenticated by Jesus’ disciple Peter) directly addressed the subject.
“Then what about the other part of my question? Why was John called ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’?”
There were several Greek words for love. The word for sexual love was eros from which we get the English word, erotic. This word was not used of Jesus and John. Instead the word was agape, a kind of love referring primarily to sacrificial action, i.e. loving a person enough to lay down your life for him. This is not a sexual word. Indeed, it is the same word used of God in John 3:16 where the gospel writer talks about God loving the entire world.
Conclusion: In our zeal to re-clarify the Bible’s standard about homosexuality, let us keep in mind that the primary message of the New Testament is not one of condemnation but rather forgiveness. God may not like the practice of homosexuality, but He loves homosexuals. He loves everyone and homosexuals are no more separated from God than any one else. We are all guilty of sin. Yes, we are all commanded to repent. But we are all guilty and even when we repent, we do so by the mercy and help of God’s Spirit.
Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE New International Version NIV Copyright 1973, 1979, 1984 by International Bible Society Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved. Share this on
