Over the past three decades, a growing number of professing Christians have begun to support same-sex relationships.[1] According to a survey done by the Pew Research Center, the percentage of White evangelical Protestants who affirm same-sex marriage has increased from 13 percent to 27 percent over the past fifteen years.[2] Overall, 64 percent of White mainline Protestants, 58 percent of Roman Catholics, 39 percent of Black Protestants, and 27 percent of White evangelical Protestants support same-sex marriage.[3] Often, these Christians who adopt an affirming attitude toward same-sex relationships are hailed by many as loving and compassionate. They argue that Jesus’ command to love your neighbor requires believers to affirm same-sex relationships as morally acceptable. Furthermore, they claim that in order to love those in the LGBT community, believers must affirm their sexual orientations and their same-sex relationships. Thus, Matthew Vines writes that affirming those in the LGBT community is a kind of love that is “a requirement of Christian faithfulness.”[4]
While this argument is popular among supporters of same-sex relationships, many recognize that it is ineffective without further backing. Saying, “Love requires us to affirm same-sex relationships,” assumes that same-sex relationships are good. Few would suggest that believers should affirm something if it were indisputably evil. To bolster this argument, Christian supporters of same-sex relationships (referred to as revisionists), give reasons why neighbor love requires believers to affirm them. Revisionists generally use two major arguments for this purpose: (1) love requires us to affirm same-sex relationships because opposing them results in bad fruit, and (2) love requires us to affirm same-sex relationships because they are loving and self-sacrificial and, thus, not contrary to God’s law. However, despite the popularity of these arguments, they fail to prove that the biblical command to love others requires Christians to affirm same-sex relationships as morally acceptable. Biblical neighbor love does not lead believers to affirm same-sex relationships.
Revisionists argue that love requires believers to affirm same-sex relationships because opposing them produces bad results. They often begin making this argument by describing the suffering of those in the LGBT community that results from lack of affirmation. This bad fruit, they argue, is not a fruit of the love that should mark Christians. So, they conclude, believers should support same-sex relationships. Gene Robinson makes this argument when he paints a picture of LGBT suffering and then writes, “At its most basic, a religious commitment to ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ suggests that our views toward homosexuality and same-gender marriage have to change.”[5] The traditional stance that same-sex relationships are sinful appears hateful to revisionists because they attribute the suffering of homosexuals to those who do not affirm them.
Matthew Vines also makes a form of this argument when he tells a story about two Christian parents and their son, Ryan, who struggled with same-sex attraction and died at age twenty from a drug overdose. Vines notes that these parents expressed love for Ryan but did not affirm his same-sex attraction. He writes that “their non-affirming understanding of homosexuality ultimately led Ryan to a place of despair and tragic self-harm.”[6] From this example, Vines suggests that lack of affirmation produces bad fruit that love should seek to prevent. Furthermore, revisionists argue that this idea comes from Jesus, who told his followers that they can tell a good tree by its fruit.[7] They conclude that the bad fruit of LGBT suffering reveals that the tree of opposition to same-sex relationships is also bad. Therefore, revisionists argue, believers who desire to obey Christ’s command to love others must affirm those within the LGBT community.
This argument is problematic. Overall, it is more emotional than logical or theological. Revisionists attempt to make all believers feel guilty for LGBT suffering, often by telling tragic stories like Ryan’s. Then, they seek to use this guilt to convince believers that in order to love homosexuals they must accept and affirm their actions. It is certainly true that some have wielded biblical teaching against homosexuality like a sword and have caused harm for those in the LGBT community. This reality should not be denied.[8] Many Christians do need to repent of an unloving attitude toward homosexuals. However, the emotional aspect of this argument does not prove the conclusion that love requires believers to affirm same-sex relationships. Instead, this conclusion reveals several flaws in the revisionist’s reasoning.
First, revisionists’ definition of love is inadequate: they equate love with affirmation or acceptance of a person’s actions. For example, Letha Scanzoni and Virginia Mollenkott suggest that “We can love or accept our neighbor only to the degree that we are able to love and accept ourselves [emphasis added].”[9] The authors appear to conflate love and acceptance, which affects their definition of love throughout their book. While there is surely an element of acceptance in love, it does not make up the totality of what it means to love others. Very few would argue that love requires people to unequivocally affirm the actions of liars or thieves even if opposing their deeds may result in emotional hurt. Love involves more than affirmation and may mean opposition to certain actions. God did not love the world by affirming its love of darkness. Rather, he loved the world by sending his Son to redeem those who repent of their sin and turn to him in faith (John 3:16). Thus, love does not require unequivocal affirmation of someone’s actions just because harm may result from not affirming them.
Second, revisionists twist Jesus’ teaching on good and bad fruit. Justin Lee writes, “Sin always results from a failure to act out of God’s perfectly selfless love, and in the end, it always bears bad fruit.”[10] While we can agree in some measure with Lee’s statement, he and other revisionists go on to suggests that opposition to same-sex relationships has resulted in bad fruit and, as a result, is unloving and wrong.[11] While revisionists seek to draw support for this argument from Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 7:15–20 and Luke 6:43–45, such use of these passages is completely unwarranted. It relies on the revisionist’s own idea of what is good fruit and what is bad fruit. In the context of these passages, good fruit is doing the will of the Father and building one’s life upon Jesus’ words (Matt 7:21, 24).[12] The bad fruit is not emotional or physical hurt, but actions that are contrary to God’s will. Given the Bible’s teaching on sexuality, there seems to be more warrant for labeling homosexual actions as bad fruit than the suffering that results from opposition to those actions. Thus, the revisionist argument twists Jesus’ teaching and dodges the real issue.
Finally, this argument involves an unbiblical view of morality. Revisionists assume that the consequences of opposition to same-sex relationships are undesirable and classify it as unloving and immoral. This is a form of the ethical theory known as consequentialism, which argues that the morality of an action is determined by its consequences. The argument that the consequences of opposition to same-sex relationships make such opposition unloving and immoral is clearly a consequentialist argument. As Denny Burk argues, consequentialism is problematic because “it elevates our evaluation of consequences above Scripture as the standard for evaluating what is right and wrong. . . . The New Testament teaches us to approach ethical issues not by asking ‘What will happen if I do x?’ but rather by asking ‘What is the will of God?’”[13] The revisionist argument is thoroughly consequentialist, and believers should recognize it as biblically and ethically untenable.
Love does not require Christians to affirm same-sex relationships simply because opposing these relationships produces emotional hurt. The revisionist argument fails to present a biblical, robust view of love and only provides an emotional, relativistic grounding for abandoning the traditional interpretation of the biblical teaching. Furthermore, such an argument lacks substantial biblical support and misunderstands both morality and love. Therefore, believers should not embrace the idea that love requires them to affirm same-sex relationships as morally acceptable.
The second argument given for why neighbor love requires believers to support same-sex relationships is that love requires this affirmation because these relationships are loving and self-sacrificial and, thus, not truly contrary to God’s law. While there are different forms of this argument, the major premise is that since God’s commands are summed up by love, there is warrant for setting aside or reinterpreting laws that no longer promote love. Philip Barclift insists that “It is time for the church to return to the theological presumption that love and grace trump the letter of law whenever they conflict, as they do on the question of homosexuality.”[14] Justin Lee argues that given Jesus’ example of setting aside certain laws when they did not promote love (e.g. the Sabbath command) and Paul’s teaching that the law is summed up by love (Rom 13:8–10), believers must filter commands through the standard of love. When this is done in the case of loving, self-sacrificial same-sex relationships, Lee argues, love seems to require us to affirm these relationships rather than condemn them.[15] Both Lee’s and Barclift’s arguments are different flavors of the same argument: love is the sum of the law and calls for the reinterpretation of passages that condemn homosexuality.
Revisionist authors tend to give at least three examples of instances where biblical commands or other passages are set aside in favor of love and inclusion, and they argue that these examples give us warrant to set aside certain commands today. First, revisionists use the example of Jesus’ healing on the Sabbath. Lee argues that Jesus was breaking the letter of the Sabbath command when he healed people on the Sabbath, but that he was obeying the spirit of the law: love for one’s neighbor.[16] Second, they argue that the inclusion of the Gentiles into the people of God is another example of love trumping the letter of the law. Barclift, using the example of Peter in Acts 10, argues, “Rooted in love, the new model for the church Peter envisioned was inclusion (see Acts 10:34-43).”[17] Third, revisionist authors use the example of slavery. They claim that despite certain passages that seem to promote slavery, believers have realized that slavery is not loving and have set aside these passages.[18] From these examples, revisionists conclude that the biblical commands concerning same-sex relationships need to be reinterpreted or set aside.
The use of these examples to prove this argument raises several problems and relies on inaccurate interpretations of Scripture. In each of the examples given, revisionists ignore context and unjustifiably conform the examples to their preconceived pattern. The first two examples are irrelevant to this discussion because neither situation is analogous to what is happening today. The case of Jesus and the Sabbath has more to do with Rabbinical additions to and Pharisaical interpretations of the Sabbath command than with interpreting New Testament commands.[19] Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath, and he has the right to interpret how it may be obeyed. In addition, the case of Peter and the inclusion of the Gentiles deals with explicit revelation from God (Acts 10:9–16), and this inclusion is the mystery that has now been revealed through the prophets and Apostles in the New Testament (Eph 3:4–6). In neither of these situations do any of the characters set aside or reinterpret God’s explicit commands simply because love requires it. While love plays a large role in each situation, neither Jesus nor Peter set aside or reinterpret God’s moral law because it no longer promoted love.
The example of slavery also fails to prove the revisionist argument because it assumes that the New Testament clearly promotes slavery in the same way that it opposes same-sex relationships. This is a false assumption. While the New Testament instructs slaves to submit to their earthly masters (Eph 6:5), it never gives any explicit affirmation of slavery. In fact, there are instances when biblical characters seem to oppose slavery. For example, Paul suggests that Philemon should release his slave (Phlm 8–16), and he condemns slave traders (1 Tim 1:10 ESV). Some have used the Bible to justify the practice of slavery, but they had no firm basis to do so. Thus, as DeYoung writes, “To make it sound like the Word of God is plainly for slavery in the same way it is against homosexual practice is biblically indefensible.”[20] While there are no passages calling for the support of slavery, the Bible clearly condemns homosexuality (e.g. Rom 1:26–27, 1 Cor 6:9–11). Therefore, this example also fails to prove the argument that love requires believers to set aside or reinterpret God’s clear prohibitions in Scripture. There are no biblical examples that give credence to this revisionist argument.
Revisionists also misinterpret the biblical teaching that love fulfills the law. At face value, this premise of their argument is biblically sound. Love is the fulfilment of the law. Jesus taught that the Torah and the prophets depend upon the commands to love God and others (Matt 22:40). Paul wrote that all commandments can be summed up in the command to love, which means that love is the fulfillment of the law (Rom 13:9–10). In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul masterfully demonstrates that without love, we are nothing.[21] The Old and New Testaments declare the love of the Lord and call his people to love him and others. Love is a central, biblical virtue. This cannot and must not be denied.
However, revisionists stray from the biblical teaching by adopting a truncated view of love. For some revisionists, this kind of love allows believers to pick and choose which commands no longer need to be followed. Since the commands prohibiting homosexuality seem unloving, revisionists claim, they should be set aside.[22] Others may not be as extreme, but still claim that certain commands should be reinterpreted so that these commands do not condemn what they think is loving. So, if two men love each other in a sacrificial way, then it is permissible for them to marry and engage in same-sex acts because love is the fulfillment of the law.[23] Revisionists take the premise that love fulfills the law and conclude that this allows believers to determine how certain commands apply, if at all.
The problem with this conclusion is that it adopts a one-sided approach to the biblical teaching that love fulfills the law. Revisionists argue that love gives us insight into interpreting the law. While this is a valid conclusion, they leave out another crucial aspect of this biblical teaching: God’s moral law also reveals what is loving. God’s Word gives his people guidance for understanding what is loving and what is not loving. Moreover, the truth that love fulfills the laws tells them that what God decrees is loving. Everything God commands has to do with love. He does not decree murder or adultery or lying. These actions are unloving. Thus, what is loving helps believers see what is lawful, and what is lawful helps believers see what is loving. Revisionists generally accept the first aspect of the biblical teaching but ignore or reject the second.
As a result, revisionists import their own definition of love into the biblical teaching to define how that teaching is to be applied instead of allowing what God has decreed to inform their understanding of what is loving. Herein we see the fatal flaw of the revisionist argument: they are the ones who define what is loving, not God in his Word. Revisionists understand that God’s law is summed up by love but use their own understanding of love to interpret or even set aside God’s commands. They fail to recognize that God gives commands because they promote love and use the biblical teaching on love and the law to skirt around calling out the current politically correct sins for what they are. However, as Stanley Grenz writes, “Humans are notoriously able to draw erroneous conclusions as to what love might entail in any specific situation. Devoid of guidance as to what love involves, we repeatedly find ourselves distorting genuine love in the name of ‘love.’”[24] People need guidance in many situations to know how to love, and the Bible gives believers this guidance.
Overall, the revisionist argument that same-sex relationships are not contrary to God’s law because they are loving and self-sacrificial relies on inaccurate interpretations of Scripture and a truncated approach to love and the law. There are no examples in Scripture of men and women setting aside or reinterpreting God’s moral law because it was no longer loving. Furthermore, a proper understanding of the relationship between love and the law leads to an affirmation of God’s law, not an affirmation of what God prohibits. Thus, those who argue that love should drive Christians to affirm same-sex relationships fail to adequately interpret the biblical teaching on neighbor love and the law.
How then should believers understand the biblical command to love others in relation to same-sex relationships? What does neighbor love require of them? The biblical teaching begins with the premise that loving one’s neighbor follows love for God. Neighbor love must be combined with love for God, and this is clear in Matthew 22:37–39, when Jesus gives the two greatest commandments: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind,” and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”[25] Love for God and one’s neighbor go together. More specifically, as Hendriksen writes, “this love toward the neighbor, who is God’s image-bearer, flows forth from the love toward God.”[26] Therefore, loving one’s neighbor requires a whole-hearted love for God in order to be genuine. The opposite is also true: love for God requires love for others as well. John writes, “And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother” (1 John 4:21). Loving one’s neighbor requires one to love God, which leads to the following requirements of love.
First, neighbor love requires compassionate sacrifice. John teaches in 1 John 3:16–18 that loving others means sacrificing for them on a large and small scale. He writes in verse 18, “Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.” Loving one’s neighbor is summed up by compassionately sacrificing for him or her. When an expert in the law asked Jesus who his neighbor was, Jesus told the parable of a Samaritan man showing compassion and sacrificing for a Jewish man he had never met (Luke 10:25–37). Loving others involves compassion and sacrifice toward all people, regardless of who they are or what they have done. Calvin writes, “The Lord demands that we do good to all, without exception, even though most people are unworthy if we judge them on their merits. . . . If someone, then, turns up who needs our help, we have no reason to refuse him.”[27] Thus, neighbor love requires believers to compassionately sacrifice for their homosexual neighbors in need. This means affirming the image of God in them, being generous with our possessions and time, and sharing with them the good news of salvation in Christ to all who repent and believe in him.
While love is certainly not less than compassionate sacrifice, there are other requirements of love. Neighbor love also requires a commitment to the truth, which includes God’s commands. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13:6 that love “does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.” Loving one’s neighbor does not lead to a love or affirmation of a person’s sin, but a commitment to the truth and obeying God’s commands.[28] God is not silent concerning same-sex relationships. He intentionally created humans as either male or female and ordained marriage as between a man and a woman (Matt 19:4–6). Under the Mosaic Law, homosexuality was clearly forbidden (Lev 18:22, 20:13), and under the New Covenant, such practices and relationships are also considered to be sinful and against God’s design (e.g. Rom. 1:26–27, 1 Cor. 6:9–11, 1 Tim. 1:10). Most revisionist seek to reinterpret these passages to favor loving same-sex relationships, but the clarity of these texts should not be denied. If neighbor love requires a commitment to the truth, it requires a commitment to the truth that same-sex relationships are morally wrong.
Furthermore, neighbor love requires opposition to sin. In Ephesians 4:1, Paul calls believers to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which they have been called. Paul unpacks this by calling them to not walk as the Gentiles do (4:17), to walk in love (5:2), and to walk as children of light (5:8). For Paul, walking in love is contrasted with walking in sexual immorality and other sins (5:2–6). Furthermore, he calls believers, as they walk as children of light, to abstain from sin and expose it for what it is (5:11). Thus, Paul teaches that walking in love requires an opposition to sin. Walking in love excludes excusing sin, including homosexual activity. Thus, neighbor love requires opposition to what God calls sin, not the affirmation of it.[29]
Love for neighbor follows love for God, and this requires compassionate sacrifice, a commitment to the truth, and opposition to sin. Thus, loving one’s neighbor does not require believers to affirm same-sex relationships, but to oppose them out of love for God and others. Yet, at the same time, believers must show compassion and grace to those within the LGBT community by sacrificing time and possessions for them and sharing the gospel with them. While this is not a popular teaching, it is the biblical teaching, and believers should seek to be faithful to call of God to love their neighbors as themselves.
1. Throughout this paper, the phrase “same-sex relationships” will be used to refer to sexual relationships between members of the same-sex.
2. Pew Research Center, Changing Attitudes on Gay Marriage, May 12, 2016, accessed October 10, 2016, http://www.pewforum.org/2016/05/12/changing-attitudes-on-gay-marriage/#attitudes-on-same-sex-marriage-by-religious-affiliation.
3. Ibid.
4. Matthew Vines, God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships (New York: Convergent Books, 2014), 178
5. Robinson, God Believes in Love: Straight Talk about Gay Marriage (New York: Knopf, 2012), 40–41.
6. Vines, God and the Gay Christian, 158.
7. Ibid., 14.
8. Sam Allberry, Is God Anti-Gay? (Purcellville, VA: The Good Book Company, 2013), 76.
9. Letha Scanzoni and Virginia R. Mollenkott, Is the Homosexual My Neighbor?: Another Christian View (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978), 8. See also Vines, God and the Gay Christian, 178.
10. Justin Lee, Torn: Rescuing the Gospel from the Gays-Vs.-Christians Debate (New York: Jericho Books, 2013), 205. Emphasis original.
11. See Vines, God and the Gay Christian, 13–16. Lee, Torn, 205–06.
12. Kevin DeYoung, What Does the Bible Really Teach About Homosexuality? (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2015), 117.
13. Denny Burk, “Suppressing the Truth in Unrighteousness: Matthew Vines Takes on the New Testament,” in God and the Gay Christian?: A Response to Matthew Vines, ed. R. Albert Mohler Jr. (Louisville: SBTS Press, 2014), 45, Adobe PDF eBook.
14. Philip L. Barclift, “Confessions of a Divorced (and Remarried) Theologian Part 3: Implications for Same-Sex Marriages,” Encounter 72, no. 3 (2012): 99, accessed September 19, 2016, ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost.
15. Lee, Torn, 195–206.
16. Ibid., 198–203.
17. Barclift, “Confessions of a Divorced (and Remarried) Theologian Part 3,” 74.
18. Lee, Torn, 193–94, 205. Vines, God and the Gay Christian, 15.
19. See William Hendriksen, Exposition of the Gospel According to Mark (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1975), 105, 108.
20. DeYoung, What Does the Bible Really Teach About Homosexuality?, 107.
21. Philip Graham Ryken, Loving the Way Jesus Loves (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 19.
22. Barclift, “Confessions of a Divorced (and Remarried) Theologian Part 3,” 74, 99.
23. Lee, Torn, 205–06.
24. Stanley J. Grenz, Welcoming but Not Affirming: An Evangelical Response to Homosexuality (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 93.
25. All Scripture quotations are from the English Standard Version.
26. William Hendriksen, Exposition of the Gospel According to Matthew (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1973), 810.
27. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion: A New Translation of the 1541 Institutes, trans. Robert White (Edinburgh, UK: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2014), 794–95.
28. James R. White and Jeffrey D. Niell, The Same Sex Controversy: Defending and Clarifying the Bible's Message about Homosexuality (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2002), 174–75.
29. White and Niell, The Same Sex Controversy, 175.
While this argument is popular among supporters of same-sex relationships, many recognize that it is ineffective without further backing. Saying, “Love requires us to affirm same-sex relationships,” assumes that same-sex relationships are good. Few would suggest that believers should affirm something if it were indisputably evil. To bolster this argument, Christian supporters of same-sex relationships (referred to as revisionists), give reasons why neighbor love requires believers to affirm them. Revisionists generally use two major arguments for this purpose: (1) love requires us to affirm same-sex relationships because opposing them results in bad fruit, and (2) love requires us to affirm same-sex relationships because they are loving and self-sacrificial and, thus, not contrary to God’s law. However, despite the popularity of these arguments, they fail to prove that the biblical command to love others requires Christians to affirm same-sex relationships as morally acceptable. Biblical neighbor love does not lead believers to affirm same-sex relationships.
Revisionist Argument 01: Neighbor Love and Bad Fruit
Revisionists argue that love requires believers to affirm same-sex relationships because opposing them produces bad results. They often begin making this argument by describing the suffering of those in the LGBT community that results from lack of affirmation. This bad fruit, they argue, is not a fruit of the love that should mark Christians. So, they conclude, believers should support same-sex relationships. Gene Robinson makes this argument when he paints a picture of LGBT suffering and then writes, “At its most basic, a religious commitment to ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ suggests that our views toward homosexuality and same-gender marriage have to change.”[5] The traditional stance that same-sex relationships are sinful appears hateful to revisionists because they attribute the suffering of homosexuals to those who do not affirm them.
Matthew Vines also makes a form of this argument when he tells a story about two Christian parents and their son, Ryan, who struggled with same-sex attraction and died at age twenty from a drug overdose. Vines notes that these parents expressed love for Ryan but did not affirm his same-sex attraction. He writes that “their non-affirming understanding of homosexuality ultimately led Ryan to a place of despair and tragic self-harm.”[6] From this example, Vines suggests that lack of affirmation produces bad fruit that love should seek to prevent. Furthermore, revisionists argue that this idea comes from Jesus, who told his followers that they can tell a good tree by its fruit.[7] They conclude that the bad fruit of LGBT suffering reveals that the tree of opposition to same-sex relationships is also bad. Therefore, revisionists argue, believers who desire to obey Christ’s command to love others must affirm those within the LGBT community.
This argument is problematic. Overall, it is more emotional than logical or theological. Revisionists attempt to make all believers feel guilty for LGBT suffering, often by telling tragic stories like Ryan’s. Then, they seek to use this guilt to convince believers that in order to love homosexuals they must accept and affirm their actions. It is certainly true that some have wielded biblical teaching against homosexuality like a sword and have caused harm for those in the LGBT community. This reality should not be denied.[8] Many Christians do need to repent of an unloving attitude toward homosexuals. However, the emotional aspect of this argument does not prove the conclusion that love requires believers to affirm same-sex relationships. Instead, this conclusion reveals several flaws in the revisionist’s reasoning.
First, revisionists’ definition of love is inadequate: they equate love with affirmation or acceptance of a person’s actions. For example, Letha Scanzoni and Virginia Mollenkott suggest that “We can love or accept our neighbor only to the degree that we are able to love and accept ourselves [emphasis added].”[9] The authors appear to conflate love and acceptance, which affects their definition of love throughout their book. While there is surely an element of acceptance in love, it does not make up the totality of what it means to love others. Very few would argue that love requires people to unequivocally affirm the actions of liars or thieves even if opposing their deeds may result in emotional hurt. Love involves more than affirmation and may mean opposition to certain actions. God did not love the world by affirming its love of darkness. Rather, he loved the world by sending his Son to redeem those who repent of their sin and turn to him in faith (John 3:16). Thus, love does not require unequivocal affirmation of someone’s actions just because harm may result from not affirming them.
Second, revisionists twist Jesus’ teaching on good and bad fruit. Justin Lee writes, “Sin always results from a failure to act out of God’s perfectly selfless love, and in the end, it always bears bad fruit.”[10] While we can agree in some measure with Lee’s statement, he and other revisionists go on to suggests that opposition to same-sex relationships has resulted in bad fruit and, as a result, is unloving and wrong.[11] While revisionists seek to draw support for this argument from Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 7:15–20 and Luke 6:43–45, such use of these passages is completely unwarranted. It relies on the revisionist’s own idea of what is good fruit and what is bad fruit. In the context of these passages, good fruit is doing the will of the Father and building one’s life upon Jesus’ words (Matt 7:21, 24).[12] The bad fruit is not emotional or physical hurt, but actions that are contrary to God’s will. Given the Bible’s teaching on sexuality, there seems to be more warrant for labeling homosexual actions as bad fruit than the suffering that results from opposition to those actions. Thus, the revisionist argument twists Jesus’ teaching and dodges the real issue.
Finally, this argument involves an unbiblical view of morality. Revisionists assume that the consequences of opposition to same-sex relationships are undesirable and classify it as unloving and immoral. This is a form of the ethical theory known as consequentialism, which argues that the morality of an action is determined by its consequences. The argument that the consequences of opposition to same-sex relationships make such opposition unloving and immoral is clearly a consequentialist argument. As Denny Burk argues, consequentialism is problematic because “it elevates our evaluation of consequences above Scripture as the standard for evaluating what is right and wrong. . . . The New Testament teaches us to approach ethical issues not by asking ‘What will happen if I do x?’ but rather by asking ‘What is the will of God?’”[13] The revisionist argument is thoroughly consequentialist, and believers should recognize it as biblically and ethically untenable.
Love does not require Christians to affirm same-sex relationships simply because opposing these relationships produces emotional hurt. The revisionist argument fails to present a biblical, robust view of love and only provides an emotional, relativistic grounding for abandoning the traditional interpretation of the biblical teaching. Furthermore, such an argument lacks substantial biblical support and misunderstands both morality and love. Therefore, believers should not embrace the idea that love requires them to affirm same-sex relationships as morally acceptable.
Revisionist Argument 02: Neighbor Love and the Law
The second argument given for why neighbor love requires believers to support same-sex relationships is that love requires this affirmation because these relationships are loving and self-sacrificial and, thus, not truly contrary to God’s law. While there are different forms of this argument, the major premise is that since God’s commands are summed up by love, there is warrant for setting aside or reinterpreting laws that no longer promote love. Philip Barclift insists that “It is time for the church to return to the theological presumption that love and grace trump the letter of law whenever they conflict, as they do on the question of homosexuality.”[14] Justin Lee argues that given Jesus’ example of setting aside certain laws when they did not promote love (e.g. the Sabbath command) and Paul’s teaching that the law is summed up by love (Rom 13:8–10), believers must filter commands through the standard of love. When this is done in the case of loving, self-sacrificial same-sex relationships, Lee argues, love seems to require us to affirm these relationships rather than condemn them.[15] Both Lee’s and Barclift’s arguments are different flavors of the same argument: love is the sum of the law and calls for the reinterpretation of passages that condemn homosexuality.
Revisionist authors tend to give at least three examples of instances where biblical commands or other passages are set aside in favor of love and inclusion, and they argue that these examples give us warrant to set aside certain commands today. First, revisionists use the example of Jesus’ healing on the Sabbath. Lee argues that Jesus was breaking the letter of the Sabbath command when he healed people on the Sabbath, but that he was obeying the spirit of the law: love for one’s neighbor.[16] Second, they argue that the inclusion of the Gentiles into the people of God is another example of love trumping the letter of the law. Barclift, using the example of Peter in Acts 10, argues, “Rooted in love, the new model for the church Peter envisioned was inclusion (see Acts 10:34-43).”[17] Third, revisionist authors use the example of slavery. They claim that despite certain passages that seem to promote slavery, believers have realized that slavery is not loving and have set aside these passages.[18] From these examples, revisionists conclude that the biblical commands concerning same-sex relationships need to be reinterpreted or set aside.
The use of these examples to prove this argument raises several problems and relies on inaccurate interpretations of Scripture. In each of the examples given, revisionists ignore context and unjustifiably conform the examples to their preconceived pattern. The first two examples are irrelevant to this discussion because neither situation is analogous to what is happening today. The case of Jesus and the Sabbath has more to do with Rabbinical additions to and Pharisaical interpretations of the Sabbath command than with interpreting New Testament commands.[19] Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath, and he has the right to interpret how it may be obeyed. In addition, the case of Peter and the inclusion of the Gentiles deals with explicit revelation from God (Acts 10:9–16), and this inclusion is the mystery that has now been revealed through the prophets and Apostles in the New Testament (Eph 3:4–6). In neither of these situations do any of the characters set aside or reinterpret God’s explicit commands simply because love requires it. While love plays a large role in each situation, neither Jesus nor Peter set aside or reinterpret God’s moral law because it no longer promoted love.
The example of slavery also fails to prove the revisionist argument because it assumes that the New Testament clearly promotes slavery in the same way that it opposes same-sex relationships. This is a false assumption. While the New Testament instructs slaves to submit to their earthly masters (Eph 6:5), it never gives any explicit affirmation of slavery. In fact, there are instances when biblical characters seem to oppose slavery. For example, Paul suggests that Philemon should release his slave (Phlm 8–16), and he condemns slave traders (1 Tim 1:10 ESV). Some have used the Bible to justify the practice of slavery, but they had no firm basis to do so. Thus, as DeYoung writes, “To make it sound like the Word of God is plainly for slavery in the same way it is against homosexual practice is biblically indefensible.”[20] While there are no passages calling for the support of slavery, the Bible clearly condemns homosexuality (e.g. Rom 1:26–27, 1 Cor 6:9–11). Therefore, this example also fails to prove the argument that love requires believers to set aside or reinterpret God’s clear prohibitions in Scripture. There are no biblical examples that give credence to this revisionist argument.
Revisionists also misinterpret the biblical teaching that love fulfills the law. At face value, this premise of their argument is biblically sound. Love is the fulfilment of the law. Jesus taught that the Torah and the prophets depend upon the commands to love God and others (Matt 22:40). Paul wrote that all commandments can be summed up in the command to love, which means that love is the fulfillment of the law (Rom 13:9–10). In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul masterfully demonstrates that without love, we are nothing.[21] The Old and New Testaments declare the love of the Lord and call his people to love him and others. Love is a central, biblical virtue. This cannot and must not be denied.
However, revisionists stray from the biblical teaching by adopting a truncated view of love. For some revisionists, this kind of love allows believers to pick and choose which commands no longer need to be followed. Since the commands prohibiting homosexuality seem unloving, revisionists claim, they should be set aside.[22] Others may not be as extreme, but still claim that certain commands should be reinterpreted so that these commands do not condemn what they think is loving. So, if two men love each other in a sacrificial way, then it is permissible for them to marry and engage in same-sex acts because love is the fulfillment of the law.[23] Revisionists take the premise that love fulfills the law and conclude that this allows believers to determine how certain commands apply, if at all.
The problem with this conclusion is that it adopts a one-sided approach to the biblical teaching that love fulfills the law. Revisionists argue that love gives us insight into interpreting the law. While this is a valid conclusion, they leave out another crucial aspect of this biblical teaching: God’s moral law also reveals what is loving. God’s Word gives his people guidance for understanding what is loving and what is not loving. Moreover, the truth that love fulfills the laws tells them that what God decrees is loving. Everything God commands has to do with love. He does not decree murder or adultery or lying. These actions are unloving. Thus, what is loving helps believers see what is lawful, and what is lawful helps believers see what is loving. Revisionists generally accept the first aspect of the biblical teaching but ignore or reject the second.
As a result, revisionists import their own definition of love into the biblical teaching to define how that teaching is to be applied instead of allowing what God has decreed to inform their understanding of what is loving. Herein we see the fatal flaw of the revisionist argument: they are the ones who define what is loving, not God in his Word. Revisionists understand that God’s law is summed up by love but use their own understanding of love to interpret or even set aside God’s commands. They fail to recognize that God gives commands because they promote love and use the biblical teaching on love and the law to skirt around calling out the current politically correct sins for what they are. However, as Stanley Grenz writes, “Humans are notoriously able to draw erroneous conclusions as to what love might entail in any specific situation. Devoid of guidance as to what love involves, we repeatedly find ourselves distorting genuine love in the name of ‘love.’”[24] People need guidance in many situations to know how to love, and the Bible gives believers this guidance.
Overall, the revisionist argument that same-sex relationships are not contrary to God’s law because they are loving and self-sacrificial relies on inaccurate interpretations of Scripture and a truncated approach to love and the law. There are no examples in Scripture of men and women setting aside or reinterpreting God’s moral law because it was no longer loving. Furthermore, a proper understanding of the relationship between love and the law leads to an affirmation of God’s law, not an affirmation of what God prohibits. Thus, those who argue that love should drive Christians to affirm same-sex relationships fail to adequately interpret the biblical teaching on neighbor love and the law.
A Biblical Response
How then should believers understand the biblical command to love others in relation to same-sex relationships? What does neighbor love require of them? The biblical teaching begins with the premise that loving one’s neighbor follows love for God. Neighbor love must be combined with love for God, and this is clear in Matthew 22:37–39, when Jesus gives the two greatest commandments: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind,” and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”[25] Love for God and one’s neighbor go together. More specifically, as Hendriksen writes, “this love toward the neighbor, who is God’s image-bearer, flows forth from the love toward God.”[26] Therefore, loving one’s neighbor requires a whole-hearted love for God in order to be genuine. The opposite is also true: love for God requires love for others as well. John writes, “And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother” (1 John 4:21). Loving one’s neighbor requires one to love God, which leads to the following requirements of love.
First, neighbor love requires compassionate sacrifice. John teaches in 1 John 3:16–18 that loving others means sacrificing for them on a large and small scale. He writes in verse 18, “Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.” Loving one’s neighbor is summed up by compassionately sacrificing for him or her. When an expert in the law asked Jesus who his neighbor was, Jesus told the parable of a Samaritan man showing compassion and sacrificing for a Jewish man he had never met (Luke 10:25–37). Loving others involves compassion and sacrifice toward all people, regardless of who they are or what they have done. Calvin writes, “The Lord demands that we do good to all, without exception, even though most people are unworthy if we judge them on their merits. . . . If someone, then, turns up who needs our help, we have no reason to refuse him.”[27] Thus, neighbor love requires believers to compassionately sacrifice for their homosexual neighbors in need. This means affirming the image of God in them, being generous with our possessions and time, and sharing with them the good news of salvation in Christ to all who repent and believe in him.
While love is certainly not less than compassionate sacrifice, there are other requirements of love. Neighbor love also requires a commitment to the truth, which includes God’s commands. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13:6 that love “does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.” Loving one’s neighbor does not lead to a love or affirmation of a person’s sin, but a commitment to the truth and obeying God’s commands.[28] God is not silent concerning same-sex relationships. He intentionally created humans as either male or female and ordained marriage as between a man and a woman (Matt 19:4–6). Under the Mosaic Law, homosexuality was clearly forbidden (Lev 18:22, 20:13), and under the New Covenant, such practices and relationships are also considered to be sinful and against God’s design (e.g. Rom. 1:26–27, 1 Cor. 6:9–11, 1 Tim. 1:10). Most revisionist seek to reinterpret these passages to favor loving same-sex relationships, but the clarity of these texts should not be denied. If neighbor love requires a commitment to the truth, it requires a commitment to the truth that same-sex relationships are morally wrong.
Furthermore, neighbor love requires opposition to sin. In Ephesians 4:1, Paul calls believers to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which they have been called. Paul unpacks this by calling them to not walk as the Gentiles do (4:17), to walk in love (5:2), and to walk as children of light (5:8). For Paul, walking in love is contrasted with walking in sexual immorality and other sins (5:2–6). Furthermore, he calls believers, as they walk as children of light, to abstain from sin and expose it for what it is (5:11). Thus, Paul teaches that walking in love requires an opposition to sin. Walking in love excludes excusing sin, including homosexual activity. Thus, neighbor love requires opposition to what God calls sin, not the affirmation of it.[29]
Love for neighbor follows love for God, and this requires compassionate sacrifice, a commitment to the truth, and opposition to sin. Thus, loving one’s neighbor does not require believers to affirm same-sex relationships, but to oppose them out of love for God and others. Yet, at the same time, believers must show compassion and grace to those within the LGBT community by sacrificing time and possessions for them and sharing the gospel with them. While this is not a popular teaching, it is the biblical teaching, and believers should seek to be faithful to call of God to love their neighbors as themselves.
Conclusion
The biblical command to love others does not require Christians to affirm same-sex relationships as morally acceptable. Claims to the contrary are biblically and ethically flawed. Even when revisionists attempt to bolster their argument with reasons for why love requires affirmation of homosexuality, their arguments are emotionally driven, twist the Scriptures, and rely on a shallow view of love. Love is central to Christianity, but it must not be used as a trump card to win arguments. Rather, believers must come to a biblically robust view of what love requires of them and then love others “in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:18).
ENDNOTES
1. Throughout this paper, the phrase “same-sex relationships” will be used to refer to sexual relationships between members of the same-sex.
2. Pew Research Center, Changing Attitudes on Gay Marriage, May 12, 2016, accessed October 10, 2016, http://www.pewforum.org/2016/05/12/changing-attitudes-on-gay-marriage/#attitudes-on-same-sex-marriage-by-religious-affiliation.
3. Ibid.
4. Matthew Vines, God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships (New York: Convergent Books, 2014), 178
5. Robinson, God Believes in Love: Straight Talk about Gay Marriage (New York: Knopf, 2012), 40–41.
6. Vines, God and the Gay Christian, 158.
7. Ibid., 14.
8. Sam Allberry, Is God Anti-Gay? (Purcellville, VA: The Good Book Company, 2013), 76.
9. Letha Scanzoni and Virginia R. Mollenkott, Is the Homosexual My Neighbor?: Another Christian View (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978), 8. See also Vines, God and the Gay Christian, 178.
10. Justin Lee, Torn: Rescuing the Gospel from the Gays-Vs.-Christians Debate (New York: Jericho Books, 2013), 205. Emphasis original.
11. See Vines, God and the Gay Christian, 13–16. Lee, Torn, 205–06.
12. Kevin DeYoung, What Does the Bible Really Teach About Homosexuality? (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2015), 117.
13. Denny Burk, “Suppressing the Truth in Unrighteousness: Matthew Vines Takes on the New Testament,” in God and the Gay Christian?: A Response to Matthew Vines, ed. R. Albert Mohler Jr. (Louisville: SBTS Press, 2014), 45, Adobe PDF eBook.
14. Philip L. Barclift, “Confessions of a Divorced (and Remarried) Theologian Part 3: Implications for Same-Sex Marriages,” Encounter 72, no. 3 (2012): 99, accessed September 19, 2016, ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, EBSCOhost.
15. Lee, Torn, 195–206.
16. Ibid., 198–203.
17. Barclift, “Confessions of a Divorced (and Remarried) Theologian Part 3,” 74.
18. Lee, Torn, 193–94, 205. Vines, God and the Gay Christian, 15.
19. See William Hendriksen, Exposition of the Gospel According to Mark (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1975), 105, 108.
20. DeYoung, What Does the Bible Really Teach About Homosexuality?, 107.
21. Philip Graham Ryken, Loving the Way Jesus Loves (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), 19.
22. Barclift, “Confessions of a Divorced (and Remarried) Theologian Part 3,” 74, 99.
23. Lee, Torn, 205–06.
24. Stanley J. Grenz, Welcoming but Not Affirming: An Evangelical Response to Homosexuality (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 93.
25. All Scripture quotations are from the English Standard Version.
26. William Hendriksen, Exposition of the Gospel According to Matthew (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1973), 810.
27. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion: A New Translation of the 1541 Institutes, trans. Robert White (Edinburgh, UK: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2014), 794–95.
28. James R. White and Jeffrey D. Niell, The Same Sex Controversy: Defending and Clarifying the Bible's Message about Homosexuality (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2002), 174–75.
29. White and Niell, The Same Sex Controversy, 175.
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