DID JESUS EVER MENTION HOMOSEXUALITY?

On Sunday, Nov. 28, Tony Campolo, the evangelical writer from Philadelphia who was the one laughing with Bill Clinton at Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown’s funeral until Clinton saw the news cameras and teared up for them, was on a CBS Sunday blather program. Campolo--in a rant about why Christian values imply ever growing welfare programs—never mentioned that Jesus was advocating individual Christians demonstrating their faith by acts of compassion rather than such acts being forced by placing the barrel of government’s gun against the head of wage earners. However, during this rant Campolo said that Jesus never mentioned homosexuality as a moral issue, though he did acknowledge that the apostle Paul did talk about homosexuality.

This assertion that Jesus never mentioned homosexuality is another popular myth that is a blatant lie that is being perpetrated by the left and the ignorant. Of course, Jesus again and again—over 100 times—said that the “law stands”, “the law must be fulfilled”, “it is written”, and other expressions that affirmed Jesus’ affirmation of the entire law of Moses as the divine moral absolute to which even He, the Son of God, must subject himself.

But where did Jesus talk about homosexuality? In Mark 7:21-23. Jesus is responding to the legalism of the Pharisees regarding eating from contaminated plates by teaching them that evil does not originate from things outside of man that somehow morally contaminate a man, but that evil originates from within the human heart. And he tells them, “For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly. All of these evils come from inside and make a man unclean.” (NIV)

So, where does he mention homosexuality in this list of evils that come from within the human heart? Jesus actually refers to homosexuality twice in this list. The problem is that concerning homosexuality, as is the case concerning many concepts, Greek has much more specific terms than does English. The Greeks had specific terms regarding homosexuality for the one playing the male role and for the one playing the female role.

Because there are no analogous terms in English for these two Greek words, and because of a discomfort on the part of modern translators with the frankness of the Bible with sexual issues, these two words are translated in the NIV “sexual immorality” and “lewdness”. But the idea that Jesus never mentioned homosexuality is ludicrous. On the contrary, He specifically condemned both the male role and the female role in a homosexual act as evils that come from within the human heart.

12/5/2004—Don Crawford