Recently, a socials’ catfight broke out concerning a claim by a longtime Bible prof at a Christian college in Santa Barbara who says Jesus and Scripture don’t much condemn sodomy and other sexual sins. He writes:
As one of my sons said, Dad the Bible says nothing about abortion, very little about sexuality, but a heck of a lot about caring for the vulnerable like immigrants. Now he and I both agree about a traditional sexual ethic and that abortion (though not murder) is a moral violation, but God seems to care a heck of a lot more that we take care of immigrants…, the poor, and other vulnerable persons.
Abortion is “not murder?” Here we start by understanding this man is a false shepherd who makes his living and royalties off wicked lies such as abortion is not murder.
Looking at his deceptions more carefully though, we are better able to see and warn against what is a common error in the way we read and apply Scripture.
Let’s begin with the question, what does Scripture say about government immigration policies and laws. “Nothing,” you answer?
Well no, not “nothing.” And here, just in this particular, this man and his son are right. What God states in His Word again and again and again is that we are to take compassionate care of three classes of people who are always and everywhere vulnerable, and we are to do so because He Himself takes particular care of these three classes of persons. This is typical of scores of such texts across Scripture:
He executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and shows His love for the alien by giving him food and clothing. So show your love for the alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt. (Deuteronomy 10:18-19)
Readers know I run against the grain of MAGA on this matter of the alien in our midst—not the alien trying to crash our borders.
Although on many levels and for many reasons I am pleased to have President Trump occupying our White House, and although I fully affirm our civil authorities passing and enforcing laws to protect our nation’s borders, saying these things doesn’t end the matter for Christians.
Why not?
Because Scripture records Jesus’ statement that the second greatest commandment is “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” Thus says our Lord, and if you are wondering “Who is my neighbor?”, read our Lord’s parable of the Good Samaritan told in direct answer to that question by a lawyer who wanted to weasel his way out of loving anyone but himself. Samaritans were despised and hated, yet Jesus forced the Jewish nationalist to recognize the Samaritan was his neighbor.
Yes, we must honor the laws concerning our borders, but as we do so, we must honor the Second Greatest Commandment to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. As the Good Samaritan was our neighbor, so the alien in our midst is our neighbor. God has made our duty of love clear by showing us in many places across the text of Scripture His commitment to defending aliens as He defends widows and orphans.
The endlessly repeated Scriptural triad is the widow, orphan, and alien. Or as we like to say it, the “illegal alien.” He’s in our country and has cooked for us and cleaned our gutters and changed the sheets of our hotel room and hung our drywall and put a new roof on our house and picked our vegetables and cut our grass and blown it off our sidewalk; he has served us quietly and sent support back to his wife and children and parents for decades now, as he lives and serves us here in our midst.
Just as the Hebrews were despised by the Egyptians and served them, so that the repeated statement of God is:
So show your love for the alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.
Why bring up this matter of immigration, here?
What the longtime Bible prof of the Christian college in Santa Barbara is saying is that Scripture is very clear about caring for migrants and immigrants, yet not clear at all about abortion and sodomy.
Just for the sake of argument, let’s grant him his point about the clarity of Scripture commanding our compassion for the alien in our midst. In what way could it be said that this duty is more clear in Scripture than our duties not to murder the unborn and not to have carnal knowledge of someone of our own sex?
Answering this question, let us note how this man’s wicked manipulations depend upon two errors we commonly commit as we read God’s Word.
First, it is common for us to make a show of obeying God in the very particular while we disobey Him in the general. To illustrate this, we return to God’s command that we are “to love” the orphan, widow, and alien. Likely because we’re all inclined to voice our consciences most vociferously outside the home and church, people know we are pro-life (or anti-abortion), but they don’t know we are pro-single mother or widow, and certainly not pro-alien.
Because of our political commitments, we can be accused of making a show of obeying God’s command to love the orphan (the preborn child) while leaving it to the deacons to care for the widows and leaving it to ICE to care for the aliens. But this is hypocrisy.
God’s command is not so simple as for us to oppose abortion, but to love the three classes of persons who are always and everywhere vulnerable to oppression. So if we make a big show of being anti-abortion while showing no comparable care for single mothers, widows, and aliens in our midst, our motives are suspicious. Carefully selective obedience of a command by God that is not exclusively specific, but inclusively categorical, is devious.
For this false shepherd to call Christians to care for the aliens in our midst while denying it is murder to kill the orphans in our midst is the worst sort of hypocrisy. Never in the history of man has our world had so many orphans being slaughtered. The streets of the cities of the world, including our own cities, run with rivers of these orphans’ blood.
Note this wolf’s exclusive selectivity. He makes a loud show of having a tender conscience towards aliens while saying nothing about single moms and widows, then proving himself heartless and cruel towards orphans.
We need to examine ourselves for this error. It is sin. Look for the general principle behind the specific command of God and don’t resist that principle because it makes obedience seem hopelessly broad or limitless. The point of God’s commands is not to show us how capable we are of obeying them.
We are to give ourselves to an expanding understanding of God’s mercy and holiness, denying our own attempts to contract our spheres of obedience.
Let this Bible prof teach his students the many devious ways to shrink what we owe God and man. We ourselves stop our ears and flee from the sound of his voice.
The second error is our habit of obeying God’s negative commands while disobeying His positive commands. We are vigilant against sins of commission, but carefree towards sins of omission. God’s “no” is everything to us while His “yes” drowns in questions of opportunities, choices, and stewardship.
Thus many might think or say, “Because God commends something doesn’t mean we have to drown ourselves in it! We all have to be responsible citizens, making our choices well in a way that takes into account the exigencies of our own situation.”
Returning to the specific lie this Bible prof is sowing, that “the Bible says very little about sexuality,” the thrust of his lie depends upon everyone thinking: “Yeah, that’s true. Jesus says nothing about sodomy—let alone the other LGBTQisms. Even the Apostle Paul only mentions it a couple times. Where does Scripture ever condemn transitioning from one gender to the other? That Bible prof is right!”
No he’s not right. He’s carefully wrong and leading many souls to Hell.
There could be no more clear condemnation of sodomy than these two positive statements made by God at the very beginning. Notice that these things were said and done while Adam and Eve were still in the state of perfection, in the Garden of Eden.
First this positive statement of God’s provision of female for male, woman for man:
God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. (Genesis 1:27)
Then the LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.” …but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.
So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh at that place. The LORD God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.
The man said, “This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”
For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. (Genesis 2:18ff)
Second, this positive Creation command given by God to Adam and Eve, and thus to every man and every woman across the world down through all ages:
God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:28)
God made male and female husband and wife, then commanded them to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth. This is recorded in the first two chapters of the first book of Scripture, but this Old Testament Bible prof tells his very big and evil lie, “the Bible says very little about sexuality.” It would be as if he read the first verse of the Bible, “In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth” (Genesis 1:1), then announced, “the Bible says very little about how the universe evolved.”
One of my heroes would regularly make the observation that there are certain lies only the educated man can believe.
To bring this to an end, all nature sings of the wonder of sex and its fruitfulness. God’s book of Scripture tells us of God’s creation of male and female sexuality, and God’s book of nature sings of God’s continued blessing of male and female sexuality. The birds dance above our bird feeders, the pair of mourning doves coo a few feet apart, the horses herd, the cow calves and we milk her.
How deep in spiritual bondage is the man who, addressing the moral wickedness of that sexual anarchy pervasive across the Western world today, spreads this evil lie that God has said very little about sexuality?
The church of Jesus Christ is filled with many such malicious, devious, wicked, soul-destroying liars. It is the duty of pastors and elders to expose this man’s lies, yelling at the sheep to run for their lives!
But false prophets also arose among the people, just as there will also be false teachers among you, who will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing swift destruction upon themselves. (2Peter 2:1)
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. (1John 4:1)
Two lies a man believes. One makes a big show of limited obedience of this command while neglecting the righteous principle of God that underlies that command which, opened up by the heart of faith, spreads many more specific commands before him also calling for his obedience.
The second makes a show of obeying God’s “no” while refusing to admit the negative commands inherent in God’s “yes.”
Sins of commission (not doing what God commands) are as wrong as sins of commission (doing what God forbids). In sex and marriage as in every other area of life, think on this statement of God:
Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin. (James 4:17)
Dearly beloved, flee the lies of this sinful man, and all those who talk as he talks.
Rather, marry. It is better to marry than to burn. Then be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth.
A bird lover and gardener, this hymn was a particular favorite of my dear mother:
This is my Father’s world:
The birds their carols raise,
The morning light, the lily white,
Declare their Maker’s praise.
This is my Father’s world:
He shines in all that’s fair;
In the rustling grass I hear Him pass,
He speaks to me everywhere.
