JESUS VS. PAUL
One comment I hear often when defending
traditional marriage is the claim that Jesus never mentions homosexuality in
the four Gospels, therefore true Christianity allows for homosexuality. When
Romans 1 or 1 Corinthians 6 is mentioned, the opposition easily brushes those
chapters aside because Paul wrote those, not Jesus. Those that use such an
argument pit Paul against Jesus. This argument also closes it eyes to what
Jesus does say about marriage in the Gospels. How is the Christian to respond
to such an argument?
First the argument must be understood. The
assumption that is foundational to this argument is that Jesus’ version of
Christianity is different from Paul’s version of Christianity. Not only is
Paul’s Christianity different from Jesus,’ it is viewed as an aberration of the
Gospel Jesus taught. Jesus is viewed merely as a good teacher or a moral
philosopher whose teachings can improve the individual and society if they are
implemented. Paul, in this view, gets his hands on Christianity after Jesus’
death and makes it into a religious system which bears little resemblance to
what Jesus actually taught. Having separated Jesus from Paul (and the other
apostles), people can separate their teachings and cast aside that which they
don’t like.
As I wrote in the first paragraph, this does two
things. The first is that is destroys the definition of what an apostle is. In
Greek, the word apostle means ‘one who is send on behalf of another.’ An
apostle is an official representative of someone else. Not every Christian gets
to be an apostle. In fact, there can be no more apostles since the death of St.
John the Evangelist (the last apostle to die). As apostles, these men were
sanctioned to speak on behalf of the Lord Jesus after His ascension. Thus
we have verses like Luke 10:16, “He who hears you
hears me.” Jesus bestows this Office upon them in John 20 when He breathes on
them, giving them the Holy Ghost, and commands them to forgive and retain sins.
In Luke 24:46-47 the Apostles are sent to preach repentance and remission of
sin in Jesus’ name. The apostles can only speak that which they are given to
speak by Christ. They can write only what they are given to write by the
inspiration of God the Holy Ghost. An apostle who deviates from their sender’s
message ceases to be an apostle.
St. Paul is just as much an apostle as the
Twelve. His calling is recorded in Acts 9. Consider the way Paul speaks of His
Office in his epistles:
For I am the least of the apostles,
who am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of
God. (1 Cor. 15:9)
Truly the signs of an apostle were
accomplished among you with all perseverance, in signs and wonders and mighty
deeds. (2 Cor. 12:12)
Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by
the will of God, according to the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus. (2
Timothy 1:1)
Christ called Paul to be His
apostle to the Gentiles in spite of His past sins of persecuting the church.
Christ proved His apostleship through signs and wonders and mighty deeds.
Christ also proved Paul’s apostleship through the effectiveness of Paul’s
preaching. Paul tells the Corinthians in 1 Cor. 9:2, “For you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord.” Paul is just as much
of an apostle as Peter, James, John and rest of the Twelve. That means that
when Paul speaks and writes His epistles, that word is the Word of God, that
is, the teaching of the same Jesus who sent him. (1 Thess. 2:13)
Another aspect of the argument we are outlining
is that it functionally ignores what Jesus DOES say about marriage. It is truth
that Jesus does not teach about explicitly about homosexuality in the four
Gospels. But would He have had to teach about this topic? Homosexuality wasn’t
an issue in first century Judaism. The Pharisees, strict disciples of the
Mosaic Law, would have known the passages in Leviticus that prohibit same-sex
relations. As proud children of Abraham’s bloodline, these people would have been
raised hearing about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the Lord’s
rescue of Lot and his family. Jesus never speaks of homosexuality because there
is no need for him to speak about it.
An argument from silence isn’t valid here because
Jesus addresses marriage in a very clear way. Jesus is tested by some Pharisees
in St. Matthew 19. They ask him about if divorce is permissible for any reason.
The Pharisees want to entrap Jesus in the rigmarole of the Mosaic divorce
certificate:
When a man takes a wife and marries her, and it happens that she finds no
favor in his eyes because he has found some uncleanness in her, and he writes
her a certificate of divorce, puts it in her hand, and sends her out of his
house. (Deut. 24:1)
The Pharisees ask Jesus, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for just any reason?” Jesus will not fall into the trap. They
want to argue marriage from Deuteronomy. Jesus answers them, not from the Law
about divorce, but from the institution of marriage in the beginning:
And He answered and said to them,
"Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning 'made them male
and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man shall leave his
father and mother and be joined to his
wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So then, they are no longer two but
one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate." They
said to Him, "Why then did Moses command to give a certificate of divorce,
and to put her away?" He said to them, "Moses, because of the hardness
of your hearts, permitted you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it
was not so. And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual
immorality, and marries another, commits adultery; and whoever marries her who
is divorced commits adultery.” (Matt. 19:4-9)
Jesus argues from the institution of Marriage in
Eden that divorce for any cause contradict sthe Lord’s institution and purpose
for marriage. I realize that Jesus is not debating homosexual marriage in this
passage. But He is teaching about marriage. His teaching about marriage is to
uphold His original institution of it in Eden. He established it to be a man
and a woman, “male and female” He says. So while Jesus never says, “Homosexual
thoughts, acts, or marriage is sinful,” His teaching on marriage is that it was
instituted by God to be between a male and a female. The reason Jesus never
taught on it, other than mentioned above, is that Genesis already establishes
what a marriage is.
One can’t separate Jesus from Paul, nor can one
pit the two against each other. “The Scripture cannot be broken.” (John 5:39)
Neither can one simply ignore the words of Jesus on this or any subject. The
Church is called to make a clear confession on this topic in this age. Let us
not surrender the Scriptures to those who do believe it, but let us hold fast
to what our Lord has given us in His Word since only in His Word does He show
us His will for our lives and His love for all sinners in Christ Jesus our
Lord.
