What happened in Orlando and the Bible

We are all highly aware of the recent horrific events in Orlando. The tragedy was quickly followed by an inordinate amount of rubbish in the media, some of the rubbish coming from “Christians”.

One strand of this rubbish has been to blame Christians for the attack as we supposedly engender an atmosphere of homophobia. And one line in this attack is to say that the Bible says homosexual acts are punishable by death, so Christians who hold to Biblical teaching are implicitly arguing, or at least thinking, that homosexuals should indeed be put to death. Sadly there are some so-called Christians who do think this and there have been some disgusting posts on the internet. The vast majority of Christians do not think this, and more importantly the Bible does not teach or promote this either. However, another stream of rubbish from so-called Christians is that we should “rethink” the Biblical teaching on LGBT issues. This is equally misguided. So let’s look at the matter more carefully, with a view to understanding what the Bible actually says.

In the Bible there are two main covenants, the old covenant or the Law, and the new covenant or the gospel. The Law was a covenant between God and the nation of Israel. The gospel is a covenant between God and all people. The precise details of the Law applied only to the nation of Israel. It also pointed forward to the new covenant, to the coming of Christ. One of the things the Law did was point out various sins. One aspect of this, and only one aspect, were sexual sins. There are a whole host of others, including justice in courts, fairness in economic affairs etc. One of the sexual sins is homosexual acts. The main places where these are mentioned are Leviticus 18 and 20. However, if you look at these chapters you will see that homosexual acts are indeed mentioned, you will also see that they are just one sin in a very long list of sexual sins (and a few others as well). And yes, in Leviticus 20:13 it does indeed speak of the death penalty, but this was an instruction for the nation of Israel alone.

Then we have the new covenant, the gospel, which the Old Testament is pointing forwards to. Under the gospel the sexual sins mentioned in the old testament, including homosexual acts, are still wrong, as is economic exploitation, dishonesty etc. But under the gospel the command is repent and believe. If we do so then we receive forgiveness and new life. Anyone who uses the Bible as grounds for hating gays is completely misguided and wrong, is misusing the Bible and will have to answer to God for doing so.

Those who call for a “rethinking” are also misguided and will have to answer to God as well. The gospel tells us that we are all (straight, gay or whatever) sinners and we are all called to repent and believe. As it says in Acts 17:30 God commands all men everywhere to repent.

President Obama has spouted a load of nonsense on the matter, he should also remember John 3:18-20, in particular 3:19

This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.

The gospel is a message of new life, and we are called to hold out the message of life to all people.