Homosexuality and the Old Testament -- By: P. Michael Ukleja

Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 140:559 (Jul 1983)
Article: Homosexuality and the Old Testament
Author: P. Michael Ukleja


Homosexuality and the Old Testament

P. Michael Ukleja

[P. Michael Ukleja, Pastor, Rossmoor Grace Brethren Church, Los Alamitos, California]

Only towering cynicism can pretend that there is any doubt about what the Scriptures say about homosexuality. The Bible has not even the slightest hint of ambiguity about what is permitted or forbidden in this aspect of sexual conduct.

God loves people and wants them to come to the wholeness and joy for which they were made. His prohibitions are not the house rules of a sadistic and capricious Deity who mocks mankind by tormenting him with desires and then forbidding him from doing anything about them.

Biblical prohibitions are bright signposts that point people straight toward fullness and joy. They warn people away from spiritual and emotional detours, mires, quicksand, and cliffs. All sexual sins represent some failure on society’s part to stick to God’s path. Fornication fails to honor the image of God in the other person, for it sees the other only as a commodity. Adultery violates the shrine of marital fidelity which houses and keeps sacred the sexual expression. Incest is the effort to achieve union with an image too close to oneself. The relationship is not sufficiently “other” to make the transaction valid. Beastiality is the effort to achieve union with an image too different from oneself. Masturbation. while not explicitly cited in Scripture as sin, involves a failure to appreciate fully the use of sex which is surely more than a matter of mere orgasm. And homosexuality is a confusion, since it involves the effort of achieving union with a “mirror” image of oneself. This “other” is not sufficiently different

to permit the union for which mankind was so remarkably formed.

Homosexuality and the Sin of Sodom

Two angels who came to Lot in Sodom were threatened by a mob (Gen 19:4–11). What were the men of Sodom seeking when they called on Lot to bring out the men “that we may know them” (19:5, KJV)? Some conclude that the story has no reference to homosexual acts at all. Bailey seeks to justify homosexuality from the Old Testament in his work Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition.1 Others (for example, Boswell2 ) use Bailey’s arguments concerning this passage. Bailey was an Anglican scholar whose work influenced the change in British law regarding this issue. This work is fast becoming a standard reference work for the prohomosexual viewpoint.

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