Homosexuality: Who was Jesus? Part One

In continuing with the topic of homosexuality, I’d like to do a short study of Christology. Often as it is, the topic comes up of what Jesus taught on homosexuality, and the general consensus is that he didn’t teach anything. In one sense, this is correct; Jesus did not teach explicitly on homosexuality (though he did teach on the definition of marriage, which I have already addressed) in his earthly ministry. In another sense, he certainly did- when we look at the whole of who Jesus was. As I state time and time again, theology matters. Narrowing the discussion of Jesus to only the carpenter of Nazareth in ignorance of his full person as God, and again narrowing it to only what is in the red letters of certain Bibles is theological laziness. It shows that either a person has no desire to understand Christian theology, or that a person is ignoring or possibly overlooking other parts of Christian theology. Theology matters. One weak link in the chain causes the whole chain to fail. So, let’s study Christology together.

Christ as God

The Orthodox Christian understanding of Jesus’ deity is central to understanding the relationship between Christology and the homosexual debate. We as Christians recognize Jesus as God. We refer to him as the Second Person of the Trinity. That is, Jesus is fully God, yet is the Second of Three, the other two Persons being the Father and the Spirit, respectively. A denial of this is across the board heresy, and divides those who are Christians from those who are not.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1)

“For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him…” (Col 1:19)

“…although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.” (Phil 2:6-7)

“I and the Father are one.” (John 10:30)

Read the next two as one section. The passage from Isaiah is what John quotes in his gospel.

“For this reason they could not believe, for Isaiah said again, ‘HE HAS BLINDED THEIR EYES AND HE HARDENED THEIR HEART, SO THAT THEY WOULD NOT SEE WITH THEIR EYES AND PERCEIVE WITH THEIR HEART, AND BE CONVERTED AND I HEAL THEM.’ These things Isaiah said because he saw His glory, and he spoke of Him.” (John 12:39-41)

“In the year of King Uzziah’s death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple. Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.
And one called out to another and said,            ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts,            The whole earth is full of His glory.’
And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke.
Then I said,            ‘Woe is me, for I am ruined!            Because I am a man of unclean lips,            And I live among a people of unclean lips;            For my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.’…“He said, ‘Go, and tell this people:            ‘Keep on listening, but do not perceive;            Keep on looking, but do not understand.’
‘Render the hearts of this people insensitive,            Their ears dull,            And their eyes dim,            Otherwise they might see with their eyes,            Hear with their ears,            Understand with their hearts,            And return and be healed.’ ” (Isaiah 6:1-5, 9-10)

Notice John's commentary: "[Isaiah] saw His glory, and he spoke of Him." Saw who? Spoke of who? Contextually, in John's gospel, he's referring to Jesus. But when we go to the book of Isaiah and read what Isaiah actually wrote in the whole context, we see that he spoke of the LORD. If you don't know, whenever our English Bibles use "the LORD" in small capitals, it means that the original Hebrew is using the tetragrammaton- YHWH. So, John is equating Jesus with YHWH.

Aside from Biblical references, you can also do a study on secular authors and look historically at what Christians have believed from antiquity. Pliny writes to the Emperor of Rome in the early second century AD on what to do with Christians. He mentions a list of ways to find them, which included forcing them to curse Christ or worship statues of the Emperor and offer drink and food offerings to his Genius. True Christians would not do these things. Now, it follows from that, that if Christianity was a Jewish religion (which Pliny also recognizes, saying that the “disease” spread from Israel to Rome), and Judaism was strictly Monotheistic, and we have witness that Christians worshipped only Christ, that therefore Christians were Monotheistic and considered Christ as God. So, from the earliest of their history, it was recognized that Christians worshipped Christ alone. Worship, being something only offered to God, is a historical proof that Christians for their whole history have honored Christ as God. So from this one source (and there are others), we can see that from very early on, people knew 1) that there existed those who were called Christians, 2) that they were Jewish in origin, 3) that they worshipped a man named Jesus, 4) they recognized him as God, and 5) Christians could be distinguished from non-Christians by their beliefs.

Theologically speaking, we recognize Christ as the Second Person of the Trinity.

“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit…” (Matt 28:19)

We are Monotheist Trinitarians. That is, we believe in One God, in three Persons. Islam, in contrast, is Monotheist Unitarian. They believe that Allah is one god with only one person. We believe that each member of the Trinity is equally God and of the same essence. As was quoted above,

“For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him…” (Col 1:19)

Paul writes to the church at Colossae that the pleroma (fullness) of God dwelt in Christ. The word “fullness” is used also in the next verse,

“and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority…” (Col. 2:10)

The word here “complete” is the word pleroo (play-raw-oh), which is the verb form of pleroma. The word means “to make full, to complete,” and when applied to Christ, draws an equality of the essence of Christ and God. Theologically, we call this homoousia, “same essence.”

To conclude this section, if Christ is God, and God was the giver of the Law, then Christ also gave the Law. That means that Jesus of Nazareth, the God-Man, upheld the Law of Moses as its Creator, its Author. Therefore, whatever is contained therein, is the very word of Christ Himself. So, when the OT Law denounces homosexuality as evil, it is Christ who is doing the condemning. [Note here, unlike the charge levied against Paul, homosexuality in the OT Law cannot be equated with temple prostitution or pederasty, as those were foreign to Hebrew practice.]

Christ as the Angel of the Lord

This is something that is universally recognized by Biblical scholars and Theologians. There are more than a few examples of it, but I will only name one. In Exodus 3, during the scene of the Burning Bush, Moses writes,

 “The angel of the LORD appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of a bush; and he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not consumed. So Moses said, ‘I must turn aside now and see this marvelous sight, why the bush is not burned up.’ When the LORD saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, ‘Here I am.’” (Ex 3:2-4)

Maybe you didn’t catch it, but look at the wording. In the first sentence, it is the Angel of the Lord in the burning bush; in the third sentence it is God who is in the bush, vis-à-vis, The Angel of the Lord is God. Pretty simple concept.

The same passage is confirmed in the New Testament, in Acts 7:30-35:

“After forty years had passed, AN ANGEL APPEARED TO HIM IN THE WILDERNESS OF MOUNT SINAI, IN THE FLAME OF A BURNING THORN BUSH. When Moses saw it, he marveled at the sight; and as he approached to look more closely, there came the voice of the Lord…”

I only quoted 30 and 31 for brevity. Once again, notice how Stephen draws the connection between the Lord and the Angel. This time, we have an interpretation given by not only a New Testament author, Luke, but a character within the story. The words in caps are the OT quotation, the words in normal case are Stephen’s words.

Although the Angel of the Lord is designated as YHWH himself, he is also a distinct person.

“Then the angel of the LORD said, ‘O LORD of hosts, how long will You have no compassion for Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, with which You have been indignant these seventy years?’ The LORD answered the angel who was speaking with me with gracious words, comforting words.” (Zech 1:12-13)

The fact that the Angel is both talking to the Lord and being talked to by the Lord shows that there is a distinction between the two. This is in line with what Jews believed of the Angel. A.C. Gaebelein says, "It is noteworthy and of great interest that the ancient Jews in their traditions regarded the Angel of the Lord, in every instance, not as an ordinary angel, but as the only mediator between God and the world, the author of all revelations, to whom they gave the name Metatron."

So, what we’ve seen so far is that the Angel is both YHWH and someone else at the same time. He’s the only intercessor of the Lord with supreme authority from God. These attributes fit what we know of Jesus from the New Testament. Jesus is God, yet he is distinct from the Father and the Spirit. Equal in essence, different in person. So, what proof do we have to make that connection? John Walvoord makes four points to prove that Jesus was the Angel of the Lord: 1) Jesus is revealed as God in the New Testament, 2) The Angel of the Lord is absent from the New Testament, 3) Both the Angel of the Lord and Christ are sent by the Father, and 4) The Angel of the Lord cannot be either the Father or the Holy Spirit.

Of these, only the last really needs to be elaborated on. John 1:18 says, “No one has seen God at any time; the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him.”  This explains that the Angel of the Lord cannot be the Father, as the Angel of the Lord had a body, and was visible to men at various times. The Holy Spirit subsists in spirit form at all times and thus is also invisible. Therefore, the Angel of the Lord, being both YHWH and yet distinct from YHWH, can only be the Second Person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ.

Jesus, God, the Giver of the Law

Now that we’ve established that Jesus did make himself visible during the Old Testament times as the Angel of the Lord, let’s look at another place where Jesus made himself visible in the Old Testament. Keep in mind the principles we established about the nature of God, and the individual Three Persons and the distinctions between them.

Then the LORD said, “Behold, there is a place by Me, and you shall stand there on the rock; and it will come about, while My glory is passing by, that I will put you in the cleft of the rock and cover you with My hand until I have passed by. Then I will take My hand away and you shall see My back, but My face shall not be seen.” (Ex 33:21-33)

“The LORD descended in the cloud and stood there with him as he called upon the name of the LORD. Then the LORD passed by in front of him…” (Ex 34:5-6a)

Being that the Lord who is depicted here is one that is visible, we once again conclude that it is neither the Father nor the Spirit. That leaves only one other option; this is once again the pre-incarnate Christ. It follows also that it was the pre-incarnate Christ who gave the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20, the Levitical Law (Leviticus), and the second giving of the Law (Deuteronomy; deutero- “second”, nomos- “Law”).

So, did Jesus agree with the Old Testament Law? Yup. As a matter of fact, he wrote it. He agreed with its every part, as he declared it to Moses. Once again, we see that Jesus was certainly against homosexuality and declared it as a sin. When Leviticus states that a man should not lay with a man as one lays with a woman, it came from the very mouth of Jesus as the giver of the Law.

[Edit: The Law states that a lot of other things are sins as well, things that Christians do not recognize as sin. For a discussion of that, see my earlier post here.]

Separating Jesus from the Law is impossible, from both perspectives of Christ’s nature as God-Man. We’ve looked at his pre-Incarnate glorified aspect and how it agrees with the law, next time I visit this topic, I’ll go over who Christ was as the Son of Man.

In Him,

Mike