What does it mean
to be a Christian, and why is the Bible divided into the Old and New
Testament? Paul tells us in 2 Cor 3:6 , “Who also hath made us able ministers of the
New Testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth,
but the spirit giveth life.” So what is the spirit of the New Covenant that we
have in Jesus Christ?
Jesus was asked "which is the greatest commandment in
the Law?” and he replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul
and with all your mind.’[ This is the first and greatest
commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as
yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two
commandments.” Paul would later write "YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR
AS YOURSELF. Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love
is the fulfillment of the law." And James would write, "If ye
fulfil the royal law according to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbour
as thyself, ye do well."
The Spirit of the law and the substance of the New Covenant is that
we love God and our neighbor. (Mar 12:30-31) And make no mistake - it’s much
more difficult, to follow the Spirit and love our neighbors as we ought to,
than to judge and impose a self-serving letter of the Law against our
neighbors, to appear more religious than they are.
Which is why many Christians prefer to be legalists and
fundamentalists. Because however strict fundamentalism may appear, it’s much
easier than letting go of our pride, our fear, and any prejudices that we may
still harbor against our neighbors – including the fear and hatred of gays and
lesbians. It’s much easier to become a fundamentalist Christian than to make
those fundamental changes of heart that define a Christian.
Many of them would say: ‘It’s not about
judging gays; it’s about looking at how the Bible considers homosexuality a
serious offense. Unless we want everyone living by their own rules and doing
whatever they please, we must look to the Bible for bedrock principals. The
notion that homosexuality is wrong is one of them.’
Or so their argument
goes…because they don’t have any faith in the New Covenant that we have through
faith in Jesus Christ. They have no faith in the power of faith to transform a
person’s life, and they believe a Christian cannot be trusted with the liberty
guaranteed us when Jesus said, Joh_8:36
"If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed."
and when Paul warned us to Gal_5:1 Stand
fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not
entangled again with the yoke of bondage.. Frankly, they’re afraid
of the New Covenant; they much prefer the letter to the spirit of the law; and
they don't believe that Christ died to free us from the Law. They talk about the power
of the gospel, but they’re afraid that it won’t work.
Their line of reasoning doesn’t conform to
the truth of the Gospel because they have the wrong kind of faith. They've put
more faith in controlling people rather than in loving them. Certainly the
Bible can - and should - be used for edification and instruction: But only within the context of the absolute
liberty guaranteed every Christian. The Bible cannot be used to refute
or to dilute our liberty in Christ, or to safeguard Christians from the freedom
that Christ died to secure for us. In the most necessary sense, the Gospel law
of Love is the only law that matters.
We are no longer under the Law of condemnation, but under the full and
complete authority of God’s grace.
The problem with using the Bible to build a circumstantial case
against gays is that you are doing something that directly contradicts the New
Covenant. You are misusing scriptures in an attempt to prove something you
would never need to prove if you had followed the Spirit of the law by loving
your neighbor - rather than giving into the temptation to judge and condemn
him.
The Gospel says that a Christian is free from the Law and any
condemnation coming from the Law; and yet many have attempted to construct an
entirely New and Abridged Mosaic Law aimed specifically at singling out and
condemning gays. While at the same time, they conveniently excuse themselves
from all the other obsolete prohibitions in the Bible, inasmuch as they judge
those to be merely ceremonial, not as important, or no longer in force. Like
the law against eating shellfish or wearing clothing with mixed threads, or
stoning a bride when she is found not to be a virgin, or killing anyone that
practices a different religion, or marrying off a young girl to the man who
raped her. And there are many more like these.
Their new and Abridged Law, targeted against gays, could never change
the path leading to our justification, which can only come by faith in Christ.
They have merely annulled the power of the New Covenant within their own life by condemning rather
than loving your neighbor.
If a Christians is using the Bible to justify their hatred and
perpetuate an injustice - however long in existence – he has broken the only
Law that matters: ‘love thy neighbor as thyself.’ He has transgressed the law
of love, against which every other Law is ultimately judged. It’s not the Law
that judges us, it’s the spirit of Christ’s love that weighs and judges the
Law.
‘What then?’ they would
counter. ‘Can’t we as a society ever decide what’s right, what’s wrong, and
make our laws accordingly? Does ‘freedom in Christ’ mean freedom from every
moral precept and a sense of common decency? What sort of a world would it be
if murderers and rapists and theives were allowed to do whatever they pleased,
while we stood idly by with our hands behind our back because we don’t want to
violate their Christian liberty?’
The most obvious fault with this kind of emotional hyperbole is that
nobody is arguing that those who harm others – those like murderers, rapists,
and thieves - should not be brought to justice and prosecuted. That’s a red
herring. Society has a duty to pass and enforce laws that establish justice and
protect the innocent from harm. However, society has no right to force the
personal, private moral standards of one religious group upon everybody. Nor
does society have any right to deny folks their basic Constitutional rights -
like the right to marry - just because they happen to violate the moral code of
others. This is not only unjust and unconstitutional, but an infringement upon
the basic liberty guaranteed us by the Gospel.
American law is based upon the separation of church and state. Which
is to say, we allow individuals the freedom to practice their own faith (or no
faith) and to obey their own conscience in matters of personal and private
morality. The separation of church and state is predicated upon the truth of
the Gospel because it allows folks to make those kinds of decisions for
themselves.
As Martin Luther would later write, “They wish to deprive us of our consciousness of liberty in such a way
that we believe that what they do is well done; and it is not permissible to
censure it, or complain that what they do is evil… It is solely on behalf of this
liberty that I cry aloud; and I do so with good conscience, and in the faith
that it is not possible for either men or angels rightfully to impose even a
single law upon Christians except with their consent; for we are free of all
things.” Martin Luther
What we call privacy and personal freedom is the outward and secular
side of the inward freedom that we enjoy in Jesus Christ. And just because some
may abuse that freedom to their own harm doesn’t mean that we all must live
under religious tyranny.
The Old Covenant was a combination of both civil and religious laws,
since at that time there was no separation between church and state. At that
point in history, the mediator between God and humanity wasn’t Christ, but the
Mosaic Law. (The same situation exists in some fundamentalist Islamic states in
their enforcement of Sharia law.) At one time, the idea of personal rights and
moral freedom wasn’t possible because the New Covenant had yet to be preached.
The Mosaic Law instructed everyone, not only in how they should live together
in a safe and just community, but in how they must worship God and the
moral standards they had to uphold.
But the New Covenant tells us that there are no written laws that
could teach us how to worship God perfectly - in spirit and in truth through
love, as Jesus taught us. (John 4:23-24) And there are no written laws that
could enable us to love our neighbors as we ought to. That kind of information
and ability can only come directly from God through the love of Jesus Christ working
in our hearts by faith. As it says, “I
will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts.” (Jeri
31:33)
Strictly speaking, because a Christian answers directly to a ‘Higher
Law’ through faith in Jesus Christ, he is completely free - not only from
any religious laws but from civil and secular laws as well.
That’s not to say that a Christian is free to be a murder or a thief;
but that a Christian refrains from murder and theft inasmuch as he is already
obeying the law of Love written by Christ within his heart. A Christian doesn’t
harm others because he’s freely chosen to love his neighbors instead. A
Christian honors secular authority, rather than endorsing anarchy, because the
law of love includes a genuine respect for civil authorities whom, as Paul
tells us in Rom 13:1-5, God established them for the common good.
But where the laws of men and the law written within a Christian’s
heart stand in opposition – as often has been the case over issues like
slavery, civil rights, going to war, or an equal right to marry – a Christian
has the right (and moral duty) to peacefully demonstrate his opposition to an
unjust law, even if it means going to jail.
In demonstrating against unjust laws, a Christian demonstrates his
allegiance to a much higher law. And though there were once sodomy laws on the
books in America – they were struck down by the US Supreme Court in 2003, in
the case of Lawrence vs. Texas, which found, “no legitimate state interest
which can justify its intrusion into the personal and private life of the
individual." Just as the laws
prohibiting gays and lesbians from marrying are being struck down today.
Many would counter: ‘It may be that the government has no right to
invade our privacy or to impose its moral code. But does that mean a
church cannot instruct their parishioners in matters of personal conduct? Isn’t
that their purpose and function – to guide their flock in these matters? So
then, aren’t churches obligated to reprimand, or even exclude, those who won’t live
up to the moral code they teach and believe in?’
The duty and purpose of every Christian church is to preach the
Christian Gospel without discrimination or favor - especially to the poor and
persecuted. It’s admirable to preach values like love, tolerance, forgiveness,
honesty, patience, courage, charity, faithfulness, commitment, and
self-sacrifice. However, calling someone’s lifestyle evil when they have done
no harm to anyone – but only because they haven't conformed to your
particular lifestyle – that isn’t Christian. It’s a heterosexual country-club
posing as a Christian church.
Even if they were right and a gay person's lifestyle was wrong,
shaming and forcing him to deny how God created him cannot save him. Declaring
a cultural war against you neighbors will neither change their heart nor their
sexuality. Nor would it matter if it could.
If a pastor solved the problem of stingy parishioners by holding a
shotgun on the congregation, forcing everyone to make a much larger donation -
would God reward the congregation for their generous giving or consider it
extortion and severely condemn the pastor for his methods? Obviously the
latter.
If Jesus intended to turn
homosexuals into heterosexuals - why would he need anyone to shame and compel
them to leave the “homosexual lifestyle” if he were already leading them in
that direction?
The Lord not only judges what we do, but why we did it. He judges our
heart. That’s why it’s so important to allow every Christian the freedom to
choose, because without it, there can be no reward for making the right choice.
Only condemnation for those who took away our freedom and stifled what Jesus
may have been working within our heart. It’s not for their sake that gays have
been compelled, through religious and legal discrimination, to attempt to
transform their sexuality; it’s an attempt to stifle what Christ is already
doing within the hearts of more loving and tolerant Christians; and the latter
attempt won’t be any more successful than the former has been.
That being said, every church has a legal right to discriminate
against whomever they choose; there is no law saying that our churches must
welcome gays and lesbians, and none should ever be written. Still, if they are
a church that preaches the New Covenant in Christ, they should necessarily adhere to the terms of that covenant, or
they’re not really a Christian church.
Someone might concoct a Christian denomination that was based upon
the Koran. But if their religion were based upon the Koran or some other revelation,
rather than the New covenant, it would be Christian in name only.
Similarly, many legalistic/fundamentalist churches today are
Christian in name, though not in spirit. Enforcing a regressive and legalistic
moral code doesn’t make them traditional Christians. That they often seem very
judgmental, angry, and intolerant towards those with differing points of view
is more evidence of a spirit that’s not at all Christian.
Every church that preaches the New Covenant of justification through
faith in Jesus Christ is theologically obligated to honor the personal dignity
and Christian liberty of every member. They should, and I believe one day will,
accept all those who believe the Gospel and have faith in Jesus Christ –
whether or not they are heterosexual.
Like the fundamentalists of other religious persuasions,
fundamentalist Christianity has become skilled at advancing the view that they
represent the only legitimate version. But things don’t always come as
advertised. Because those that have compromised the faith are those who have
compromised (and taken away) the liberty of the Gospel.
