‘BUT JESUS NEVER SAID ANYTHING ABOUT HOMOSEXUALITY’ by Bill Muehlenberg

There are plenty of ways in which homosexual activists and their supporters seek to undermine the biblical view of homosexuality. One of the major tactics used by the revisionists is to simply make the claim that Jesus never said anything about the matter.

The idea is that he said nothing about it, so therefore it was no big deal to him, and so it should be no big deal to us. We hear this all the time, not only from secular activists but by quite clueless Christians as well. So how might we respond to such claims? Do they hold any water?

One really has to stretch things to come up with the claim that Jesus said nothing about homosexuality. Sure, he did not of course speak about things like homosexual marriage and the like. No one did back then, and basically no one did until just recently.

While the specific issue of homosexuality was not addressed, he did indeed speak plenty about God’s intentions for human sexuality and the like, as will be seen in a moment. But he certainly was not unaware of the great sin of homosexuality.

For example, Jesus did refer to the Sodom episode at various times (see Matthew 10:14-16; 11:23-25; Luke 10:11-13 and 17:28-32), and he knew full well what that was all about. But plenty of things are not directly discussed by Jesus. Arguing from silence is never a very helpful approach to take here.

It is also true that Jesus never said a word about rape, incest, child abuse, arson or pollution either. Are we to argue therefore that these behaviours are morally acceptable, and that Jesus has no problems with them? Is anything and everything OK if Jesus did not specifically mention it or condemn it?

The truth is, arguing from silence in these matters will get you nowhere fast, and it is foolish to even try to run with this tactic. Did Jesus approve of rape because he did not explicitly condemn it? Hardly. In the same way, Paul never once explicitly mentions the virgin birth. Did he therefore not believe in it?

Read more