Sexual sin doesn't mean homosexuality. It means sexual sin. Sexual sin can be almost anything.
Romans. Here's a good one. First of all, reminding you that Paul wasn't any more faithful or chosen than you or I. He was not a prophet and he never met Christ face to face, only through voice from heaven. He was not "divinely favored" and there is no proof that he received anything more than inspiration, and inspiration directly from the spirit can be so easily misinterpreted when one goes at it with a closed-mine. Also many historians believe he may have been blind so many of his words may have been through a scribe, which means we have to question if they're really Paul's words. Last, because of the complexity of Greek, many words are difficult to translate into English and can ALSO be misinterpreted to mean something other than what we assume it does.
Astonishing Relevance
In our exposition of Paul's letter to the Romans, we come now to this astonishingly relevant section in 1:24-28 where Paul touches on the reality of homosexuality. It is relevant for many reasons. For example, yesterday there was conference called "Here I Stand" to address the issue of homosexually active clergymen in the ELCA (Star Tribune, 10/10/98). On the front page of the Star Tribune there was the story of what appeared to be a hate crime against a homosexual student at the University of Wyoming who was in critical condition after being tied to a fence and beaten.
In August, 641 Anglican bishops from around the world gathered for the Lambeth Conference in Canterbury, England, and voted overwhelmingly to affirm that homosexual practice is "incompatible with Scripture."
Full-page ads were recently taken out in USA Today and the New York Times and the Washington Post showing some 850 former homosexuals who gathered last summer at the Exodus conference and who declared there is power in Christ to be changed. Here in Minnesota, legal cases continually crop up about child custody and adoption of children by homosexual people. And most immediate of all, here in our church there are people who have homosexual desires and many more people among us who have people in their families whom they care about very deeply who consider themselves homosexual. The reality of homosexuality is inescapable today, and this would come as no surprise to the apostle Paul, and therefore should not to us.
One of the things that makes matters unusual today is the effort on the part of some people to defend the legitimacy of homosexual behavior from the Bible. Most common, for example, is the claim that the denunciations of homosexuality in the New Testament are not references to committed, long-term homosexual relations, which these people say are legitimate, but rather refer to promiscuous homosexual relations and to pederasty, which are not legitimate. To use the words of one scholar, "What the New Testament is against is something significantly different from a homosexual orientation which some people seem to have from their earliest days. In other words, the New Testament is not talking about what we have come to speak of as sexual inversion. Rather, it is concerned with sexual perversion" (Paul Jewett, Interpretation, April, 1985, p. 210).
Simply Denouncing Heterosexuals Engaging in Homosexuality?
With regard to our own text this morning, some would argue that what Paul is denouncing in 1:26b-27 is heterosexual people forsaking what is natural for them and engaging in promiscuous homosexual relations which are unnatural for them. Paul writes, "Their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts." So, the argument goes, it is not unnatural when a homosexual person has homosexual relations, it is only unnatural when heterosexual persons have homosexual relations and (by implication) homosexual persons have heterosexual relations.
There are at least three major problems with this way of interpreting these verses. I will mention them because the last one will take us into the overall exposition of this section of Romans.
The first problem is that in verse 27 Paul says, "The men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another." Now if these were men who were by nature heterosexual, and who were going against their natural desires, what is the meaning of "they burned in their desire toward one another"? It is a very strong term. Does a natural heterosexual burn with lust for another man? If not, it is very unlikely that what Paul is dealing with here is the subject of heterosexuals engaging in homosexuality.
There is such a thing as a
bisexual, who seems to have desires for both men and women. But if that were in Paul's mind, the interpretation we are talking about wouldn't work either,
because then the burning of a man for a man and a woman would both be natural (according to this interpretation), and Paul would be unjust to denounce either one. But he does denounce this unnatural burning and the acts that follow. So the argument doesn't work that says, Paul is only denouncing homosexual acts by heterosexual people.
The second reason the argument doesn't work is that when Paul says in verse 27b, "Their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural,"
the Greek phrase for "that which is unnatural" (ten para phusin) is a stock phrase in Greek ethical literature of the time for homosexual behavior per se, not for homosexual behavior among heterosexuals - as though that's what made it unnatural.* So it is very unlikely that Paul is arguing that what's wrong and unnatural about these folks is that they are heterosexuals by nature and acting contrary to nature by doing homosexual acts. "Contrary to nature" in this text, as it most Hellenistic literature of the time, meant homosexual behavior per se. That's what Paul regards as unnatural.
The third argument against this kind of interpretation is the most significant, because it takes us into the deeper meaning of this text. But before I develop it, let me explain where we are going in these two weeks. My aim today is to give as sound and faithful an exposition of Romans 1:24-28 as I can, which will leave me little time for application. That is why I plan to continue the message next week. We will need to broaden our Biblical base and to tackle some practical issues next week.
Pray for Biblical Balance
My prayer for both weeks is that we as a church, and I in particular as the preacher, will find a Biblical balance between clear conviction about the sinfulness of homosexual behavior, on the one hand, and patient compassion to come alongside those of you who have homosexual desires, and your friends and relatives, and seek your good. I have no desire to drive homosexual people away. On the contrary, I would like to be able to say of our congregation what Paul said to the church in Corinth: after mentioning "fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, effeminate, homosexuals, thieves, covetous, drunkards, revilers, swindlers," he says in 6:11, "Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God." I would like us to be a church like that - justified sinners battling together to walk in purity, with all of our differing genetic, hormonal, environmental disorders that incline everyone of us, in varying ways, to do sinful things. We will talk more about that next week. It's a very important issue. But the point for now is simply this: we want to be a church where homosexual people can either overcome their sexual disorder, or find the faith and courage and help and love and power to live a triumphant, joyful, celibate life with the disorder.
http://www.soundofgrace.com/piper98/10-11-98.htm
I found the above study/sermon covers Romans 1 very well, and I think the prayer covers so well the true feelings and desires for the biggest amount of Christians who believe homosexuality is a sin.
I will put the third argument against the above interpratation on the next post so that maybe the reading of the prayer/feelings of most Christians will maybe be better understood.