Law, Grace, and Sexuality

Law, Grace, and Sexuality

Leviticus 18:1-30

Main Idea: God’s Word calls us to submit to what God says about sexual morality, to separate from the sinful ways of the world, and to remember in humility the danger of falling into the same sins we condemn in other people.

I. God’s People Submit to God’s Authority.

A. He created us, and He created sex.

B. He owns us.

C. God’s Word is true, powerful, and effective.

II. God’s People Separate from the World’s Iniquity.

A. Separation starts with salvation.

B. Separation progresses by God’s Spirit.

C. Separation culminates in love.

III. God’s People Serve God in Humility.

A. We confess our weakness.

B. We conform our service to Scripture.

The Victorian Age in nineteenth-century Great Britain has a reputation for conservative views of sexuality. Fulton Sheen once said, “The Victorians pretended sex did not exist; the moderns pretend that nothing else exists” (cited in Warren Wiersbe, Be Holy, 80). Sheen was correct. We live in a sex-saturated, sex-obsessed society. Sex is an ever-present theme on television, the Internet, and in movies, music, and books. The advertising industry lives by the mantra “sex sells,” and their belief in the market effects of sex multiplies the suggestive images we see every day. The church is churning out books and seminars on what God says about the subject. Bible teachers are teaching and writing about Song of Songs as a manual on marital intimacy. Such teaching is surely a positive development, but it seems worthy of pointing out that such an emphasis is unprecedented in the 3,000 years since Solomon wrote Song of Songs.

Unfortunately, Western culture has not only become obsessed with sex, it has also perverted it. In 1931 when Aldous Huxley wrote his novel Brave New World, he portrayed promiscuity as a societal virtue. Huxley’s fiction is now non-fiction. Today the entertainment industry portrays promiscuity as the norm and monogamy as antiquarian. Our culture has abandoned God’s design. Verse 23 of Leviticus 18 uses the word “perversion.” The Hebrew word translated “perversion” comes from a root that had the physical sense of mixing something, like mixing oil in flour. It had the figurative sense of being mixed up or confused. It appears in Genesis 11:7 to refer to the Tower of Babel incident when God confused the language of the people so they could not understand one another (Kaiser, “tebel,” in Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, I, 112). So Leviticus 18:23 refers to being sexually confused, mixed up, perhaps with the idea of mixing two different things together that God did not intend to go together. In Western culture today, a lot of people are mixed up in that way. That makes Leviticus 18 a word for our times. What does God teach us in this part of His Word?

God’s People Submit to God’s Authority

In verse 2 God told Moses, “Speak to the Israelites and tell them: I am Yahweh your God.” God was reminding His people that He is the Lord; He is the authority who has the right to direct humanity with His laws. Again in verse 4 God said, “You are to practice My ordinances and you are to keep My statutes by following them; I am Yahweh your God.” In fact, six times in this chapter God reminded His people that He is God. He was making sure they would have no doubt about who was in charge—the God of the universe was giving these rules. He is the authority.

Authority is a fundamental issue in our culture today. Who determines right and wrong? When we hear a command, its authority in our lives is determined by who gives the command. If I am walking down a sidewalk and somebody behind me shouts, “Freeze! Put your hands behind your head!” I check immediately to see who is shouting. If the person behind me is a policeman, he has the authority to give that command and demand compliance. So I hope he is shouting at someone else, not me. A command has authority if the one who gives it has authority (Wright, “Learning to Love Leviticus”).

With respect to commands regarding sex, there are only three possible sources of authority. For many people, their authority is personal opinion. Every individual decides for herself or himself what is right and wrong. During the period of the judges, Israel adopted that approach to authority. Twice the book of Judges states, “Everyone did whatever he wanted” (17:6; 21:25). God’s people were ignoring God and His law; their morality was entirely self-referential. They did what they thought was right—personal opinion. The book of Judges also demonstrates the result of that approach to life. It results in moral anarchy—widespread murder, stealing, and rape—not unlike our current culture, which also determines right and wrong by consulting personal opinion.

Another source of authority concerning sexuality is the opinion of the majority, or law. We submit to the standards of the society in which we live. That seems better than consulting only personal opinion, but societal standards change dramatically through time, and they change from one society to another. If society is the authority for right and wrong, then all the Nazis did in Germany in the early 1940’s was not immoral because German society accepted it (Schlessinger and Vogel, The Ten Commandments, xxix). Clearly it is not possible to apply this source of authority consistently. Therefore, majority opinion is not an acceptable authority for morality.

We need a source of authority that transcends societal changes and personal opinions, an authority that protects the weak and the innocent. We need God’s transcendent authority. For the people of God, the issue of authority has been settled—our authority is God, and He has expressed His will in His Word, the Bible. The reason our culture is confused and perverse is that God and His authority have been rejected.

In Carl F. H. Henry’s magisterial work, God, Revelation, and Authority, he stated that the crucial issue for modern civilization is authority. How can we know what is right and wrong, or whether right and wrong exist, if we have no transcendent, absolute authority? Dr. Henry wrote,

For mankind today nothing is of greater importance than a right criterion whereby men may identify the truth and the good over against mere human assertion. (vol. 4: 16)

The Scriptures are the authoritative written record . . . of God’s revelatory deeds, and the ongoing source of reliable objective knowledge concerning God’s nature and ways.(vol. 2: 13)

Followers of Jesus cannot waver on our source of authority. Our authority is God’s Word. Since the issue of authority is so important in discussions about right and wrong in sexuality, let’s ask why God is the authority over sexuality. Why does He get to make the rules, and why are His rules best?

He Created Us, and He Created Sex

It may come as a shock to some people in our pornographic, perverse culture, but the perfectly holy God of the universe is the One who first thought of sex and gave it to humanity. The second chapter of Genesis says that God brought the first woman to the first man and gave her to him. God Himself performed the first wedding, and Genesis 2:24 says, “This is why a man leaves his father and mother and bonds with his wife, and they become one flesh.” The one flesh relationship is God’s design. Note that God’s design is one woman and one man forming one new family brought together by God with no provision for dissolution. Why should God be the authority over sex? He’s the One who created it!

He Owns Us

Psalm 24:1 says, “The earth and everything in it, the world and its inhabitants, belong to the Lord.” God owns everything. Tertullian, one of the early fathers of the church, cited the Roman law praescriptio proprietatis—the prescription of ownership. The owner determines the rules for what He owns (Grant, A Short History, 75–76). We still say today, “Possession is 90 percent of the law.” God owns the universe, so His laws are universal. With ownership comes the authority to make the rules. This is especially true for followers of Jesus. First Corinthians 6:19-20 says to Christians,

Don’t you know that your body is a sanctuary of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought at a price. Therefore glorify God in your body.

Why does God get to make the rules for our bodies? He owns our bodies. We are not our own; we have been bought with the price of the blood of Jesus. Therefore, we glorify God in our bodies. God owns us.

God’s Word Is True, Powerful, and Effective

God’s Word, the Bible, is our authority because it comes from God, and He created us and owns us. Additionally, it is important to know that through the millennia God’s Word has proven to be true, powerful, and effective. Hebrews 4:12 says,

For the word of God is living and effective and sharper than any double-edged sword, penetrating as far as the separation of soul and spirit.

The words of humanity about sexuality may be convenient, easy, and popular; but the Word of God is true, powerful, and effective.

A good friend is a devoted follower of Jesus, a Bible teacher, and a wonderful husband and father. Years ago he was living a homosexual lifestyle. One day somebody told him that the Bible says homosexuality is wrong. He was not aware that the Bible said that. He looked in the Bible for himself, and he saw that God says homosexuality is an abomination. God used that to convict him of sin. He told his gay partner what the Bible says. It did not seem to bother his partner, but it bothered him so much that he moved out of the place he was staying with his partner. Some friends who were Christians took him in, they shared the gospel with him, he put his faith in Jesus, and it changed everything about him. God used His Word to change him. God’s Word is true, powerful, and effective. God’s people submit to God’s authority; He said, “I am the Lord your God” (Lev 18:2 ESV).

God’s People Separate from the World’s Iniquity

In verses 6-23 God specifically prohibited every sort of incest (vv. 6-18), adultery (v. 20), child sacrifice (v. 21), homosexuality (v. 22), and bestiality (v. 23). Then God referred to the fact that the people of Canaan practiced those sins. God said,

Do not defile yourselves by any of these practices, for the nations I am driving out before you have defiled themselves by all these things. The land has become defiled, so I am punishing it for its sin, and the land will vomit out its inhabitants. But you are to keep My statutes and ordinances. You must not commit any of these detestable things—not the native or the foreigner who lives among you. For the men who were in the land prior to you have committed all these detestable things, and the land has become defiled. (vv. 24-27)

God was telling His people not to do what the people who did not know Him were doing. God said the inhabitants of Canaan practiced “all these detestable things”—incest, adultery, child sacrifice, homosexuality, and bestiality. Evidently such depraved behavior had become common in Canaanite culture, so God was sending His judgment. G. Campbell Morgan wrote of people who do not believe that God commanded the Israelite conquest of Canaan, and he responded,

For myself . . . if I did not believe God would make war against what is revealed concerning Canaan, I could not believe in God at all! . . . Israel was raised up, and sent into that land to cleanse a plague spot, which was blasting the whole world by its influence. (Morgan, Hosea, 139)

The Canaanites broke God’s laws and became unclean, and He punished them. God wanted His people to enjoy happy families and the blessings of walking with Him, so He told them not to live like the people who were disobeying Him. Sin leads to suffering. God was calling His people to be holy, different from the people around them.

These days a common argument against the law forbidding homosexuality is to say that these laws should be categorized the same way we categorize Old Testament laws concerning clean and unclean foods, laws about sacrifices and ceremonies that are no longer observed, and civil laws governing Israelite society. Those laws are obsolete, so, the argument goes, the laws against homosexuality are also obsolete. However, God’s rules against homosexuality did not apply only to the Israelites. God gave none of this Mosaic law to the Canaanites, but Leviticus 18 says explicitly that God was holding the Canaanites accountable for the sin of homosexuality. Laws concerning things like murder, adultery, stealing, and homosexuality were universal laws because they are laws from creation. Committing such acts is rebellion against God’s creation design. In the beginning God established marriage between one man and one woman. Any deviation from God’s creation pattern violates His law. Furthermore, the law against homosexuality is about personal sexuality, and that can hardly be categorized as a ceremonial law or a civil law. It has never been categorized that way until recently. A final reason we cannot discard the Old Testament laws against homosexuality, incest, and lesbianism is that they are repeated in the New Testament in the books of Romans (1:26-27), 1 Corinthians (5:1; 6:9), and 1 Timothy (1:10). Even if we excised Leviticus from the Bible, we would still have to face the fact that the New Testament calls such activity sinful.

Let’s note three biblical truths about the issue of separation.

Separation Starts with Salvation

We must never forget that before God gave all the laws recorded in Leviticus to His people, God had saved His people from slavery in Egypt. Old Testament religion was not just external compliance to legal standards. God did not call His people to legalism; He miraculously delivered His people from slavery, He graciously set them free, and He called them into a loving relationship with Himself. As a part of that relationship He gave them laws to guide them so they could enjoy life.

New Testament religion is not just external compliance to legal standards. God offers us eternal salvation in Jesus. He sets us free from sin, self, and the Devil. He transfers us from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of His beloved Son. Once we are in that kingdom, He gives us His rules so we can enjoy a happy life. The apostle Paul stated this truth beautifully in 1 Corinthians 6:

Don’t you know that the unrighteous will not inherit God’s kingdom? Do not be deceived: No sexually immoral people, idolaters, adulterers, or anyone practicing homosexuality, no thieves, greedy people, drunkards, verbally abusive people, or swindlers will inherit God’s kingdom. And some of you used to be like this. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Cor 6:9-11)

Those verses do not mean that people who commit those sins will not go to heaven. It means that people who can be characterized by those lifestyles instead of being characterized by knowing Jesus will not go to heaven. The difference between the people who are not headed for heaven and the people who are is not that one group of people commits those particular sins and the other group of people does not. The difference in followers of Jesus who are headed for heaven is that they have sinned and they know they are in big trouble because of it! They have recognized their sin, confessed it, and reached out to Jesus to forgive them, cleanse them, make them new, and give them eternal life. People who are not headed for heaven commit sins and have not turned to Jesus for salvation. Followers of Jesus still commit sins, but as one preacher said, people who know Jesus lapse into sin and loathe it, and people without Jesus leap into sin and love it.

Some of the Christians in Corinth were characterized by those lifestyles in their past. “And some of you used to be like this.” Some of the Christians in Corinth had been idolaters, adulterers, thieves, alcoholics, and homosexuals. “But,” verse 11 says, “you were washed, you were sanctified [made holy], you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.” When those idolaters, adulterers, thieves, alcoholics, and homosexuals put their faith in Jesus, God took them just like they were, forgave their sin, reconciled them to Himself, washed them, and made them holy.

God has done the same for all of us who are disciples of Jesus. Christians are not better than those sinners because we don’t do what they did. Some Christians did do those things, and all of us are sinners by nature and by choice. Before we put our faith in Jesus we were without God and without hope. But we confessed our sin and put our faith in Jesus, and He did His work of salvation by forgiving our sin, giving us the gift of eternal life, and making us clean by His grace. We must never forget that separation starts with salvation.

Separation Progresses by God’s Spirit

The passage cited above states how we are washed and sanctified: “by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor 6:11). We need the Spirit of God to change us. What Leviticus 18 says about deviant sexuality is not just the Word of God for “those sinners” out in the world; it is the Word of God for all of us. Every one of us inherits twisted ideas about our sexuality as part of our fallenness, and every one of us is affected by the twisted ideas of our culture. We need help. God gives us help by the presence and power of His Spirit. He uses His Word and He uses His people, but He is the One powerfully working in us by His Spirit. It is possible that someone reading this section is struggling with homosexual attraction or with another temptation that violates God’s design. You may struggle with that attraction for years to come, but attraction is not the same as sinful action. God’s Spirit will help you with the temptation. Ask Him. Depend on His power. We are washed and sanctified “by the Spirit of our God.” Sanctification progresses by God’s Spirit.

Separation Culminates in Love

God told the Israelites to be separate, different from the Canaanites. He told them to stay away from the idolatry and immorality of the Canaanites. In the next chapter in Leviticus God told His people that they were also to love the Canaanites. Verse 18 in chapter 19 says, “Love your neighbor as yourself; I am Yahweh.” Jesus quoted that statement and said it is the second greatest command (Matt 22:36-39). First, love God. Second, love people. I have seen a lot of separation from sin that does not involve love. We say, “Hate the sin and love the sinner,” but somehow we never get around to spending time with sinners to love them. Our separation from sins like homosexuality and abortion often consists of carrying banners, spouting rhetoric, and pointing fingers, not expressing love.

Maybe it would help us to love sinners if we remembered that we are sinners too. Christian men look at pornography, Christian marriages end in divorce, and the people in churches fight with one another and divide. How dare we feel self-righteous or condescending? We are spiritual beggars just like every sinner; the only difference is that we have found bread in Christ. We have found His forgiveness, the eternal life He gives, the truth and guidance of His Word, and the power of His Holy Spirit. Now that we have found that bread, what do we do with it? We offer it to the unsaved, and if they reject it we don’t get angry, we love them. To whom in the gay community are you showing love? “Love your neighbor as yourself; I am Yahweh.”

God’s People Serve God in Humility

God told Israel not to commit the sins that the Canaanites were committing. In verse 27 God said the Canaanites had become unclean through their sin, and the land of Canaan would spew them out because of their sin. Then God told His people again not to commit the sins of the Canaanites or the land would spew out the people of Israel too. God told His people they were capable of committing the same sins, and if they did commit the same sins they would experience the same punishment. The subsequent history of Israel shows that God’s people did fall into the same sins, and they experienced the same punishment. About seven hundred years after God spoke these words, the land spewed Israel out when the Assyrians took the northern kingdom of Israel into exile, and 150 years after Israel’s fall the Babylonians took the southern kingdom of Judah into exile.

God knew His people were just as vulnerable to temptation and sin as the Canaanites. God knows that we are vulnerable to temptation and sin too. So what do we do?

We Confess Our Weakness

How do we relate to sinners around us? We relate to them aware of our own propensity to sin. Galatians 6:1 says, “If someone is caught in any wrongdoing, you who are spiritual should restore such a person with a gentle spirit, watching out for yourselves so you also won’t be tempted.” We restore others with the awareness that we too are vulnerable to temptation and sin. Falling into sin is easy. The sin we condemn in someone else today may be the sin we have to confess tomorrow. We restore sinners in the church the way we would want the church to restore us, because one day we may be the ones who need restoration.

I pastored a church where two former pastors joined about the same time. Both of them were new to that city, both of them were relatively young men, and both of them were dying. One of them was single, the other was married, and both of them had contracted AIDS from other men. The wife of one of those former pastors told me, “I heard my husband stand in the pulpit and preach against homosexuality. How could he become involved in the very sin he so strongly condemned?” When calling sinners from sin and trying to restore them, may we always heed the warning of Galatians 6:1, “watching out for yourselves so you also won’t be tempted.” The Israelites had no guarantee that they would not fall into the same sins and suffer the same consequences as the Canaanites. They did. So can we. We confess our weakness.

We Conform Our Service to Scripture

Followers of Jesus in the West live in a sex-saturated, sexually perverse culture. What do we do?

We share the gospel of Jesus Christ. Separation from sin begins with salvation, salvation begins with hearing the gospel, and hearing the gospel begins with some follower of Jesus sharing the gospel (Rom 10:14-15). Rules do not change the hearts of people. Jesus changes the hearts of people so that they want to follow Jesus and obey God, and God’s Spirit empowers us to obey.

We support laws that define morality biblically. We should be grateful for godly persons who serve in elected positions and influence state and federal laws. We should also be grateful that we have the right to vote our convictions. The convictions of followers of Jesus should be shaped by God’s Word in the Bible. The civil laws in the Old Testament, such as the imposition of the death penalty for various offenses, are not applicable today since God intended those laws only for old covenant Israel. However, God’s moral laws in the old covenant are not obsolete. They reveal God’s character and God’s will for humanity. Followers of Jesus who live in a democracy have the responsibility to work to enact laws based on the moral principles of God’s Word. What will be our authority in voting—our own opinion, the opinions of our culture, or what God says in His Word? When we support laws that define morality biblically, we are working to promote justice and righteousness. We are contributing to the creation of a culture where the gospel is more likely to gain a hearing.

We make friends with people who are different from us. Jesus was known for such friend-making. Matthew 11:19 says that people called Jesus “a friend of . . . sinners.” Since our Savior was and is a friend of sinners, His followers should be friends of sinners too. How can we express love to sinners or share the gospel with them if we do not make friends with them?

We help people struggling with sexual identity. People who are struggling in that way need people who will listen to them, love them, care for them, and help them find Jesus and the wholeness Jesus gives. These are days of great opportunity for the church; we should rise to answer the call to minister to people struggling with same-sex attractions, love them, teach them what God says, and tell them about Jesus.

We become a haven for those hurt by sexual sin. A lot of people have been hurt by sexual sin. The media promotes sexual sin as if it brings only pleasure and never pain. I wish more people could see the other side of sexual sin—people who carry long-term scars from what they have done or what others have done to them. As a pastor, no one has ever come to me to extol the joy and pleasure they have experienced in sexual sin. However, numerous people have come to me for help in recovering from the enduring pain of it.

Minnie Warburton was abused as a child by her father. In adulthood she confronted her father about it, but he would not confess his wrong to his dying day. Then one day she read Leviticus. Anybody who questions the value of Leviticus should read the article she wrote.

I remember very clearly the moment . . . and the words leaping out at me . . . incest taboos. One after another. I slammed the book shut. I was shocked. I had no idea that was in the Bible. . . . My father . . . was six years dead. . . . I never knew he was breaking God’s law. But there it was, clear as anything. . . . I will never be able to explain what that moment was like, that discovery of Leviticus 18. I wanted to call up everyone I knew and say, “It was wrong. What he did was wrong. It says so right here, in the Bible.” Therapists had told me, my own instincts told me, everything had told me—yet nothing told me the way Leviticus told me. . . . It was wrong, truly, truly wrong. And for the first time I felt utterly and absolutely vindicated. For the first time, I felt clean. . . . I felt released. (Warburton, “Letting the Voice of Leviticus Speak,” 166–67)

Many people in our culture are claiming it is too restrictive or judgmental to tell anyone, “That behavior is wrong.” God’s laws are not too restrictive, and they are certainly not judgmental. On the contrary, they are protective. If Minnie Warburton’s father had obeyed them, they would have protected her. God’s laws protect our happiness, and they protect the innocent and vulnerable. We praise Him for that. We praise Him that His law shows us our sin. We praise Him for His grace in Christ that forgives our sin and sets us free. We praise Him that one day we will be in His presence forever where no sin exists!

Reflect and Discuss

1. How is Leviticus 18 an applicable word for our times?
2. How do people in our culture have a similar approach to authority as Israel did during the time of the judges? What were the results of this approach in the book of Judges?
3. What authority governs your sexuality?
4. Why does God get to make the rules, and why are His rules best?
5. Why should we uphold Old Testament laws forbidding homosexuality?
6. According to 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, what separates followers of Jesus from the unrighteous?
7. How does God help us with our fallen, twisted ideas about sexuality?
8. To whom in the gay community are you showing love?
9. What advice does Paul offer in Galatians 6:1 concerning our attempts to restore a sinning brother or sister?
10. How should Christians in the West confront their sex-saturated, sexually perverse culture?