Isn‘t it the case that Biblical teachings create more hate and sin in the world (e.g. sexuality)?

G’day everyone, Dave Deane here, and our question for the week is: Isn’t it the case that biblical teachings create more sin and hate in the world (e.g. sexuality)?

The Bible certainly does contain all sorts of different teachings and instructions on all sorts of different issues for different people in different times and different places for different purposes. Some of those instructions are still relevant today, some of them are not, because throughout history God has worked out His plan of salvation for humanity in different ways. The means of salvation is always the same – by grace through faith in Jesus – but the mode of how that is worked out with humanity has changed over time.

Let me give a few examples:

• After the fall we moved into a time of government
• Then a time of the law under the theocracy of national Israel
• Then a time of the prophets
• And then finally now God is speaking to us through the mediation of His Son, Jesus. And as Hebrews 1 tells us, Jesus is the final revelation of God.

So, when we read an ethical instruction in the Bible, what we need to do first of all as a part of the interpretive process, is ask ourselves: is this a moral prescription relevant for us today, or is it a description of what was given for a particular time and to a particular people?

The point is: while some laws or instructions in the Bible seem arbitrary to you and I, when we put them in their proper Biblical-historical context, we see that they aren’t.

Take, for example, the instruction in Leviticus 11 about abstaining from eating Pork. At first glance that just seems arbitrary – I mean, Christians eat pork all the time, right? In fact, it’s a tradition at Christmas of all times – the celebration of Jesus’ birth – that we enjoy a good slap of ham on the dinner table. What’s that all about? Well, when we put that instruction within its historical context, we see that this instruction – along with a host of others – had a specific purpose for Ancient Israel, to whom it was given. Pork abstinence was one of the ways Israel looked different from the other pagan nations around them so that when people talked about Israel and that one God that they worshipped, they said ‘oh yeah, those people who don’t eat Pork…’ You see, it wasn’t an arbitrary law; it was a way of distinguishing God’s people as unique in the world.

Now that instruction is no longer in effect today because we don’t live in a theocracy. But that doesn’t mean that everything the Bible says is defunct or no longer relevant. The civil and ceremonial laws of Ancient Israel are no longer in effect, but God’s moral laws and instructions very much are because “good” and “evil” – if these are anything at all – are not relative concepts. Some examples of God’s moral laws and instructions include what and how we worship; how we speak and treat other people; and, even, our sexual thoughts and activities.

You see, while at first glance the Biblical teachings on sexual ethics might seem arbitrary, like the issue of eating pork, which only makes sense when we put it within the context of Ancient Israel, the Bible’s teachings about sex only make sense when we put them into the larger context of this universe being God’s creation: with specific plans and process and patters and purposes. If God is God and He has designed this world including you and I, then it makes sense that He knows best how our lives are to be lived, including our sexuality.

The reason God cares about who you and I sleep with is because He cares about us! Who we sleep with matters to us because it affects us deeply. And that Christianity has sexual borders and boundaries is really not surprising, because when you think about it – we all have sexual borders and boundaries… that’s why sexual abuse is so devastating, because it is a violation of these borders and boundaries that we all have.

But the question then comes: who draws these borders and boundaries about what is a legitimate and illegitimate expression of sex and sexuality?

Well, undergirding the Christian view is the deep conviction that Jesus is God and as such He knows what’s best for us and the moral constraints He gives us in the Bible are there for our good – as instructions for how we can live and flourish in this thing called life. We aren’t left on the high seas without a chart or compass, God has given us orientation for how to live and move and have our being.

Now, there are a lot of people who don’t see this world as God’s creation with a particular pattern and purpose. And as a consequence, it should come as no surprise, then, that God’s instructions aren’t well received by many. In rejecting God, people effectively pursue their own ends, deviating from God’s plan, pattern and purpose for how we should live, pursuing their own ends. So the tension comes, then, between how God says we should live and how we think we should live; between what God says is right and wrong, and what we think is right and wrong. That’s where the conflict lies. 

So all that to say, I don’t think it’s God’s Word that creates more hate and ‘sin’, I think it’s the fact that this world is already broken in hate and sin.

As the Bible says, “the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, 21 so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord…” (Rom 5:20-21)

You see, “Everyone who does wrong, hates the light and will not come into the light…” (John 3:20)

But here’s the good news. There is grace abounding! There is a light! John 8:12 “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” Psalm 119:105 “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path…”

Friends, we have an orientation, a guide, a way for navigating this life and all of its complexities. Living in the light isn’t easy – again, we will all be tempted to recoil back into our way of doing things – but it is right and it is for our good and ultimate flourishing.

Today there is so much hype about sexuality and gender and it breaks my heart when I hear people say that this issue of sexuality or sexual ethics is their greatest stumbling block. Christianity isn’t about your sexuality. Of course God is concerned about it, but he’s more concerned about YOU and YOU are so much more than your sexuality.

So if you’re listening to this, and you’re thinking that you need to get all right and cleaned up before you can become a Christian… Can I say: that’s not what Christianity is about. The Biblical teaching is that you come to Jesus as dirty as you are, I come to Jesus as dirty as I am, and together Jesus is the only one who cleans us up. And the marvellous thing about it all is you and I can never earn that right to be clean… But thanks be to God who, in Jesus, offers all of us salvation as a free gift from God.