Today it is popular among those promoting same sex marriage to say that Jesus never addressed the issue, that He was silent on the subject.  Those who affirm the historical and traditional understanding of marriage between a man and woman often are admonished to go and read more carefully the Bible.  If we do so we are told we will see that Jesus never addressed the issue.  So, the question that I want to raise is, “Is this assertion correct?”  Is it indeed the fact that Jesus never addresses the issue of same sex marriage?

When one goes to the gospels to see exactly what Jesus did say, one will discover that He addressed very clearly both the issues of sex and marriage.  He addresses both their use and misuse.  And, as He speaks to both subjects, He makes it plain that issues of the heart are of critical importance.

First, what did Jesus say about sex?  Jesus believed that sex is a good gift from a great God.  Jesus is pro-sex!  He also believed that sex was a good gift to be enjoyed within a monogamous, heterosexual covenant of marriage.  On this He is crystal clear.  In Mark 7 Jesus addresses the fact that all sin is ultimately an issue of the heart.  Jesus was never after behavioral modification.  Jesus was always after heart transformation.  Change the heart and you truly change the person. Thus when He lists a catalog of sins in Mark 7: 21-22, He makes it clear that all of these sins are ultimately matters of the heart. It is the idols of the heart that Jesus is out to eradicate.  Among those sins of the heart that often give way to sinful actions He would include both sexual immorality and adultery (Mark 7:21).  The phrase “sexual immorality,” in a biblical context, would speak of any sexual behavior outside the covenant of marriage between a man and woman.  Therefore, Jesus viewed pre-marital sex, adultery and homosexual behavior as sinful.  And, He knew that the cure for each is a transformation of the heart made possible by the good news of the gospel.  The gospel changes us so that now we are enabled to do not what we want, but what God wants.  Here we find real freedom and joy.

Second, what about the issue of marriage?  Is it truly the case that Jesus never spoke to the issue in terms of gender?  The answer is a simple no.  He gives His perspective on this when He addresses the issue in Matthew 19:4-6.  There, speaking to the institution of marriage, Jesus is clear when He says, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?  So they are no longer two but one flesh.  What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”  That Jesus was committed to heterosexual marriage could not be more evident. A man is to leave his parents and be joined to a woman who becomes his wife. This is heterosexual marriage.  That He also was committed to the permanence and fidelity of marriage is clear as well.

So, how might we sum up the issue?  First, Jesus came to deliver all people from all sin.  Such sin, He was convinced, originated in and was ultimately a matter of the heart.  Second, Jesus made it clear that sex is a good gift from a great God, and this good gift is to be enjoyed within heterosexual covenantal marriage.  It is simply undeniable that Jesus assumed heterosexual marriage as God’s design and plan.  Third, Jesus sees all sexual activity outside this covenant as sinful.  Fourth, it is a very dangerous and illegitimate interpretive strategy to bracket the words of Jesus and read into them the meaning you would like to find.  We must not isolate Jesus from His affirmation of the Old Testament as the Word of God nor divorce Him from His 1^st century Jewish context.  Fifth, and this is really good news, Jesus loves both the heterosexual sinner and the homosexual sinner and promises free forgiveness and complete deliverance to each and everyone who comes to Him.  John 7 tells the story of a woman caught in adultery.  The religious legalists want to stone her, but Jesus intervenes and prevents her murder.  He then looks upon the woman and, with grace and tenderness, He tells her that He does not condemn her.  Then He says to her, “go and sin no more.”  In Matthew 11:28 Jesus speaks to everyone of us weighed down under the terrible weight and burden of sin.  Listen to these tender words of the Savior, “Come to me all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.”  This is the hope that is found in Jesus.  This is the hope found in the gospel.  Whether one is guilty of heterosexual or homosexual sin, one will find grace, forgiveness and freedom at the foot of the cross where the ground is always level.

When I came to fully trust Jesus as my Lord and Savior at the age of 20, I determined that I wanted to think like Jesus and live like Jesus for the rest of my life.  When it comes to sex I want to think like Jesus.  When it comes to marriage I want to think like Jesus.  That means I will affirm covenantal heterosexual marriage.  It also means loving each and every person regardless of their lifestyle choices.  It means, as His representative, proclaiming His gospel and extending the transforming grace of the gospel to others that takes us where we are, but wonderfully and amazingly, does not leave us there.  That is a hope and a promise that followers of Jesus gladly extend to everyone, because we have been recipients of that same amazing grace.

[Editor's Note: Daniel Heimbach is Senior Professor of Christian Ethics at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He has authored or contributed to fourteen books and published numerous articles and essays. Dr. Heimbach served in the Navy and also served as an adviser to President George H. W. Bush during the first Gulf War. He is the author of several pieces on just war, including, "The Bush Just War Doctrine: Genesis and Application of the President's Moral Leadership in the Persian Gulf War." In From Cold War to New World Order: The Foreign Policy of George H. W. Bush. Edited by Meena Bose and Rosanna Perotti (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood, 2002), 441-464.]

I was born of missionary parents in the midst of war during the Communist revolution in China, and my life has been touched by war in significant ways. I am also a born again Christian, a true follower of Jesus Christ, and a moral theologian who specializes in understanding and teaching ethics. So this topic is one I have thought much about, and not just based on training and research but drawing from experience as well.

The short answer to why I am not a Pacifist is that Jesus was not a Pacifist and what Jesus taught, and what the rest of the Bible teaches, does not align with Pacifist teaching. That for me is the bottom line. Of course I have interests and loyalties as an American that are different from people living in other nations. But my ethics relating to war is not determined by these differences. When it comes to the ethics of war and peace between nations, all that matters to me, or that should matter to anyone else, is how a situation aligns with objective moral reality. And, while human reason is able to analyze this reality, the reality itself is fixed by the Moral Ruler of the Universe who is none other than Jesus Christ himself.

I do not enjoy war and am all too familiar with its horror. In fact I sincerely wish I could embrace Pacifism. That would be easy for me to do. Pacifism is very popular among others in my professional class and embracing it would result in a lot of personal affirmation and praise. I cannot do that with integrity, however, simply and only because I am convinced without a doubt that, when the Bible is accepted as the inerrant, authoritative, and plenary Word of God written, it cannot be reconciled with Pacifist ideology. I do not think Christians should go around starting wars. But I do believe the Bible teaches that God expects, and in fact requires, morally responsible rulers sometimes to use deadly force to defend weak and innocent people against unwarranted aggression, and also requires rulers to use coercive power where necessary to correct specific acts of injustice-taking care when they do these things to keep what they do within well defined moral boundaries.

What I have just described is the ethic of Just War, which is an ethic of war and peace between nations quite different in attitude and approach to the ethic of Pacifism. The main difference between these opposing approaches is that Pacifism is a perfectionist social ideology impossible ever to achieve before Jesus comes back to establish a perfect world, and Just War is a form of moral realism that recognizes we do not yet live in a socially perfect world. Unlike Pacifism, Just War is an ethic consistent with a sober understanding that we live in a wicked world filled with wicked people, and that by God’s choice this will continue to be the case until God himself removes all need for war by utterly removing all sin from the world. This also is consistent with humbly accepting the fact that only God can do this and we cannot.

The teaching and life of Jesus is the most important place Christians should go when deciding how to approach the ethics of war and peace. Pacifists claim Jesus was a Pacifist, and if they are right that would settle the question. But they are not right. Jesus was not a Pacifist himself, and he did not teach a Pacifist ethic for his disciples or anyone else to follow.

Jesus certainly is the Prince of Peace (Is 9:6; Lk 1:79). But the sort of “peace” Jesus offers the world is the peace of reconciling sinners to God. He did not launch a movement to remove all weapons of war or to disband all armies in a still very sinful world. He did not announce a program for pursuing civil non-violence no matter what happens in a wicked world. Pacifists read civil non-violence into every mention of “peace” in the New Testament. But that is hardly ever what the original human authors or the Holy Spirit were addressing.

In the one place Jesus did clearly address “peace” in the civil non-violence sense-the sort of “peace” Pacifists have in mind-he firmly and absolutely denied he was teaching an ethic of Pacifism. In that passage Jesus very clearly explains to his disciples, “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace (in the civil non-violence sense) on the earth, I did not come to bring peace (in the civil non-violence sense) but a sword” (Mt 10:34). Jesus also assumed that morally responsible kings must sometimes go to war, and when they do they ought to apply the Just War principle of not sending troops into battle where there is no chance of success (Lk 14:31).

While Pacifists make much of the fact that Jesus rebuked Peter’s use of the sword in the Garden of Gethsemane, I as a responsible moral theologian am not free to read into what Jesus said anything that in any way contradicts what Jesus himself said to his disciples (including Peter) just an hour or so earlier that same evening. Before leaving the Upper Room, Jesus told his disciples that after he left this earth (still future when Jesus rebuked Peter in Gethsemane) they should carry with them and be prepared to use weapons of deadly force to defend as necessary against attack (Lk 22:36). This does not mean Christians should enjoy fighting or should go around stirring up wars. But neither does it mean Christians may never use deadly force or should never participate in fighting wars for any reason.

Finally, we must not forget that Jesus of the New Testament is also God of the Old Testament. Because the character of God never changes (Ps 102:27; Mal 3:6; Jas 1:17), this means the moral character of Jesus cannot be different than it always had been and always will be-without variation. So, if God in the Old Testament approved Just War (as in Deuteronomy 20 and Amos 1), then so did Jesus in the New Testament. This is an important part of the essential doctrine affirmed about Jesus in the book of Hebrews, which is that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb 13:8).

I believe that Jesus of the New Testament is God of the Old Testament. I believe that the moral character of Jesus in the New Testament is unchanged from what it was in the Old Testament. I believe that as God did not teach Pacifism in the Old Testament so Jesus did not teach Pacifism in the New Testament. And so we end where we started. I am not a Pacifist simply and only out of fidelity to the life and teaching of Jesus Christ himself as faithfully witnessed and recorded in the Bible itself.

By: Doug Coleman

The previous post dealt mostly with the issue of theology of religions, although it touched on the issue of possible revelation in non-Christian religions. In this post, I want to briefly comment on a few key passages frequently referenced by IM advocates.

Proponents often note the watershed decision of the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15. They rightly note that Gentile believers were not required to “go through” Judaism (i.e., be circumcised) in order to be saved. Therefore, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and others should not be required to go through “Christianity” today. I can only offer two extremely brief responses. First, if by “Christianity” IM advocates mean a Western cultural form of the worship of Jesus, I agree. But IM on the one hand, and Western cultural Christianity on the other, are not the only alternatives. Second, IM advocates are making Acts 15 answer a question that was not being asked. The early Gentile believers were not saying, “Can we remain in our Gentile pagan religious system and community if we modify some of our beliefs and behavior?” No, they were saying, “Must we take on circumcision?” In other words, the Acts 15 discussion was not about what must or mustn’t be put off, but about what must or mustn’t be put on.

Regarding Paul’s statement in 1 Cor 7:20, 24-that each man should remain in the state in which he was called-I think IM advocates fail to interpret this in light of Paul’s instructions later in the same letter. IM advocates rightly note that the immediate context of 1 Cor 7:20-24 does involve some religious matters (after all, Paul mentions circumcision in 1 Cor 7:19). However, Paul strongly and unequivocally prohibits continued participation in pagan religious activity in 1 Cor 10:20-22. Therefore, unless Paul is hopelessly self-contradictory or schizophrenic, his exhortation to “remain” in 7:20 cannot refer to remaining in pagan religious activity.

This brings me to the suggestion that 1 Cor 8:10 refers to a former pagan, now turned follower of Christ, who is at least in part remaining within his pagan religious community. In other words, he’s still dining at the pagan temple, but Paul doesn’t condemn the practice in itself, only because it harms a weaker brother. I’ll note a few possible interpretations here (you’ll have to read the dissertation if you want all the background). (1) The situation in 8:10 is not actually happening, but is hypothetical. (2) The dining is actually occurring but it is a social-not religious-occasion, so the stronger brother is free to eat if he can do so without causing a weaker brother to stumble. (3) The dining is actually happening, and it is wrong, but Paul doesn’t outright condemn it outright in 8:10, only later in chapter 10 (because he is mainly concerned with brotherly relations in chapter 8 and/or he employs a rhetorical strategy that saves the stronger condemnation until later).

The key point to note here is that none of these interpretations are compatible with an Insider approach. Again, in 1 Cor 10:20-22 Paul clearly and unequivocally condemns participation in anything that constitutes idol worship. So, do Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and other non-Christians worship idols? As much as I would like to, I don’t have space to fully address that here. In short, I think the answer is “yes.” If you’re really interested, you’ll have to read at least a few pages of my dissertation.[1]

Finally, I need to say a few words about the analogy between early Jewish believers and Muslim Insiders. First, while there is no clear consensus on exactly when all Jewish believers completely separated from the Temple and synagogue or from the Jewish religious community, history indicates that many of them did stay closely connected for a lengthy period, for various reasons. However, while IM proponents acknowledge some discontinuity between Judaism and Islam, I think the discontinuity is overly minimized. I think Scripture portrays a much more radical discontinuity between the faith of Judaism/Christianity and all other faiths, however politically incorrect such a view may be today.

I believe the exhortation of Hebrews 13:13 (“let us go to Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach”) is particularly important for this discussion, especially in light of this analogy. Again, if you’re really interested you’ll have to check the dissertation for all the supporting documentation and discussion (pp. 210-223), but I believe the author of Hebrews was calling Jewish background followers of Jesus to make (or maintain) a decisive break with the religious community and system of Judaism. If this was essential for first-century Jewish believers, how much more so for those who come to faith from non-Christian religions today?

There’s so much more to say, but that’s why I wrote a dissertation.

[Editor's Note: Doug Coleman is a SEBTS alum who lives and works in Central Asia. His SEBTS dissertation was recently published as A Theological Analysis of the Insider Movement Paradigm from Four Perspectives: Theology of Religions, Revelation, Soteriology, and Ecclesiology (Pasadena, CA: WICU Press, 2011). We asked Dr. Coleman to publish a critique of the Insider Movement here at BtT, in the form of a six-part blog series.]

By: Doug Coleman

So what do we make of the biblical and theological arguments of IM proponents? This was the sole purpose of my entire dissertation, and even still I feel like more could have been done. So, a couple of blog posts will be terribly inadequate to offer anything but a number of summary statements. But here are a few brief thoughts.

First, while I appreciate Kevin Higgins’ effort to provide some biblical and theological rationale, I find claims about God working within the non-Christian religions biblically unconvincing. After closely scrutinizing the six characters or passages he cites, I do not find biblical indications that God is working within, or via, these non-Christian religions. God is certainly calling out to, drawing, and convicting individuals (and perhaps even groups) within these religions, and He is certainly “in relationship” with those individuals (albeit it sometimes an adversarial one). But I do not see biblical indications that God ordained these religions as preparation for the gospel or that He is using them as vehicles of communication.

For example, regarding the sailors of Jonah, Higgins makes three brief claims: (1) their prayers are heard by Yahweh, (2) Yahweh directs the answer when they cast lots, and (3) therefore, they are in relationship with Yahweh.[1] In one sense, all three claims can possibly be affirmed. The sailors clearly cast lots (Jonah 1:7) and it seems that God directed. Furthermore, the text indicates the sailors prayed on two occasions, the first time each man praying to his own god (1:5), the second time specifically to Yahweh, Jonah’s God (1:14). Their second prayer was answered (they were spared), but the text nowhere establishes a cause and effect relationship between their prayer to Yahweh and the outcome. In fact, Jonah had already informed them they would be saved if they cast him into the sea (1:12).

The sailors, as with all individuals who have ever lived, are certainly in some kind of relationship with Yahweh, but the text gives no indication that their prayer was anything other than an egocentric concern for their own safety. Furthermore, the text nowhere suggests that God used their religion as a means of communicating or relating to them. God appears to have directed the casting of lots, but lot casting was a common practice among the Israelites and the ancient Near East, so the sailors’ actions are not surprising. But again, how could this support the conclusion that God was working within a non-Christian religious system, or that He intended to affirm such a religion? The other biblical examples Higgins cites are equally problematic.

Similarly, this claim that God is working within the religions of the world-or the possible implication that He ordained them as a means of preparation for the gospel-cuts against the grain of repeated biblical judgments on other religions and the biblical emphasis on the covenant people as the means by which God intends to bring salvation to the nations.

This is not to suggest that non-Christian religions are entirely devoid of any kind of true statements. In fact, I believe there are biblical and theological reasons to expect that most, if not all, non-Christian religions will contain elements of both general and special revelation. However, I am not suggesting that God inspired Muhammad in the way that Kevin Higgins believes He did. Historical evidence suggests that biblical content was available to Muhammad, possibly from multiple human sources. He also had access to general revelation, as do all humans. Therefore, it is not surprising to find true statements within Islam. But this does not mean that God inspired Muhammad, that He is working within Islam to bring Muslims to Christ, or that He ordained Islam as some sort of preparation for the gospel. The latter claim would be troublesomely anachronistic since Muhammad was born almost 600 years after Jesus.

Therefore, it seems misguided to place the religions within the Kingdom of God, as Higgins does. Ultimately, God does reign over all (however you want to work out the tension between God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility). But as George Ladd points out, the Kingdom of God is primarily a soteriological idea, and it has come in the person and activity of Jesus, the King.[2]

In the next post I’ll make a few comments on several of the key passages cited by IM proponents, and mention the analogy between early Jewish believers and Muslim Insiders.

[2] George Eldon Ladd, Crucial Questions about the Kingdom of God (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1952), 81-91.

[Editor's Note: Doug Coleman is a SEBTS alum who lives and works in Central Asia. His SEBTS dissertation was recently published as A Theological Analysis of the Insider Movement Paradigm from Four Perspectives: Theology of Religions, Revelation, Soteriology, and Ecclesiology (Pasadena, CA: WICU Press, 2011). We asked Dr. Coleman to publish a critique of the Insider Movement here at BtT, in the form of a six-part blog series.]

By: Doug Coleman

Kevin Higgins, whom I mentioned in the previous installment, has made the most significant attempt by any IM proponent to offer a biblical and theological rationale for various aspects of the methodology. For example, in a brief discussion of six biblical characters or passages, Kevin suggests the Bible contains evidence, or hints, that God is at work within the religions of the world, and that some individuals in other religions are “in relationship with God Himself.”[1] These examples include Melchizedek, Balaam, Amos 9:7, the pagan sailors in Jonah, the Wise Men (Matthew 2), and Paul’s speech in Athens (Acts 17).

According to Higgins, while all non-Christian religions evidence both human and demonic rebellion, they also reflect the activity of God. Therefore, because “God is at least potentially at work in other religions, then the contention of insider movement advocates that disciples can remain within their religious context is potentially true in any situation.”[2] Furthermore, just as Paul found altars and poets in Athens, intentionally placed there as “fingerprints of God within the religions of the world,” we will find in the Qur’an, hadith, mosque worship, and even the pilgrimage to Mecca,”altars to an unknown god” and “poets” that we can quote.[3]

For Higgins, the religions are not only vehicles of God’s activity and potential structures within which followers of Jesus can live as faithful disciples, but they are also part of the Kingdom of God, which Higgins defines as “the whole range of God’s exercise of His reign and rule in the universe.”[4] This does not mean Higgins holds an inclusivist position, but it does mean that, for him, conversion to Christ does not require an institutional transfer of religion. In other words, a Muslim is not required to become a “Christian” and join a “Christian” community.

When addressing the question of Islam specifically, Higgins distinguishes between “Islam as it is” and “Islam as it was.”[5] According to Higgins, Muhammad’s original intent (“Islam as it was”) was to unite the people of his region in the faith of Abraham. The Qu’ran affirms the previous books from Allah. Furthermore, the style of the Qur’an suggests Muhammad assumed his audience was familiar with the content of these books. Therefore, says Higgins, the Qur’an should be categorized as a kind of “midrash” on the Bible, and should be interpreted through the lens of the Bible rather than through the lens of the hadith. Further still, while Higgins does not believe the Qur’an is the “word of God,” and it does contain errors, he also suggests Muhammad received some of it directly from God via “direct inspiration.”[6] All of this (and more which I don’t have room to relate here) leads Higgins to posit a “Jesus Key” hermeneutic of the Qur’an. Muslims may reject interpretations reached via this approach, but early unbelieving Jews also rejected Christian interpretations of the Old Testament as well.[7]

Higgins’ interpretation of “Islam as it was” leads him to the conclusion that remaining within Islam, albeit a reinterpreted Islam, is a biblically viable option for disciples of Jesus. The unbelieving Muslim community may discover these aberrant beliefs and dispel the “Muslim followers of Jesus,” but Higgins believes these followers should remain inside the Muslim religious community as long as possible. Here again, Higgins cites the early Jewish background Christians who did not leave the Temple and synagogue until driven out by the Jews.

Finally, one other possible example of an IM in the Bible suggested by Higgins is 1 Cor 8:10.[8] Paul writes, “For if someone sees you, who have knowledge, dining in an idol’s temple, will not his conscience, if he is weak, be strengthened to eat things sacrificed to idols?” According to Higgins, the dining in a pagan temple is actually occurring, not hypothetical, and Paul does not condemn the action for the thing in itself, but because it negatively affects a weaker brother. Therefore, Higgins concludes this is a “possible example of a Gentile believer who is still ‘inside’ part of their religious heritage.”[9]

In the next two posts I’ll offer some brief analysis of these claims.

[2] Higgins, “Inside What?” 88.

[3] Kevin Higgins, “The Key to Insider Movements: The ‘Devoted’s’ of Acts,” IJFM 21 (Winter 2004): 162.

[4] Higgins, “Inside What? 87.

[5] Higgins’ thoughts on this are explained in an unpublished document he graciously supplied to me and allowed me to include as an appendix to my dissertation. See pages 256-308 of Doug Coleman, A Theological Analysis of the Insider Movement Paradigm from Four Perspectives: Theology of Religions, Revelation, Soteriology, and Ecclesiology (Pasadena: WCIU Press, 2011).

[6] See Coleman, “A Theological Analysis,” 121 fn. 182.

[7] Kevin Higgins, “Acts 15 and Insider Movements among Muslims: Questions, Process, and Conclusions,” IJFM 24 (Spring 2007): 38.

[8] Higgins, “Inside What”? 79 fn. 16.

[9] Higgins, “Acts 15,” 37.

[Editor's Note: Doug Coleman is a SEBTS alum who lives and works in Central Asia. His SEBTS dissertation was recently published as A Theological Analysis of the Insider Movement Paradigm from Four Perspectives: Theology of Religions, Revelation, Soteriology, and Ecclesiology (Pasadena, CA: WICU Press, 2011). We asked Dr. Coleman to publish a critique of the Insider Movement here at BtT, in the form of a six-part blog series.]

The Politics of Jesus

On October 9-10 at FBC-Durham (NC), the North Carolina Baptist State Convention will be hosting a conference The Politics of Jesus: Timeless Answers for Today’s Questions. Headlining the conference are SEBTS’ very own David Nelson and Nathan Finn, along with C. Ben Mitchell, Greg Thornbury, Andy Davis, and Ken Fentress.

Nelson, a brilliantly crotchety polymath who has spent time thinking about nearly everything, will be presenting on “Adorning our Savior’s Teaching: How the Gospel Matters for Public Life.” Finn, who has recently committed several acts of literature, including Domestic Slavery Considered as a Scriptural Institution, will be presenting on “The Pulpit and the Public Square: Some Observations from the Ministry of Charles Haddon Spurgeon.”

The remaining plenary topics, as well as registration information and the schedule of events may be accessed at http://www.politicsofjesus2008.com/.