Transcript: Can we only use Jesus’s words and not the rest of the Bible? Does Jesus teach against homosexuality? My friend claims that he isn’t against it and she doesn’t consider Paul’s letters authoritative, so your friend is part of a minority movement of individuals who say such interesting things.

Can we only use Jesus’s words and not the rest of the Bible? No, and the reason why is because Jesus’s words will push you to the rest of the Bible. Jesus says things like, “I’ve come to fulfill the scriptures.” Jesus says things like, “The whole of the scriptures were written about me.” Jesus says things like, “The scripture cannot be broken.”

So if you get Jesus and you trust his words, his words tell you about the rest of the Bible. That’s kind of a big deal. Then you have Jesus who commissions Peter, right? “Be my sheep.” He commissions Peter and the other disciples. Now she might say, “Well, he didn’t do Paul,” but Peter says that Paul is an apostle and calls Paul’s writing scripture. Peter does this—Peter, whom Jesus approves of—he writes that Paul’s writings are scripture. So what this means is that once you get Jesus in as your sort of central doctrinal anchor, he pulls in the rest of the scripture, Old and New Testament, and he says all of this is true.

You can’t pretend to only listen to Jesus because Jesus, if you only listen to him, would make you listen to the rest of the Bible too. That’s the inevitable result of that. So this is like a game someone’s playing. Then the second part: they reveal their hand when they ask a question like, “Why didn’t Jesus say homosexuality was wrong? Like, he never mentioned this,” and that is understandable. Okay, like, I get it, but it’s very historically and biblically unaware.

Jesus doesn’t specifically speak about homosexuality for the same reason that Jesus didn’t talk about x-rated movies. Right? It wasn’t relevant to his audience. Jesus’s audience is entirely Jewish. Paul’s audience is mostly Gentile. In the Jewish environment, they were one thousand percent convinced that homosexuality was a sin all the time, in every case. Why? Because that Old Testament that Jesus approves of clearly states that it is. Clearly states that it is, in spite of whatever recent movies are coming out trying to pretend that that’s not the case. I have a series—I highly encourage you guys to check it out—I’m not just making wild claims. Like, I’ve looked at the original language, I’ve looked at the claims that have come from people like Matthew Vines who try to reinterpret the Bible, and my series on homosexuality goes through this in great detail.

The Old Testament clearly indicates that all homosexual behavior is wrong. I don’t mean that all people who are homosexual are automatically condemned, right? Because what they’re saying is, “I’m tempted with this sin.” Like, that doesn’t mean you’re condemned. You know, there’s plenty of Christians that are tempted with those sins; it doesn’t make you less of a human or less of a chance of being saved or something like that.

So, Jesus is in an environment where everyone already believes this thing is wrong, so why would he teach on it? He doesn’t mention it. If Jesus wanted to say homosexuality was okay, he would have had to come out and say it. Otherwise, everyone in his community and culture knows it’s already wrong. You know what I mean? His silence here is important. His silence implies that there’s nothing to change, but it’s more than that. His approval of the Old Testament in general is absolutely affirmation that he is opposed to homosexuality. Like, that’s a hundred percent confirmation.

In addition to this, we have Paul. When Jesus goes to the Pharisees, he brings up issues that seem irrelevant to you today: “Pharisees, you make your phylacteries all big and you make these big prayers in front of others and you enlarge the borders of your garments.” Like, nobody’s doing this today, but it was relevant to his audience, so he tackles the issues they’re struggling with and shows them right and wrong in the midst of those issues they’re dealing with. Paul does the same thing, but he has a different audience.

So in Romans, when Paul, in Romans 1 and in First Corinthians chapter 6, talks about homosexuality, it’s because he’s going to Gentiles who don’t have the moral compass that the Jews have. And so with them, he makes it very clear: it’s absolutely immoral, it’s definitely wrong, God is commanding you to repent of these things. He even says that in the church, there were many people who were formerly engaging in homosexual acts.

All this is 100% consistent, but when you try to take a pair of scissors and you try to cut Jesus out of the Bible, he will be reaching out with both arms to grab the Bible and bring it back in. So, if you want Jesus without the Bible, you end up getting neither. But you’re claiming to have the authority of Jesus to affirm a sin that you were just committed to above your commitment to Jesus. That’s the sad, sad bottom line.

What do you say to a friend like this? You share the things that I’ve said, and you hope that they will listen, and you hope that they will listen. There’s an agenda that is driving them to reject massive amounts of scripture and reimagine a new version of Jesus that affirms a lifestyle of sin that Jesus would never, ever have affirmed.

See original video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ0Wlp6zt0o