Top 20 Bible Questions #2: Homosexuality

Q. “What does the Bible teach about homosexuality? Is it a sin?”

A. Every social group tends to frown on deviation from the norm. According to Fuller Seminary writers, the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah was social blocking and had nothing directly to do with the so-called sin of sodomy.

Paul, in the first chapter of Romans says that men sleeping with men is an abomination. In 39 of 40 uses of the word sin, he uses hamartano, the word which means pain, fragmentation, struggle. He uses “missing the mark” in the only other use of the word sin.

It is important to understand that Paul starts a long argument in Romans, chapter one. By time he gets to chapter four, he asks the question: “What shall we say that Abraham has found working in man?”

By time he gets to chapter seven, he cries out in verse 15, “What I’m doing, I don’t understand; for that which I would, I don’t do, and that which I would not, that I do. If I do what I do not wish to do, and don’t do that which I would do, I find that I am not the one doing it, but the law of sin.” This is the law of pain and confusion we call sin.

Paul continues his argument by crying out in vs. 24: “Who will deliver me from the body of this death?” His answer is simply: “I thank my God, through Jesus Christ."

He ends his argument with the first part of chapter 8. “There is therefore (You have to pay attention to the therefore, to see what it is there for.) no condemnation to those in Christ, for the law of freedom in Christ has set us free from the laws of sin and death. For what the LAW could not do, weak as it was in the flesh, the SPIRIT did for those in Christ."

When the LAMB was slain before the foundation of the world, that holy event took care of all sin. God can not see sin that’s covered. Certain kinds of pain (sins) are easier to focus on than others, but in the final analysis, any judging is of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. We center in the Tree of Life and let God worry about so-called sin. It’s all covered by the Blood.

The answer to Question #2 is a strong no, the way I see it.

Top 20 Bible Questions #1: Women

Q. What does the Bible say about women in ministry - specifically, women pastors and/or preachers?

A. Religious leaders who put the Canon together took the liberty to change certain parts of the scripture to make women look lower than the man.

The story of the woman caught in adultery, for instance, was inserted into the scriptures by a monk in the third or fourth century and most good Bibles will have a marginal note at the story saying that most good manuscripts do not contain this account.

The changing of the Garden of Eden to be a literal story rather than an allegory places the so-called woman as the culprit that caused the man to sin. It clearly ignores the part of the Word that says, "Male and female created HE them."

Religious leaders went on to fabricate sin as behavior problems, such as drinking, smoking or committing adultery - which are works of the flesh, not sin. The real meaning of sin is to be fragmented, in pain, and out of touch with the real self, which is hidden from the EGO.

The Apostle John tells us that 'the person who is born again cannot sin.' He points this out using two different words to indicate sin: Strong's Concordance #266 and #264.

Perhaps the most grievous distortion of text occurs when the word 'Woman' is made to mean gender. It is clear from scripture grammar that Spirit is always called male and Soul is always expressed as female or emotional. Every person is both male and female. It is by our manner of living that we demonstrate God’s will.

Most sound theologians admit that portions of Paul’s Epistles to the Corinthian Church were altered to imply woman werenot given authority over a man or the privilege of speech in the Church. This is simply not true to the first century church.

The man/woman issue is always and only present at the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. In the Kingdom of God, there is neither male or female, bond or free, but all are ONE in Christ (Galatians 3:8) To make them different is to be out of Kingdom reality.