 |
|
Life is war. That's not
all it is. But it is always that. Our weakness in prayer is owing largely to
our neglect of this truth. Prayer is primarily a wartime walkie-talkie for the
mission of the church as it advances against the powers of darkness and unbelief.
– John Piper
|
Unit 1012: The VFFDP, DO NOT SUPPORT capital punishment
for homosexuals, we support it for first degree murder and other crimes. Pastor
John Piper will explain why there is no longer a need to put homosexuals to
death in the modern day from a Christian viewpoint.
 |
| A military guard looks on impassively |
Doesn’t
the Bible Tell Christians to Put Homosexuals to Death?
Interview
with
John Piper
Founder
& Teacher, desiringGod.org
Audio Transcripts
Podcast listener Luke writes in: “Dear Pastor John, I want
to first thank you for the Ask Pastor John podcast and for your obedience and
love for the Lord. One thing I have always struggled to communicate is the
difference between the Old Testament law and the fulfilled law after Christ. I
have many atheist friends who press me here, specifically when it comes to
homosexuality. Why do we as Christians not believe practicing homosexuals
should be killed for their sin if that is exactly the prescription in our
Bibles in Leviticus
20:13? How would you answer this objection?”
Willing to Listen
This
is huge and absolutely crucial. And we need an answer for it. It is such a common
response for somebody that has a smattering of knowledge or has just read that
there are these verses in the Bible. It is not difficult to answer this
problem. It just takes a little willingness on the part of people to listen for
a few minutes as we describe the nature of the Christian Bible. So you have to
ask for a few minutes.
“Not everything that God designed for Israel in the Old Testament is the same as what he designs for us today.”
It
might be helpful to start with an analogy. I think right off the bat this might
be helpful. You might say to the person who is asking that question, “Suppose a
book is written for the military, and in Chapter 1 it deals with how soldiers
should relate to each other during basic training stateside. Chapter 2 deals
with how soldiers should relate to each other and to their captured enemies on
the battlefield. Chapter 3 deals with how soldiers should relate to each other
and to their captors if any of them is taken captive and imprisoned. And the
chapter 4 deals with how they should relate to each other and to the enemy if
they have infiltrated behind enemy lines.”
Would
anyone accuse a soldier of disobedience if while he is captured as a prisoner
of war he obeys the instructions in Chapter 3 rather than the instructions in
Chapter 1? No. Nobody would. That is the way the book intends to be used.
Now
that is the kind of book the Bible is. It was written under God’s inspiration
over a period of 1,500 years or so through various periods where God dealt with
his people in different ways. Not everything that the Bible designed for God’s
people Israel under the judges or under the kings, or that God designs for
Christians under the apostles in the New Testament, is the same.
Putting
to death adulterers, putting to death homosexuals, putting to death the sons
who curse their parents — all these penalties belonged to a particular season
in the history of God’s dealings with his covenant people. Those dealings have
changed dramatically with the coming of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, into the
world. That is the basic nature of the Bible and of redemptive history that we
need to get across to our critics.
Changes Across the Covenants
Then,
if they are willing to take a few more minutes with us to examine the Bible, we
can point them to the very places in the Bible where this becomes plain. Maybe
it would be helpful if I just gave a few of those, and this would be a guide
for what texts you could use if you sat down with your atheist friend who said,
“No, I think you Christians are inconsistent because you are not putting
homosexuals to death, because it says right here in Leviticus that that is what
you are supposed to do.” Here are a few.
The Law Fulfilled
We
see the first pointer of how things have changed dramatically in Matthew
5:17, where Jesus says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law
or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”
“Putting homosexuals to death belonged to a particular season in the history of God’s dealings with his people.”
All
the Old Testament finds its completion and fulfillment in Jesus — and that is a
basic truth that a person needs to understand. Everything in the Old Testament
was pointing toward Jesus as the Son of God incarnate, dying and rising to save
his people. Therefore, in his person, in his ministry, the whole Old Testament
reaches a climax and is dramatically altered.
A New Phase in History
Second,
the Bible spells out many of the specifics of this dramatic alteration. For
example, the book of Hebrews is probably the classic place for showing how the
old covenant has become obsolete with the coming of the new covenant.
Hebrews
8:13 says, “In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete.
And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.” For
example, the death of Jesus is the once-for-all sacrifice for sins so that the
entire Old Testament sacrificial system of offering animals comes to an end. Hebrews
7:27 and 9:12 say Jesus is the final Lamb of God. The
whole Old Testament sacrificial system is over. It doesn’t apply anymore.
Another
example from Hebrews is that Jesus himself offers the sacrifice of himself, and
therefore Jesus is the final Priest. You don’t need any more priests. The
entire Old Testament priesthood is removed. It is over. We have one, new,
final, eternal High Priest, Jesus Christ.
A
third example is that Jesus saw himself as the new temple. “Destroy this
temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19)
— and he meant, I will rise from the dead in three days. So when the temple was
destroyed in AD 70, the place of worship for Christians was not destroyed,
because we don’t have a place for worship that is limited geographically. We
have Jesus. And any place Jesus is, we can worship.
So
all of those specifics are how the old covenant was becoming obsolete. And
dramatic changes came about, and hundreds of commands in the Old Testament
don’t apply to Christians anymore, because this new phase of redemptive history
has come.
Released from the Law
A
third pointer to this dramatic alteration between the Old and New Testament is
that the Christian life is put on a completely new footing from the law. Romans
7:6 says, “Now we are released from the law, having died to that which held
us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old
way of the written code.”
Exiles on the Earth
A
fourth pointer is that Jesus said about the people of Israel in Matthew
21:43, “I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you” —
political, ethnic Israel — “and given to a people producing its fruits” — that
is, the Christian church. What that marks is a dramatic change from the old
theocratic, ethnic orientation on one people group — namely, Israel — to a new
kind of people who are not a political entity.
“The Old Testament finds its fulfillment in Jesus. That is a basic truth that a person needs to understand.”
They
are not an ethnic entity ruled by a political or governmental leader, but they
are a people scattered like exiles away from heaven, their homeland, on the
earth, mingling among all the ethnic groups of the world with a king in heaven
and not on earth, so that Jesus says to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this
world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting,
that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the
world” (John
18:36).
So
the church doesn’t function any longer like Israel did — as a national or
political governmental agency — and therefore, it does not coerce its beliefs
with the sword.
All Foods Clean
A
fifth pointer is the way that Christians are freed from the old theocratic,
ethnic orientation that needed all kinds of cultural distinctives which the
Jews had in order to set it apart from the nations. For example, in Mark
7:19, Jesus declared all foods clean. So the entire dietary law system of
the Old Testament is wiped away, because we don’t need to distinguish ourselves
from all the nations of the world.
We
are part of the nations of the world. We eat whatever we are offered, because
we are on an evangelistic mission to win people from all the peoples of the
world, among whom we are a part. Another example would be circumcision.
Circumcision was the defining trait of Israel among the nations. And in Galatians
5:6, we are told it no longer counts for Christians. It is not required for
Christians anymore.
Changing Moral Expectations
And
a sixth pointer to this dramatic alteration between Old and New Testament is Matthew
5:38–39: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth
for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if
anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.”
Another
example of changing moral expectations is where Jesus talks about divorce. In Matthew
19:7–8, they ask him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate
of divorce and send her away if you say we shouldn’t divorce?” And here is what
he answers: “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce
your wives, but from the beginning it was not so.” In other words, “Even though
Moses made this provision, I don’t anymore.” So you can see change is coming to
the world with Jesus in the moral expectations upon the people of God.
Homosexuals Today
Now,
finally, directly to the point about homosexuals being executed in the Old
Testament: the New Testament, when it is presented with an executable offense,
dealt with it differently.
“Our overall aim in dealing with our critics who don’t know their Bibles is to direct them to Jesus, who is the goal of everything in the Bible.”
For
example, in 1 Corinthians 5, the early church was confronted with a man who was
having sex with his stepmother evidently. It might have been his mother-in-law,
or it was an intrafamily, horrendous sexual sin that even the nations around
the church thought was evil. It goes like this: “It is actually reported that
there is a sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated
even among the pagans, for a man has his father’s wife” (1
Corinthians 5:1).
When
Paul dealt with that — which was in the Old Testament an offense so egregious
it would have been dealt with by stoning, killing, execution — Paul did not, of
course, prescribe stoning or execution. He prescribed church discipline. That
is a clear example of how dramatic the changes have become between Chapter 1 in
the military book and Chapter 4 in the military book.
So our overall aim in dealing with our
critics who don’t know their Bibles is to direct them to Jesus, who is the goal
of everything in the Bible, and to try to help them see that God has been
moving through history in different ways at different times to bring us into a
relationship with Jesus for the salvation of our souls.
INTERNET
SOURCE:
Doesn’t the Bible Tell Christians to Put
Homosexuals to Death? // Ask Pastor John
•Apr 23, 2017
Putting practicing homosexuals to death
belonged to a particular season in the history of God’s dealings with his
people.
VIDEO SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhDM251BZUc
OTHER LINKS:
The Conversion and Execution
of Tokichi Ishii
March 29, 2016
March 29, 2016
No comments:
Post a Comment