With the landmark decision from the Supreme Court this week, striking down DOMA, proponents of gay marriage have scored a huge, if not final, victory in their pursuit of marriage equality. The Court’s decision reflects popular opinion. In our society, marriage (and all of its benefits) is understood as a civil right, and therefore cannot be legally denied to anyone who wishes to be married. While I disagree with this understanding of marriage, and personally believe that homosexual practice is on the spectrum of sexual immorality, I am not overly concerned by what this ruling means for our society. What concerns me, rather, is what I’m hearing and seeing in the Church, and how it understands what the Bible has to say about homosexual practice.

There is a movement happening within the Church, and particularly within Evangelicalism, to reconcile the Church with the homosexual community. I believe in this movement. I want to be a part of this movement. I am convinced that this is one of the things that God is doing in the American church today. However, I’m concerned that, in an effort to follow God’s leading, we are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. As Christians are pursuing reconciliation and love, the Scriptures are being misinterpreted, misunderstood, ignored, or even denigrated. In a well-intentioned attempt to be humble and contrite about sins committed against homosexuals (and those sins are real and many), many Christians are abandoning the millenia-old biblical sexual ethic, and, more importantly, the understanding of the authority of Scripture over the life of the believer.

I want to be clear about something. The problem lies not with what the Bible says or does not say about homosexuality; the problem lies with the hostile attitudes, condemning words, and proud hearts that Christians have had toward homosexuals. What I see and hear happening, though, is that for many Christians the Bible is the problem. When the Bible becomes the problem, and as a result you throw it under the bus, you step outside of historic, orthodox Christian faith. So what I’d like to do in this post is address some of the issues regarding Scripture and homosexuality that I’ve seen raised in the past few years.

1. Jesus never talked about homosexuality.

This is, perhaps, the most common objection to the biblical teaching on homosexuality. This is also a true statement. Jesus never directly addressed homosexuality; or to put it more accurately, the Gospel writers did not  include statements about homosexuality in their books. If Jesus did say something about homosexuality or homosexual practice, it has been lost to history. The inference that many people make from this silence is that Jesus, therefore, approved of homosexual practice, or at the very least he approved of loving, monogamous, homosexual relationships.

The trouble with this reasoning is that arguing from silence is the weakest argument one can make. Take a look at the picture on the left. You have three circles. The largest circle is “All the things,” which symbolizes everything somebody might possibly believe. The smallest circle is “The things Jesus said,” and the circle that is slightly larger than that is “The things Jesus believed.” I believe that it’s safe to assume that Jesus believed more things than what the Gospel writers credited him as saying. In other words, Jesus believed more than he said. That, I take it, is self-evident.

However, the trouble comes when trying to determine what, exactly, lies outside of the red circle but inside of the blue circle. Some assume that, because of the importance of homosexuality, Jesus would have spoken against it if, in fact, he believed that homosexual practice was wrong. But because he did not speak of it, he must have either, a) not been too concerned about it, or b) approved of it. (A third inference would be that, because Jesus didn’t talk about it, neither should the Church.)

While I agree that homosexuality is a really important issue, there are  a lot of other issues of equal importance that Jesus also did not talk about. Just in relation to human sexuality and sexual activity, Jesus did not address any of the following issues:

Polygamy/polyamory
Bisexuality
Cross-dressing
Rape
Child sexual abuse
Bestiality
Group sex
Public nudity or exposure

Using the same logic as above, we must assume that Jesus either, a) wasn’t too concerned about these issues, or b) approved of them. Of course, this is absurd. If we believe that the following statement is true, Jesus didn’t talk about homosexuality, therefore he approved of the exercise of it, then by mere reasoning we can substitute any activity for homosexuality, as long as Jesus did not expressly condemn it in the Gospels. Besides the list of sexual activity above, we could include extortion, kidnapping, and a host of other evils. There are even some good things that Jesus never spoke about; for example, romantic love. Arguing from silence breaks down into absurdity because it is based on mere speculation. It is unreasonable to believe that, because Jesus never explicitly talked about or condemned homosexuality, he therefore approved of the practice of it.

In fact, when Jesus speaks about sexual ethics, he makes it clear that his position on human sexuality is even stricter than what is found in the Old Testament. For Jesus, sexual holiness and wholeness extend to the individual’s heart, so that external adherence to biblical laws is not a sufficient sexual ethic in the kingdom of Jesus. Whether Jesus was talking about lust or divorce, he consistently added to the teaching of the Old Testament, indicating that he expected more from his disciples than what the Bible called for. It would be shocking, then, if Jesus were lax on the issue of homosexual behavior, which is condemned in Leviticus 20.

2. The prohibition of homosexuality in the OT is right next to the command not to make a garment of two types of material.

The implication of this statement is that, because nobody pays attention to the garment command, neither must we pay attention to the sexuality command. This same reasoning pops up with certain commands in the New Testament, particularly about women speaking in church or having short hair.

I am somewhat sympathetic to this objection. Why, after all, must Christians be hard-lined on sexual behavior and not other behaviors? When did we decide which Scriptures we could ignore and which we had to enforce? If we’re going to let men have long hair and women have short hair in our churches, then we should have a good explanation of how we’re obeying the spirit and intent of those commands rather than just ignoring them altogether.

With that said, it is hard to ignore that there is a consistent sexual ethic to be found in Scripture. While Leviticus 20 presents the bare bones outline of this ethic, it is expounded upon in many other places in the Bible, and even made stricter by Jesus. Unlike the kosher food laws, the Old Testament’s sexual ethic is never abolished in the New Testament.

Furthermore, the selective application of Scripture by some Christians is not a reasonable argument for the selective application of Scripture by other Christians. And just because some Scriptures seem absurd and outdated to us doesn’t mean that other Scriptures, whether in adjacent chapters or in the other Testament, should be treated as such.

3. David and Jonathan were gay lovers.

The question of the nature of David and Jonathan’s relationship has gotten a lot of attention lately. Indeed, their relationship was complicated and intense. Jonathan took off his robe in front of David. David said that his love for Jonathan was greater than the love of women. They kissed and wept together. So they were gay, right? Not necessarily.

First of all, Jonathan almost immediately recognized that, though he was Saul’s firstborn son and rightful heir to the throne of Israel, it was David who would become king. Rather than become his rival, however, Jonathan became David’s friend. The act of taking off his robe (and also his tunic and sword) and giving it to David is most likely the symbol of Jonathan’s surrender of the throne to David. The covenant that they made together, recorded in 1 Samuel 18, is not a covenant of marriage, but a covenant of power and of the throne of Israel.

Secondly, the love that David and Jonathan had for one another was not necessarily sexual in nature. The Hebrew word found in this passage (ahobah) has a wide spectrum of meaning, much like our own English word “love.” According to Holliday’s Lexicon, the word can mean the love between a husband and wife, the love between friends or people in general, or God’s love for his people. The overwhelming majority of occurrences in the OT describe the love between friends or the love between God and his people. It’s important to note, too, that most marriages in the Ancient Near East were not based on romantic love, particularly for someone with the political power of David or Jonathan, so the love that David had for his wives was likely not as strong a force in his heart as the love I have for my wife. (I readily admit, of course, that this is speculative. But it’s important that we remember just how different our culture is from Israel in David’s time.)

Third, the kiss was a common greeting and “goodbye” in ancient Israel. Examples of two men kissing can be found in Genesis 29:13, Genesis 33:4, 1 Samuel 10:1, and 2 Samuel 19:38-39. None of these kisses are sexual in nature. For a much fuller treatment of the relationship between David and Jonathan, please check out this post from pleaseconvinceme.com.

4. The NT authors were talking exclusively about abusive homosexual relationships and cultic sexual practice.

The implication of this statement is that, in places like Romans 1:26-27, 1 Timothy 1:9-11, and 1 Corinthians 6:9, Paul is talking about the abusive homosexual relationships, common in Roman culture, between an older, dominant man and a younger, passive man, and not monogamous, same-sex relationships based on love and respect. He may also have been talking about sexual activity in the worship of idols, which is a common theme in idolatry both in the Old and New Testaments.

This argument might be convincing if Paul were Greek or Roman. Though he was a Roman citizen, Paul was a Jew, through and through. He was, at one point, a Pharisee–a teacher within the strictest sect of Judaism. As I have already mentioned, there was a strong sexual ethic within Judaism, and particularly within Pharisaic Judaism, that would have understood homosexual practice, as well as many other sexual activities, as contrary to God’s command. The defining element of the nature of the relationship was not whether it was abusive or cultic, but that it was homosexual. While Paul would have also condemned heterosexual cultic sexual practice (and any other kind of cultic sexual practice), as well as abusive heterosexual relationships, because of his strict upbringing in Torah, he would not have accepted or embraced monogamous same-sex relationships.

But what about when he recognized Jesus as Messiah and his life was changed by God’s grace? As we have already seen, God’s grace does not necessarily mean a relaxing of the sexual ethic of the Old Testament. In fact, based on what Jesus communicated in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere, the sexual ethic of Jesus’s kingdom is more strict than what is found in Torah. We have every reason to believe, especially given what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:18-20, that Paul, following the lead of Jesus, draws a clear line demarcating appropriate sexual behavior for the believer, and homosexual practice lies on the far side of the line.

5. The authors of Scripture knew nothing about sexual orientation.

This is probably true, but I don’t think it matters. The Bible never tells us to “be true to ourselves” or to “follow our hearts.” The truth is, when we follow Jesus, we are called to say “No” to the natural desires of our hearts. None of us are oriented to take up our cross and follow Jesus. None of us are oriented to lay down our lives for our friends, love our enemies, or go the second mile for anybody. There’s nothing natural about following Jesus. And yet these are the basics of being a Christian.

For all we know, the authors of Scripture knew nothing about being introverted and extroverted. There is so much that Jesus demands of me that forces me to set aside fundamental aspects of my personality (INTJ–the best!) for the sake of others, himself, and his kingdom. I find, very often, that being a Christian, much less a Christian leader, is very unnatural and difficult for me.

I want to finish by saying this: Jesus is opposed to anything that is more fundamental to your identity than himself. Jesus is opposed to anything that leads you away from closer communion with himself. Jesus is opposed to anything that you love more than himself. Sexual orientation is not more fundamental, more important, or more true than the person of Jesus Christ.

One of my seminary professors, a systematic theologian named Dr. Richard Lints, told me that all good theology begins in Genesis 1. If this is true, which I believe that it is, then we must think about Genesis 1 correctly if we are going to think appropriately about God. This first chapter of Scripture lays the foundation for the way in which we understand God. It’s no wonder, then, that this is one of the most contentious and hotly-debated texts in all of Scripture. Coupled with the trajectory of modern science since the publication of Darwin’s Origin of the Species, the interpretation of Genesis 1 has served for many as a litmus test for true belief. Yet even within evangelicalism, there is a vast spectrum of belief on this text, ranging from Biologos to Answers in Genesis, and many in between.

There are many different ways to interpret Genesis 1, just as there are many different ways to interpret, for example, the book of Revelation, or Daniel, or the Psalms. It is worth noting, though it should go without saying, that people who love Jesus very much can come into sharp disagreement over the interpretation of biblical passages–especially Genesis 1. The litmus test for true belief, however, is not what one believes about Genesis 1, but whether or not one believes the Gospel–that Jesus died for our sins and rose again. With that said, I’d like to lay out what I take to be the meaning of Genesis 1.

What God Wanted to Say

The first and most important question we must ask with any biblical text is this: What did God intend to communicate through the original author to the text’s intended audience? We ask this question because the meaning of a text cannot change. As Fee & Stuart have written in their excellent work, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, “The Bible cannot mean what it never meant.” While personal and communal applications of a text may change across time and culture, the meaning of a text does not change.

So when it comes to Genesis 1, we must ask the question: What did God intend to communicate through Moses (or Abraham, or Ezra, or whoever actually wrote the passage) to the Hebrew people in the hymn that is Genesis 1? Approaching the question this way, one thing should come immediately to mind: Moses did not write Genesis 1 as a polemic against Darwinian evolution. Darwin’s book was published roughly 3,000 years after Genesis 1, so to assume that this text is about evolution/creation is to commit an historical anachronism of the first order. It’s simply not possible. 

When we step into the culture of the Ancient Near East (which you can’t physically do, but two books, The Lost World of Genesis One and The Bible Among the Myths, can help you understand a great deal more about it) we see that Genesis 1 is not a polemic against Darwinian Evolutionary Theory or naturalistic materialism; it is, however, a polemic against pagan pantheism. The real problem that Genesis 1 sets out to address is not the mechanism by which God created the universe, but rather which god is the true creator.

In fact, the unique genius of Genesis 1 is that it presents a monotheistic theology of creation that holds humanity in high esteem. Typically, the creation myths of Israel’s neighbors presented a pantheistic (many gods) view of creation with the heavens and the earth being the byproduct of some cosmic war. In this pagan scenario, humanity is an unwelcome addition to this world of chaos, thereby establishing their bottom-rung value in the universe, useful for little more than serving the needs of the gods.

But in Genesis 1 we get something radically different. We see a singular God speaking the heavens and the earth into being by himself and on purpose. What is more, in this story humanity is the pinnacle of creation, bearing the very image of this all-powerful, speaking Creator God, who called humans “very good.” Even more radical than this, the text declares that God created humanity male and female, meaning that women have as much inherent, created dignity, worth, and purpose as men. You might say that Genesis 1 erases and rewrites everything–EVERYTHING–that Hebrews, inundated by Ancient Near Eastern cultural values, knew about creation, divinity, and themselves. It may just be the most powerful, worldview-deconstructing and -reconstructing text ever written.

Imagine that you are a Hittite, or an Egyptian, or a Babylonian living around 1400 BC. You believe in many gods, and they are all powerful, vengeful, angry, and often possess little or no moral character. They are strong, but they are not good. You also believe that humanity exists to be, in essence, the slaves of the gods, and are completely subject to the whims of the members of the divine pantheon. Furthermore, whatever dignity exists within humanity is entirely invested in males, especially firstborn males. Women are good for child bearing and little else. This is your worldview. These beliefs, more than anything else, form the way you look at the world. And then you find the text of Genesis 1. What happens to you? No one has ever even conceived of these things before! You have no category for what you read here. Creation comes into being, not through divine warfare, but through divine proclamation. All creation is called “good.” Human beings, both men and women, are called “very good.” This changes everything.

The Pattern in the Days

I had been reading Genesis 1 for a long, long time before someone pointed out to me the pattern in the days. Have you ever noticed it before? The first three days line up with the second three days. In other words, day 1 is associated with day 4, day 2 with day 5, and day 3 with day 6. Check out the tabbed table below for more info on the days.

[tabs] [tab title=”Day 1″] On the first day of Creation God made light, separating it from the darkness. He called the light “day” and the darkness “night.” Notice that he hasn’t yet created any celestial bodies to shine or reflect any light, much less anything for the light to shine upon. No light-producers–no sun, moon, or stars. He has simply created light. It’s as though light exists as an empty field or canvas, unpopulated and unmarked. [/tab] [tab title=”Day 4″] Three days later, God created the celestial bodies–the sun, moon, and stars–to govern the passage of days. In other words, God filled or populated the empty field called “light” he made on the first day. Now, light does not simply exist, but serves the function of the passage of time. [/tab] [tab title=”Day 2″] The second day is really interesting because it is the separation of the waters. This concept comes from Ancient Near Eastern cosmology, in which it was understood that there was water behind an “expanse” or “vault” in the sky. This was how they understood the process of rainfall, which, given the scientific understanding of the time, is perfectly reasonable. What happened on this day, though, was that God separated two realms–the sea and the sky. Like on the first day, there are not yet any inhabitants of these realms. They are empty. [/tab] [tab title=”Day 5″] On the fifth day, God created the fish and the birds–the inhabitants of the sea and the sky! He painted an empty canvas on the second day, and then, just as with day four, he filled it up, though this time with beautiful, powerful, awe-inspiring creatures. [/tab] [tab title=”Day 3″] The third day was when God pulled back the waters of the sea and created dry ground. An interesting note about this day is that, unlike with days 1 and 2, the land produced something on day 3–vegetation! This points to the Hebrew understanding that vegetation and land are one and the same, and that the land exists to produce vegetation for… [/tab] [tab title=”Day 6″] Animals and humans! Day 6 is connected with day 3 just like the other two pairs in that God first created an empty field, and then filled that field with his creatures. God created spaces, and then he filled those spaces with creatures. [/tab] [/tabs]

There is an unmistakeable, and, I believe, a God-breathed pattern in the first six days of Creation. God creates a space, and then God fills that space with creatures who give it purpose and life. The order of the Creation text is no accident, and is, in fact, meant to lead us to an understanding of the order of Creation itself. But it leaves us with a question, doesn’t it? What about that seventh day? Why no pair for that day? What does it mean?

Divine Enthronement

The design of Genesis 1 is meant to point us to a profound cosmic reality, one that gets lost in the modern debate over the age of the earth and the origins of the universe. The three pairs of days are meant to point our attention toward the final, unpaired day, and make us ask the question, “What is so special about this day?”

Of course we all know that the seventh day is the Sabbath, the day that God rested. We imagine that this is the day God kicked up his feet, drank some lemonade, and maybe read a good book. Or took a nap. Whatever he did, we think of it as God taking a break from work. But there’s a crucial question that we haven’t been trained to ask, and that is this: “What did it mean, in the Ancient Near East (the culture in which Genesis 1 was written), for a god to take his rest?” In his excellent book The Lost World of Genesis One, John Walton writes that an ancient god always takes his rest in his temple.

So what happens on the seventh day is not so much a prolonged divine lunch break as it is a moving day. God takes his rest in his creation. Creation is God’s temple. God moves into creation. God is present within, while at the same time distinct from, the cosmos he has just created. All creation is God’s holy place. The creation myths of Israel’s neighbors begin, so to speak, with a world already thrust into chaos, sin, and death. But the Hebrew creation story begins with a good creation inhabited by a good and beautiful God–a holy world functioning in perfect harmony because of the presence of its Creator.

It is vital, I believe, for us to understand the world, and ourselves, primarily in the light of God’s original creation. Too many Christians functionally believe that Genesis and 1 and 2 are nothing more than happy myths, faerie tales, and that the Bible doesn’t really start telling the truth of creation until Genesis 3, the fall. Too many Christians think of themselves, the world, and even God, as though Genesis 3 were more true than Genesis 1. But Genesis 1 describes reality as it was and will be again, while Genesis 3 describes reality as it is now but will someday no longer be.

The Living God

Genesis 1 isn’t about geology or biology; it’s about a good Creator creating a good world, a home suitable for creatures that are more like he is than the angels are. On that sixth day, God made human beings, and he made them in his image. This is significant.

In the Ancient Near East, every god’s temple had to have an image–a statue, an inscription–to signify whose temple this was. For example, Dagon’s temple would have an image of Dagon in it. Baal’s would have an image of Baal, and so forth. So what did God choose to put as his image in his temple? Us. Humans. We are the inscriptions, the living statues on earth that testify to every living creature to whom this temple belongs, what sort of God he is, and how we might know him.

If you understand human beings from a Genesis 3 perspective, you would naturally conclude that the God in whose image they were created is a foul, nasty, cowardly, shallow deity bent on sex, food, and power. But if you understand human beings from a Genesis 1 perspective, you would see the Creator God as a good, wise, benevolent deity who sought the best for his creatures. (It’s important to note that Jesus was a Genesis 1 kind of human.) But here’s the most important part: all the images of all the other gods were made of wood, stone, or metal. In other words, they were dead. The breath of life was not in them. But the image of the Hebrew God is made of flesh and blood. It breathes. It moves. It is alive. And if God’s image is alive, how much more alive is that God? Genesis 1 tells us that God is alive because you are alive. You are a living apologetic to the existence of God.

God is not like the other gods. He does not need anyone to make him a house or a temple. He made his own temple and came to dwell within it, setting up his own living images to govern and care for it. His intention was and is for his living images to spread over the earth, subduing it, caring for it, ruling over it in the same way he rules over the cosmos–with wisdom, strength, and mercy. These living images, however, were not merely his minions, created solely to do his bidding. They were and are individual lives, minds, and personalities, meant to know and be known by one another and, most importantly, by God himself. God’s intention has been, from the very beginning, to dwell with humanity within his creation–within the beauty and holiness of his temple. This is the way it was, and to the praise of his glory and grace, the way it will be again.

Sam left a comment in the previous post about a discussion he was having with friends about 2 Timothy 2:22-24. He asked for my thoughts, particularly as they regarded our conversation a while back about David Platt, reformed theology, and whether or not God hates sinners. That conversation began with this post, in which I criticized David Platt’s exegesis of the psalms. It then continued in the comments and into several other posts, including:

Biblical Hatred
How I Read the Bible
Why I Criticized David Platt on My Blog
Questions for Calvinists
A Response to a Response

That was a long and involved series of posts that had a lot of theological debate. The passage that Sam refers to from 2 Timothy says this:

Flee the evil desires of youth and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. Don’t have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels. And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful.

So I think the first question is this: Is the discussion about Calvinism v. Arminianism, predestination v. free will, etc. a “foolish and stupid argument”? I’ve heard a lot of folks, exasperated from the same late-night conversation playing itself out over and over again, decry this conversation as one of those stupid arguments that Christians should avoid. I’m certainly sympathetic to that position; this conversation can be exasperating.

But I don’t consider it a foolish and stupid argument because I believe that it pertains to the nature of God. Calvinists and Arminians understand God in fundamentally different ways. If you believe in, for example, double predestination, then you perceive God in a radically different way than someone who believes in free-will. Roger Olson, an Arminian biblical scholar, would even go so far as to say you believe in a different God altogether.

Where it breaks down, though, is when you are more concerned about being right than having godly character. Not only can our drive to be right, or to win an argument, obscure our perception of the truth, it can also reflect deep character flaws that need to be redeemed. When your aim is to win the argument rather than discover the truth, you have become quarrelsome. That might sound like a petty sin, but quarrels lead to broken relationships within the body of Christ. In fact, doctrinal quarrels have led to the fractured and splintered state the Church is in right now. Being quarrelsome is a serious issue that reflects deep character shortcomings.

While some conversations are important to have, and some disagreements are going to result from those conversations, it’s important to not be foolish or stupid, or do anything that would turn those conversations into an argument or a quarrel. We must strive, as the Scripture says, to be kind to everyone. We must be able to teach, which is definitely not the same as shouting or arguing.

So I say, let the conversations continue, but let them continue in the spirit outlined by Paul in this passage.

Yesterday I posted about how Jesus brilliantly refuted a trap question from a group called the Pharisees. Today I want to look at how he refutes the Pharisees’ rival group, known as the Sadducees.

18 Then the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. 19 “Teacher,” they said, “Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. 20 Now there were seven brothers. The first one married and died without leaving any children.21 The second one married the widow, but he also died, leaving no child. It was the same with the third. 22 In fact, none of the seven left any children. Last of all, the woman died too. 23 At the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?”

24 Jesus replied, “Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? 25 When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. 26 Now about the dead rising—have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the account of the burning bush, how God said to him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? 27 He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are badly mistaken!”

The Sadducees were a different group from the Pharisees. The two groups often engaged in sharp debate, and the resurrection was one of those flashpoints of conflict between the two. The Sadducees didn’t believe in resurrection; that’s why they were sad, you see. (Whaa-whaaaa)

They came to Jesus because they had heard that he believed in the resurrection, and they wanted to pose a question to him that they had probably posed to many Pharisees. It was a dishonest question, meant to make resurrection look like a ridiculous, and even unbiblical, idea. I imagine that no Pharisee had been able to give them a satisfactory reply, so they thought they could trap Jesus with this one.

One woman. Seven brothers. Each man obeyed the biblical law by marrying his older brother’s widow and trying to produce an heir for him. This was how a family was able to continue it’s line. Should the oldest brother die without an heir, the next brother in line was responsible for marrying his brother’s widow and producing a male child for his dead brother. It was a sort of surrogacy.

So the woman and the seven brothers die without producing an heir. When the resurrection happens, and here the Sadducees are probably snickering to themselves, whose wife will she be? She couldn’t possibly be married to all of them; that would be adultery! How can there be adultery in the resurrection? How can obedience to the biblical law in this life lead to disobedience to the biblical law in the resurrection? That’s exactly the situation we have in this scenario. Obviously, the Sadducees conclude, the resurrection cannot exist.

But Jesus refuted them, and quite easily actually. But he did it by dropping the bomb that destroys the hopes and dreams of every young, evangelical Christian. “When the dead rise,” he said, “they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.” There will be no marriage in heaven. Or, to put it more accurately, romantic, sexual love, and the unique bond between two people that goes along with it, will not exist in the resurrection.

Now let me say this. If you find that thought so depressing, so repugnant, so distasteful, so disappointing that you don’t even want to participate in the resurrection anymore, then you have made marriage and romantic love into an idol. In fact, I believe one of the most powerful idols that afflicts young people, and especially young people today, especially Christian young people, is the idol of romantic love.

We put a lot of hope into romantic love. We think of it as normal. We think it’s our right to be loved, and to experience this romantic love, for all of our lives. But there’s a greater love, a better love than this, and too many of us are missing out on it because we’ve made romantic love an idol in our hearts.

The greater love is the agape love that we will experience with Jesus for eternity. At the end of the Bible there’s a wedding; the groom is Jesus, and the bride is the Church. But they’re not getting married under the compulsion of romantic love, but rather in the promise of agape love.

Agape love is the love of the cross. It’s the love that lays down its life, that forgives sins, and refuses to demand its rights. This is the love that Jesus made a reality for us when he died for our sins on the cross.

There won’t be marriage in the resurrection, because in the resurrection, agape love will replace romantic love. Romantic love is a shadow, a wonderful, exciting shadow, but still a shadow of the deep self-sacrificing love of God that we will all experience together, with God, for all eternity. We are invited to fully participate in divine love of the Trinity.

People hated Jesus. They tried to trap him. They wanted to kill him. This passage represents one of their best efforts at trapping him.

13 Later they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus to catch him in his words. 14 They came to him and said, “Teacher, we know that you are a man of integrity. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are; but you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not? 15 Should we pay or shouldn’t we?”

But Jesus knew their hypocrisy. “Why are you trying to trap me?” he asked. “Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.” 16 They brought the coin, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”

“Caesar’s,” they replied.

17 Then Jesus said to them, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”

And they were amazed at him.

So now the religious leaders are pretty upset. They’re trying to trap Jesus with this question. If he said that it’s not right for the Jews to pay taxes to Caesar, then he would be arrested by the Romans, and potentially tried for insurrection. If he said that it is right to pay taxes to Caesar, then the people would reject him because they despised the pagan Romans, and deeply resented their presence in Israel. What’s he supposed to do? What can he say? There’s no way out of this conundrum.

Well, you can’t trap Jesus. He knew exactly what was going on, and he wasn’t going to be caught in their trap. So he had someone bring him one of the Roman coins, a denarius. “Whose image is this?” he asked.

“It’s Caesar’s,” they responded.

“Well then, give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”

But he left something out. Where is God’s image inscribed? On us. On every human being on the face of the earth. Genesis 1 says that we are made in God’s image. We bear God’s inscription.

So everything that has Caesar’s image on it belongs to Caesar, but everything that has God’s image on it belongs to God. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Go ahead and give your money to Caesar. God doesn’t really care about that anyway. But give yourself to God. That’s what he wants. He’s not concerned about your taxes. He’s not concerned about the pagans collecting your money. He’s concerned about your generosity toward him. How much of yourself are you giving to God?

Are you being generous with yourself—your thoughts, your actions, your heart, your will, your talents, your gifts, your being, your future—are you being generous in giving yourself to God? You are made in the image of God. You belong to God. All of you.

There have been some dominant themes that, I believe, God has been trying to pound into our heads and hearts throughout the course of Ember’s existence. One of those themes is that God can change us at the level of our deep heart desires. He changes us through the power of the Gospel, through his grace and mercy seeping into the cracks of our hearts, our minds, our wills.

But in order to be changed we must give ourselves over to his grace. We must throw ourselves down at the foot of the cross, placing all of our trust, all of our hope, all of our dreams, all of our desires upon the broad and broken shoulders of Jesus. We must abandon our way of doing things, our agendas for this life, and throw ourselves fully onto the grace of God found only in his son, Jesus Christ.