Matthew Vines is Wrong Regarding Homosexuality and the Bible
Matthew Vines is the founder of the Reformation Project, which has nothing to do with the Protestant Reformation. It’s an attempt to reform church teaching on sexual orientation and gender identity. Vines authored a book entitled God and the Gay Christian, in which he attempts to argue that God is actually for homosexuality. (R. Albert Mohler Jr. then wrote a response to Vines, available here).
In his reinvention of the text, he says that Sodom and Gomorrah were not destroyed because of the same-sex fornication. The men of Sodom wanted to have sex with the two angels who came to rescue Lot from the wrath of God, but this was a threatened gang rape.
“God sent two angels disguised as men into the city of Sodom, where the men of Sodom threatened to rape them. The angels blind the men, and God destroys the city. For centuries, this story was interpreted as God’s judgment on same-sex relations, but the only form of same-sex behavior described is a threatened gang rape.” – Matthew Vines (from the video, “God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships)
Vines says the real reason Sodom was destroyed is given in Ezekiel 16:49.
“Ezekiel 16:49 sums up the story’s focus on violence and hostility toward strangers: ‘Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, over-fed, and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.’” – Matthew Vines (from the video, “God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships)
So, even though Vines acknowledges the Sodomites wanted to rape visitors, he still insists Sodom was destroyed because they didn’t invite the angels to dinner.
Ezekiel 16 is one of the most shocking chapters of Scripture, with its use of sexually explicit language.
Jerusalem was unfaithful to God who labeled the city a promiscuous whore. In addition to being prideful and uncharitable, God said Jerusalem was guilty of all Sodom’s abominations – having at one point employed male prostitutes.
How sick is your heart, declares the Lord God, because you did all these things, the deeds of a brazen prostitute. (Ezekiel 16:30)
And your elder sister is Samaria, who lived with her daughters to the north of you; and your younger sister, who lived to the south of you, is Sodom with her daughters. Not only did you walk in their ways and do according to their abominations; within a very little time you were more corrupt than they in all your ways. (Ezekiel 16:46-48)
And there were also male cult prostitutes in [Judah]. They did according to all the abominations of the nations that the Lord drove out before the people of Israel. (1 Kings 14:24)
So, that passage really doesn’t work in Vines’ favor. He also ignores other passages, like in Jeremiah and Jude, that mentioned the sexual and unnatural desire of the infamous Sodomites.
But the prophets of Jerusalem I have seen a terrible thing: they commit adultery and walk in lies; they strengthen the hands of evildoers, so that no one turns from his evil; all of them have become like Sodom to me, and its inhabitants like Gomorrah. (Jeremiah 23:14)
Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. (Jude 7)
According to the Bible, homosexuality is a serious sin, worthy of the wrath of God. But, it’s not an unforgivable sin. Those who repent are washed, sanctified, justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor the swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6;9-11)
…when we understand the text.
(This video is by WWUTT. Discovered by Christian Podcast Central and our community — copyright is owned by the publisher, not Christian Podcast Central.)