Love is Love?
I was inspired to write this sermon by Reverend Calvin Robinson’s rebuttal in debate at Oxford Union February 15, 2023. He spoke of LGBTQ and its conflict with Christianity in a powerful loving way. I will quote him in this work.
The subject today is LGBTQ. In case you were not sure: The L stands for Lesbian, the G for Gay, the B for Bisexual, the T for Transgender, and the Q for Queer. The LGBTQ community believes that human beings may practice sexual love in their different ways, that “Love is Love.” Is that true? American culture is thrusting worldly secularism upon us. From sex changes for children, to transgender participation in women’s sports, to drag queen shows for all ages, anything goes. “Love is Love” is the attitude that is driving our culture. We Christians are and always have been counter cultural. * In this case, should we be?
This sermon is as much a teaching as it is a preaching. Firstly, our New Testament was originally written in the first century in Latin (18%), Aramaic or Hebrew (12%) but mostly in Greek (70%) for Greek was the dominate language of the Eastern Mediterranean. Thus, Paul, Mark, John and the other authors wrote mostly in Greek. Our New Testament is a translation of the best available surviving (extant) copies of these authors’ works. Our English New Testament translators’ goal: Translate the best extant Latin, Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek texts into modern English accurately making it as easy to understand as possible–tell the readers what the author’s intended meaning was in plain English. You see, if you were to read these early texts translated word for word into English, they would be very difficult to understand. A balance between readers understanding ease and verbatim translation is always a translator’s goal.
So, what of our translations, in 1526, William Tyndale translated Latin, Aramaic, Hebrew, and Greek texts into an Early Modern English Bible. In 1611, the King James Bible first appeared. I have a copy of that; its English is hard to read. In 1895, the English of that era became the Authorized King James Version. Many churches still use it. However, we now have many other good English translations: The New Revised Standard Version, The International Version, and The New Standard American Bible to list a few. These newer translations have the advantage of the additional extant texts earlier scholars did not have, and so we believe the newer translations are more accurate. However, some translation challenges still exist for some words and phrases do not have satisfactory English equivalents.
One of our Greek to English challenges is the word “love”. In English, I can say, “I love hot dogs.” or “I love my wife.” or “I love America.” “My neighbor loves automobiles.” Now loving hot dogs in nothing like loving my wife nor like loving America and certainly not like loving automobiles. Unlike our English, the Greek language recognizes that there are different kinds of love. Their language has six different words to describe what English translators often translated as “love”. In addition, other Greek word variants also relate to the meaning of love. So, how did translators go from Greek to English and convey as close as possible the original meaning of love in particular scriptures? Let us examine the different kinds of love in Greek and see if worldly secularists are correct in saying that “Love is Love.”
Agape is the ultimate type of love. The Greeks used agape to express feelings for a spouse. Greek speaking Christians also used agape to express the unconditional love of God for His children. That is to say, agape expresses love as charity and forgiveness. An example, we find an agape translation in John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.” Agape is also the word translated love in Matthew 22:37, John 13:34 and I Corinthians chapter 13.
Erose is carnal desire. It conveys sexual passion. The Greeks used erose to refer to the initial love a person feels when they see a sexually attractive person; it is a love of youthful beauty that leads to erotic cravings. You will find eros translated in Hebrews 13:4, “Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.” The Greek eros expresses the uncontrolled sexual lust of “whoremongers and adulterers”. The writer is certainly not tying to communicate agape love. In 1 Corinthians 7:1, we find another example, “Now for the matters you wrote about: ‘It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.’” “Sexual relations” is expressed eros in the Greek, sexual passion. Paul was saying that the law permits sexual relation only with your wife. Sex with any other woman is immoral, unfaithfulness. Read 1 Corinthians 7:1-5.
Philia is very affectionate love. It means warm regard, friendship, familiarity, enjoyment of activity with one another. Philadelphia is the city of brotherly love. You will find it translated love in John 20:2, “Then she runneth, and cometh to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them, they have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid him.” Here, “whom Jesus loved” is philia. Translators also used philia in Matthew 10:37 to indicate love for father, mother, son and daughter (we are to “love Jesus more than these”) and in John 11:3, 36 concerning Jesus’ friend Lazarus.
Storge is naturally formed between parents and children, love within a family. You will find storge used but once in the New Testament. There we find it in combination with philia in Romans 12:10 to mean devoted, “Be kindly affectionate one to another with brotherly love; in honor preferring one another…”
Philautia means self-love, regard for one’s own happiness. The Greeks further divide this self-compassion into beneficial and egotistical, the healthy and the unhealthy, the selfish and the unselfish. In II Peter 1:5-7, Peter uses philautia in ranking Christians’ healthy self-loves, growth in ones’ positive attributes. “And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.” We find amour-propre philautia, the unhealthy self-love, in Matthew 26:20-22, “When it was evening, he reclined at table with the twelve. And as they were eating, he said, ‘Truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.’ And they were very sorrowful and began to say to him one after another, ‘Is it I, Lord?’”
Xenia means hospitality, the friendship offered guests. It means generosity and reciprocity. Xenia also expresses hospitality toward foreigners. In Romans 12:13, we find xenia expressed this way, “Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.”
So, is “Love is Love” always accurate? Our translators did their best to capture the meaning of the Greek into English. No matter how good a job the translators did, the people using our Bibles in modern life may too quickly read the word “love” without understanding the nuance.
Easily found are everyday examples of “Love is Love.” The word love is now often used to refer not only to marriage between one man and one woman; people also use it when speaking of marriage between two men and between two women, but does that represent what the writers of the New Testament meant? Can we really equate these relationships with marriage between one man and one woman? Paul obviously did not think so. Look at Romans 1:26-27, “For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.” This is eros, lustful cravings. Also, see I Corinthians 6:9-10 and I Timothy 1:9-10.
Quoting Reverend Calvin Robinson in debate, “This is not about ‘Love is Love.’ It is about marriage, the sacrament of Holy matrimony. It is directly connected to love, but it is not the definition of love. Too many people utter those words and confuse the meaning of love. It is sacrificial love, it’s not lustful. People often conflate sex with love, but it is very disingenuous.”
“We are directly talking about undermining God’s plan as He has revealed it to you. We are replacing His authority with our own. If marriage is no longer between one man and one woman, are we open to the idea of polygamy? We disregard the heterosexual aspect, so why not the monogamous aspect too? If ‘Love is Love,’ that is what I keep hearing people say, who then is to say that three men loving each other is not more love than two men loving each other? … We have heard quite a bit of that but of course atheist often parrot the words, ‘god is love’ and we have heard that one tonight again without any understanding. Yes, God is love but He set the terms, not us.
“Another one we have heard plenty of is inclusivity, should the church be more inclusive? Again, it is a play on words; it is virtue signaling. It is to appear good rather than to be good. The Church should absolutely be inclusive. Christ spent time with tax collectors and prostitutes, but it is they who went away changed, not Christ. We are fallen; therefore, we are all sinners. The church is open to sinners, of course it is! That is the purpose of the Church, but it should not be to encourage people to continue to sin. Our duty as clerics is to help lead people to Christ, to lead them away from sin, not to embrace it, not affirm it.
“I know many LGBTQ people who live lives in Christ. They abstain from sexual gratification to be closer to God and it is not easy, it really is not. It is perhaps not fair, but it is right, and it is good. These people are being let down. I have had people crying saying, ‘I could have got married but I did what the Church taught me was right and now the Church is saying they were wrong all along. I have wasted my life.’ As Christians, we are called to be in the world but not of the world.
“In the secular world, we already have equality in law. People can enter civil partnerships or even ‘Gay marriage’ outside of the Church and that is their prerogative. However, the faith is inherently discriminatory–God is discriminatory. He sets conditions on us entering His heavenly kingdom. It is not a free-for-all. We must want to specify it is the sin that is the problem, not the sinner. Every single person is loved by God and God forgives all of us of depravity, but we have to turn away from all of our sins and turn toward Him and it seems the panel opposite me has forgotten to separate the sin from the sinner.
“One can denounce sin while still welcoming the sinner. So as a wrap-up, my message to the proposing side is, ‘Do not lead us astray.’ Do not be wolves in sheep’s clothing. Do not be the false teachers that the Bible warns us about. Remember your obligation to defend the faith. Stop teaching about diversity, inclusion and equity. Get back to teaching redemption and salvation.
“This is spiritual neglect. Help people by telling them the truth. Be kind to people by supporting them through those struggles and reminding them that Christ suffers with them. Be compassionate by leading them to Christ when the world tries to lead them away from Hm. The Church is imploding, and the faithful masses have stopped turning up on Sundays and we are seeing the rapid decline of Christianity in the country that we may have never seen. Do not accelerate it with heresy. You do not have the authority to bless sin. … I hear the devil at work. … It’s a shame but in the words of Saint Athanasius of Alexandria, ‘If the world is against truth, then I am against the world.’”
The world has provided laws that permit LGBTQ. The Lord has not. We may feel like we are between a rock and a hard place. It somewhat reminds me of Matthew 22:21, “After they answered Jesus’ question he responds to them, ‘So give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.’” We Christians must respect man’s laws but live by God’s laws. **
There is another aspect of scripture that we must sometimes consider; we have to take into account the cultural of the time the authors wrote the scriptures, the culture relativity, the specific or principle application of a scripture. There are scriptures that speak to specific situations in the first century setting, the culture. For example, 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, “Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.” Paul never vetoed a woman exercising the prophetic gift that so many women in the primitive church enjoyed. In all likelihood, what was uppermost in Paul’s mind was the lax moral state of Corinth and the feeling that anything that might bring upon the infant Church the faintest suspicion of immodesty must be avoided. Further, this first century church’s culture had the women sit on one side of the congregation and men on the other. The culture gave the men a better education than it did women. Women could well have questions about what the speaker said. Conversations between a man and a woman across the aisle would be likely to cause interruption of the speaker’s message. That is to say, there is every reason to believe that this was a cultural thing and not a religious requirement.
However, culture relativity is not an excuse to void inherently immoral behaviors. Paul’s sin list is an example. 1 Corinthians 6:9-10, “Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. That is what some of you were. 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.” The New Testament takes a singular position against these actions and attitudes: These practices are always wrong. Salvation is the answer; then, “go and sin no more.”
Decades ago, I heard the first justification for LGBTQ practices: “What two consenting adults do in the privacy of their home is their business.” That makes virtually all private practices okay including incest. That is now legal in many European countries including France, Spain and Portugal. I now hear rumblings for that in Canada and the United States–do we want that? The Bible clearly says that incest is wrong. The next justification I remember: “Sex is a complex issue; we must make allowances for that.” God knows that sex is a complex issue; He invented it. Knowing the power of eros, He also gave us rules. Today’s justification seems to be, “Love is Love.” Using a debate, I think that Reverend Robinson has shown that also misses the mark.
God created each of us in His image. That image included the freedom to think issues through, the freedom to speak our minds, and the freedom to create our own unique lives. The Father also knew that those freedoms without direction could go horribly wrong. Therefore, He gave us the Scriptures.
Many church leaders think they are intellectually superior to the ancients that wrote the Scriptures. John Wesley anticipated their error: “On all cases, the Church is to be judged by the Scripture, not the Scripture by the Church.” People want nothing to do with churches that quote scripture and then find reason to practice something else. People recognize the hypocrisy; that is why they are leaving churches in droves.
We Christians are to speak boldly; however, Proverbs records an exception under which some LGBTQ people fall. They craze attention and itch for targets to shout down. They dare people to question their lifestyle and attack those that do. King Solomon speaks of such fads in Proverbs 23:9, “Speak not in the ears of a fool: for he will despise the wisdom of thy words.” In this scripture, a fool is a person that derides the Word, a person that mocks God-fearing people. Do not speak of the serious and sacred to such people for it is speaking to the wind.
Do speak boldly of the joy in Christ that fills you. John 8:12, “’He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness,’ says our Lord. In these words, Christ counsels us to follow His life and way if we desire true enlightenment and freedom from all blindness of heart. Let the life of Jesus Christ, then, be our first consideration.” *** Share Jesus remembering that Jesus never forces His way on anyone. Christianity is voluntary. Therefore, Christian, volunteer.
Jesus went about healing the sick, feeding the hungry and loving all, even the hardest to love. Jesus also went about preaching truth, so did Paul, John, Peter and on and on. Their ever action and every word demonstrated agape, love as charity and forgiveness. Thus, you are to care for the sick, help the poor and witness to the downtrodden. Then, do as Reverend Calvin Robertson suggested, “Get back to teaching redemption and salvation.”
* Reverend Calvin Robinson, “I have no doubt that some will consider me a bigot or a transphobe or a homophobe but I am neither of these things and none of those things. I am simply a follower of Christ, a Christian. Today’s liberals are driving our culture. We Christians are and always have been counter-cultural. If liberals were truly as diverse and tolerant as they claim to be, they would entertain our point of view just as they entertain other points of view.” They do not so we Christians must speak to that audience and to those affected by it.
** The First Amendment to our Constitution, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Our religion is purely between our God and our consciences.
*** from The Imitation of Christ by Thomas A’ Kempis translated by Leo Sherley-Price
