“Jesus preached love and forgiveness, and practiced it.”

Yes, he did. The problem with Mr. Lane’s re-articulation of Jesus’ proclamation is that he leaves out one crucial word, a word which figures quite consistently and prominently in Jesus’ preaching as it has been recorded in the Gospels, and that word is repentance.

The reason that prostitutes, theives, liars and adulterers were drawn to Jesus of Nazareth is not that he ignored their sin or pretended that their behavior was somehow blessed by God. The prostitutes and theives  etc...understood their sin quite well and it would have offered no comfort for Jesus to ignore it.

Rather than pretending that theivery was good or that prostitution was just another form of honest labor, Jesus confronted their sin and offered his love. And his offer , boiled down to its core, was this: “I know what you have done. I love you. Repent, come to me, and I will forgive you.”

And, of course, that is his message to us all. To recieve his offer of forgiveness, however, we must agree with Jesus that we are sinners and be willing to repent.

In any case, perhaps Jesus was the first person had ever loved these prostitutes and theives in that way? There had, no doubt, been plenty of condemnation but no love, no offer of aid, no desire to rescue. But in Jesus they found both clear-eyed conviction, a perfectly honest assessment of sin, and an open door to reconciliation with God. Jesus did not offer to ignore sin, but to cure it and reverse its effects.

Jesus, in fact, saw sin as a sickness, a deadly infection, from which all must be rescued. He loved people too much to simply name the disease, pronounce the prognosis, and depart. He offered healing, a way out.

You are not, he said, doomed to die in your sin unless you desire that end. You do not have to be chained to sin for eternity. Come to me, repent, and I will forgive you and give you a new life.

It is interesting to note that the only ones who can truly hear God’s call to faith in Jesus Christ are those who know themselves to be sinners in need of repentance and redemption.

The Pharisees were unwilling to hear Jesus' proclamation because they wanted so desperately to see themselves, and have others see them, as righteous. They wanted to have no need of a Physician. Jesus rebuked and corrected, but the Pharisees and teachers of the law who opposed him would not bend the knee and seek repentance.

It strikes me that the Episcopal Church seems to encourage a rather pharisaic attitude when it comes to homosexual behavior. Those caught in this sin must be persuaded that they have no need of a physician. Jesus’ loving call to repentance is to be replaced with a blessing.

Perhaps now you can see what a disastrously harmful teaching this turns out to be. It does grievous harm to those who accept it because it sets them in a place where repentance is impossible.

Mr. Lane’s oversight with regard to Jesus’ message is made manifest in his next paragraph:

“He[Jesus] defended the woman caught as an adulteress and was to be stoned in accordance with the book of Leviticus in the Torah. Leviticus also jumped on gays and many other supposed sins.”

Mr. Lane is referring to the incident in John 8 where Jesus, indeed, saves the life of a woman caught in adultery. But, typically, Mr. Lane leaves off the last admonition from Jesus to the woman.  “Go and sin no more”.

Far from winking at adultery, Jesus calls the woman to repent and leave her life of sin.

Lane is correct that the first of the prohibition against homosexuality is found in Leviticus, Leviticus 18:22 to be exact and this is followed with another mention of homosexuality in Leviticus 20:18.

Leviticus20:18 is, indeed, a text that calls for those living within the theocratically ordered Kingdom of Israel who commit homosexual acts to be executed. And, no, this command no longer applies to the Christian Church.

Of course Mr. does not explain the context or content of either passage or the reason Leviticus 20:18 no longer applies.

There are three categories of Levitical law: Ceremonial, Civic and Moral. Only the last category—moral—was intended to stand eternally.

The Ceremonial Laws
The “ceremonial” or purity/ritual laws have to do with tabernacle and temple. They were introduced by God to reinforce the concepts of holiness and bodily purity. Cleansing from impurity was to be accomplished through sacrificial offerings.

The rules and regulations associated with the temple no longer apply to Christians for the very good reason that Jesus Christ, in his body and through his blood, has fulfilled and replaced the temple.

This "replacement" is not something the Church imagined whole-cloth. Rather it is the key point labored by the author of the Book of Hebrews who makes clear in chapters 9-10 (as Peter's vision makes clear in Acts 10:9-23) that on the cross, in accordance with the prophets, Christ's blood sacrifice cleansed, once and for all, the impurity of all those who believe. Jesus body and blood is the one and only sacrificial offering to which the Law and prophets point.

The Church then did not arbitrarily decide to discard the ceremonial laws. The New Testament reveals that these laws have been fulfilled on the cross.

The Theocratic Civil Laws
The theocratic laws had to do with governing the people of Israel during the time of the judges and kings. They were intended to reinforce the concept of Israel being set apart as a holy nation and people and they were in force so long as the Siniatic and Zion covenants remained. But Israel broke the covenant and because of her rebellion and idolatry, Israel was given over by God to her enemies. The punitive civic laws fell with her.

The new Kingdom of God introduced in and through Jesus Christ fulfilled the covenant, fulfilled God's promise of rest and salvation to his people, but Christ not restore the earthly kingdom of Israel and thus the civic laws regarding governance in the Promised Land no longer apply.

Jesus did not abrogate these laws but rather, as the representative Israelite, he fulfilled the old covenant and mission to which God had called Israel and bore in his body the legal penalties described and prescribed for those who disobey and rebel. In obedience even unto death, he became the light to the nations and the glory of God's people Israel . With Jesus' death and resurrection, the people of God have been given an eternal purity in his blood and have been ushered into a new sort of theocracy, the Kingdom of God, that includes all who call Jesus Lord. The old has passed away, God is making all things new.

Notice, however, that this fulfillment, this new creation, was initiated and begun by the sovereign Lord and verified and authenticated not apart from the law and the prophets, but through and according to them. This new covenant in blood was not voted on or dictated by the Sanhedrin or by popular demand, but it was handed down and authenticated by God himself at the resurrection and ascension. Moreover, the New Testament writers themselves, inspired by the Holy Spirit, attest to all of these things.

The Moral Levitical Laws are Eternal
Now we come to the third category, the moral law. These have not been superceded or changed. In this category you will find the Ten Commandments, the laws regarding sexual morality, and the laws regarding the poor and the foreigners. These laws are consciously alluded to and purposely mentioned by Jesus and the New Testament writers as absolutely binding in the new Kingdom.

The present debate has centered upon whether or not the sexual regulations listed in Leviticus 18 are to be categorized as purity/ritual laws or moral laws. It is clear, however, from the fact that the prohibitions against all forms of sexual behavior outside of monogamous heterosexual marriage are consistently and clearly condemned in the New Testament, including implicitly and explicitly, homosexual conduct, (Mark 7, Romans 1:18-22 and 1 Corinthians 6:9 for example) that Jesus and the apostles considered these laws to be moral laws established at creation and in force until the end.

That the New Testament writers considered them to be moral in nature should be clear from enough from the explicit prohibitions found in Romans 1 and 1st Corinthians 6:9 to which I referred above.

That Jesus understood these laws to be moral rather than purity/ritual is clear from his discourse in Mark 7:9-23 (to be discussed below). That the early church held and enforced the same understanding is clear from the instructions to Gentile believers found in Acts 15:20.

Jesus does not address homosexual behavior as distinct from other illicit sexual behaviors, but he condemns it all the same by his negative application of the word “pornia” in Mark 7:21-22 and Matthew 15:19. The Greek word “pornia” in the context of first century Judaism referred specifically to the Levitical laws found in Leviticus 18 (homosexuality is specifically mentioned in 18:22).

The rabbis of the first century often used shorthand phrases to refer to the law. The phrase “the law and the prophets”, for example, refers to the entire Tanach (our Old Testament). “Pornia” was another shorthand word that, again, was used to refer to all the acts and behaviors listed in Leviticus 18 from incest to bestiality, from adultery to homosexuality. Therefore, when Jesus says, “But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man unclean. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander . . . ”(Matt 15:18-19), he indicates very clearly that all the acts considered sexually immoral in the Levitical law code (found in leviticus 18), from heterosexual promiscuity to homosexual partnerships, are to be considered immoral by his disciples as well. They are, in other words, moral in nature and thus eternal.

The very same word, “pornia,” is used in Acts 15:20 by the church council in Jerusalem. They command Gentile believers to abstain from “pornia,” again, a direct reference to and a clear endorsement of the Levitical sexual code.

The second levitical reference, found in Lev 20:18 is clearly part of the civil code (described above) which details punishments to be applied specifically within the earthly Kingdom of Israel for violations of the ceremonial or moral law. Lev 20:18 no longer binds us, then, to “stone” the homosexual offender, but it certainly points us to the fact that homosexual behavior along with adultery, bestiality, and incest is a violation of the moral law.

Mr. Lane goes on to write:

“He further demonstrated it when he cured the 12 lepers. (Leprosy was supposed to be God's punishment for your sins and those of your ancestors.)”

Yes, one of the most telling aspects of Jesus’ ministry is that he touched the unclean. In doing so, he implicitly signaled that he had come for the purpose of replacing the Temple. The function of the Temple in Israel was to cleanse from impurity by blood sacrifice. Jesus ministry to the unclean revealed both that he is the final or ultimate source of purity…he cannot be made unclean, he is the Holy One….and that his life and death would, as noted above, serve to stand as the final and last sacrifice for the purification of the fallen world. His blood would make lepers clean.

“Jesus was saying that the old laws are wrong. (I believe there were 864 such laws, including killing of unruly children). If the churches are following the Bible, how many have stoned any adulterers in their congregations lately?”

Jesus, most emphatically, said the opposite. In Matthew 5, in fact, Jesus said that not a jot or tittle would be erased until the entire law was fulfilled. And, in his death, as we have said, he fulfilled and completed the civil and ceremonial laws and perfectly obeyed the moral ones. Mr. Lane, then, offers a rather absurd mischaracterization of the Old Testament and its applicability to the contemporary church.

“He never directly preached on the gay syndrome, which is too bad.”

I think I have already addressed this but, just in case you missed it, in fact, Jesus did refer to homosexual behavior and all those sexual acts listed in Leviticus 18 when he referred to and condemned “porniea.”

Mr. Lane goes on:

“The gay people are created in the same way the so-called straight people are, and we are all supposedly created in God's image.”

Yes, we are all created in God’s image. But that image has been twisted and marred by the Fall.

Sin has twisted our nature to the extent that human beings are no longer born oriented toward God but away from him. So our flesh “naturally” desires what is evil. Of course, within the range of our fallen natures there are inborn impulses that turn us toward sin.

That is what Paul means when he says that we are by “nature “objects of wrath in Ephesians 2. And this is the condition King David described when he said that he was a sinner from his mothers womb (Psalm 51:5). We are by nature, from birth, rebels. That is what it means to be “fallen.”

“If God got it wrong with some people, by other people's standards, go fight with God.”

No, God got it absolutely right. But through our rebellion we have corrupted what God created. The homosexual impulse, the heterosexual desire for promiscuity, hatred, greed, covetousness, all of these characterize fallen humanity, humanity in rebellion against God.

Mr. Lane writes:

“I personally feel that it is just too easy for the majority to gang up on a small portion of the people.”

I agree, those of us who uphold biblical truth in the Episcopal Church are an extremely small minority. It can be difficult sometimes, but we are, by God’s grace, standing firm.

“I also realize that a couple of Timothy and Paul's epistles talk against gays, but they certainly were not proofread by Jesus since he was dead Those epistles were selected from many by people 2,000 years ago and who knows what their agenda was.”

No Mr. Lane, Jesus is alive. I am surprised that a professing Christian would suggest otherwise. And, moreover, the promises he made to his to his disciples on the night before he died stand as guarantees that the words written under their authority, as his appointed heralds, are, in fact, his words and carry his authority:

1. 25"All this I have spoken while still with you. 26But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.” (John 14:25-26)

2. 12"I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. 13But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. 14He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. 15All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you.

Mr. Lane concludes:

“Very simply, if you want to call yourself a Christian, follow the teachings of Jesus.”

Indeed.