Romans 2:1, Homosexuality and the Bible, Part IV of VIII

Posted on Tuesday, July 1, 2014 in Bible Commentary | 0 comments

Therefore you are inexcusable, O man, whoever you are who judge, for in whatever you judge another you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things.

//Question 2 of 5: Why does Paul then contradict his teachings on this topic, in this same letter to the Romans?

Yesterday, I introduced the one verse in the New Testament which seems to speak against homosexual relationships. It’s in the letter of Paul to the Romans. Oddly, immediately after this, we find today’s verse at the start of chapter two.

The question is this: Why would Paul write condemning words, and then immediately say that anyone who judges another condemns himself? It hardly makes sense. Could Paul be NOT condemning anyone in the famous “homosexual” verses of chapter one? Or is he providing an example of how God takes care of the judgment of evil men (in this case, turning them over to pederasty), warning us to never, ever judge another?

More curious is why Paul would condemn homosexuals, when the only other place in the scripture which does so is the Old Testament Law. Does he forget his own words on the topic, how the law was obsolete once Jesus happened on the scene with a better way to live? (In Romans 10:4, he says the Christ is the end of the law.) Did he not insist that the Law applied only to the Jews, not to the Romans, the audience of his letter? Why does he explain twice in this same book of Romans (5:20, 7:7-8) that the Law increased our sin, as if many of the things once considered sin should be no longer?

Christians recognize the replacement of the Law to be true in regard to Sabbath observance and unclean foods. Things once considered a sin no longer are.

There is plenty of controversy about what Paul meant, but in any case, it should definitely make us doubt the assumption that we can tie Paul’s apparent condemnation of homosexuals in chapter 1 to the Holiness Code of the Old Testament. That is unlikely … whatever Paul was talking about in Romans chapter 1, he wasn’t talking about the Law. We’ll examine this in more depth tomorrow.