Heidelberg 108–109: You Were Bought With A Price (2)

By Dr. R. Scott Clark - Posted at The Heidelblog:

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God’s Word is very clear about sexual immorality. Leviticus 18 illustrates how God views sexual immorality. It prohibits adultery and moves immediately in the next verse to warn against not offering one’s children to Molech, to a prohibition against male homosexuality, which the text calls an “abomination.” It prohibits bestiality (vv. 18–23). All these things made Israel unclean. The punishment for these crimes was most grave. Those punishments have expired with the expiration of the death of Christ but God has not changed. Sexual immorality is still a sin. As we have already seen, our Lord Jesus forbids sexual immorality and the Apostle Paul forbids it in both 1 Corinthians 6 and 7. Scripture is clear that homosexual behavior is a sin. The argument is sometimes made that Christian opposition to homosexuality is grounded solely in the Mosaic (Old Covenant) civil laws and thus, if Christians oppose homosexuality today, they must also seek to enforce the rest of the Mosaic civil and ceremonial legislation. If, however, there is clear teaching against homosexuality in the New Testament, that argument fails. In fact, the Mosaic civil laws in the Torah, the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) were intentionally temporary and typological and the Christian view is that they were fulfilled by Christ. The New Testament opposition to homosexuality is grounded not in the Mosaic civil legislation but in nature or natural law. The New Testament arguments against homosexuality are, in that way, like its teaching on marriage and the Sabbath: they are grounded in nature, in creation, and natural law and thus existed long before the institution of the Mosaic (Old Covenant) civil and ceremonial laws and have universal application. The moral law was summarized (typologically) in the Ten Commandments (in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5) and in Matthew 22:37–40, and widely throughout the New Testament.

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