A response to Brad Chilcott on the sin of Sodom
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| The Destruction Of Sodom And Gomorrah, a painting by John Martin (painter), died 1854, thus 100 years. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Christ on Sodom
Perhaps the most convincing implicit references to homosexual conduct and orientation occur where Christ mentions the city of Sodom and events surrounding its destruction.
Christ makes six references to Sodom, including parallel texts (Matt. 10:15; 11:23–24 [2 x]; Mark 6:11; Luke 10:12; 17:26–37). Jesus said more about Sodom than did any other New Testament teacher. The statements fall within three categories.
Matthew 10:15
Jesus sends out His disciples to teach and preach and do miracles throughout the cities of Israel. They are to shake from their feet the dust of any house or city that rejects them or their words; those who reject will come under severe judgment (v. 14).
The pattern for this judgment is the utterly devoured cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. This is a clear object lesson describing God’s disapproval and rejection. Matthew 10:15 relates, “Truly I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for that city.” Jesus repeats this statement, without mention of Gomorrah, in Matthew 11:23–24 and Luke 10:12 (parallel Mark 6:11). However, the latter uses the statement to preface Jesus’ words of judgment against cities of his own day.
Matthew 11:23
Christ says of Capernaum: “If the miracles had occurred in Sodom which occurred in you, it would have remained to this day” (Matt. 11:23).
Christ reproaches the cities of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum for their failure to repent at the preaching of the disciples and at the miracles Christ and His disciples had done (cf. vv. 20–24 and parallels). Verses 20–21 make clear God’s judgment: Both Sodom and the cities of Israel are culpable for not repenting. However, Sodom would have repented from its sin and thereby escaped had it known the presence of Christ.
Repentance assumes guilt. The greater the light, the greater the guilt. The cities of Israel had the advantage of direct revelation through miracles, preaching, and the presence of Christ Himself (cf. Matt. 11:25–30), whereas Sodom had only general revelation and the witness of the two angels and Lot.
Luke 17:26–37
In the third and final assertion about Sodom, in the order presented in the Gospels, Luke 17:26–37 links the destruction of Sodom to the Flood. Both events illustrate the suddenness of the coming again of the Son of Man. Unexpectedly Jesus will exact judgment upon the wicked, though sparing the righteous (cf. 2 Peter 2:4–10). According to Luke 17:28–30, 32,
“It was the same as happened in the days of Lot: they were eating, they were drinking, they were buying, they were selling, they were planting, they were building, but on the day that Lot went out from Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. It will be just the same on the day that the Son of Man is revealed.… Remember Lot’s wife.”
This passage differs from the others, where Jesus casts the Sodomites in a more positive light than His own generation (“It will be more tolerable for Sodom.…”). In Luke 17, Sodom is an object lesson with an entirely negative message. The Lord stresses the heinousness of the sin of unbelief.
Immoral actions—such as the sins committed by the Sodomites—find forgiveness upon repentance. The real issue is the unbelieving and rebellious heart that produces such sins, and its bitter fruit in the rejection of Jesus. If that rebellious unbelief is not dealt with when Jesus extends forgiveness, there will be no room for repentance and forgiveness later. The rebellion will bring all moral failings into judgment with it, like those acts of Sodom, because it is their cause (John 3:16–36).
Other messages scream from this object lesson. Although unrepentant rebels against God ultimately will face never-relenting judgment, there will be degrees of punishment to correspond with the heinousness of the sins committed. How that will be shown is one of several unknowns about God’s judgment of sin and sinners. The Lord assumes that the destruction of Sodom, and even of Lot’s wife, is historical fact and that the judgment was deserved.
Jesus saw in Sodom a lesson for all generations. His hearers should remember Lot’s wife, as they should remember the Flood in the past as a portent of the Second Coming in the future. Whatever happened at Sodom portrayed such a graphic warning that Jesus placed it alongside the Flood and His Second Advent (see pp. 93–94).
If the sin of Sodom was homosexuality, Jesus was anything but supportive of same-gender sexuality. He did not use the actual terminology, but He assumed that Sodom’s sin was grievous, comparable to the sin of unbelief in Him expressed by the cities of Israel. That sin stands out more starkly if the sin of Sodom was great. The Scriptures describe the sin of Sodom as “exceedingly grave” (Gen. 13:13; 18:20; 19:13, 15). It also has been argued that Scripture identifies the sin of Sodom as ultimate rebellion against God, manifested by arrogance, injustice, self-centered materialism, lack of compassion, haughtiness, and abominations against the order of creation.3
We can assume the condemnation of homosexuality by Jesus.
Other References to Sodom
Romans 9:29
Four New Testament references to Sodom occur outside the Gospels. Romans 9:29 cites Isaiah 1:9, where the prophet Isaiah indicts Israel for its apostasy, rebellion, and other iniquities: “And just as Isaiah foretold, ‘Except the LORD of Sabaoth had left to us a posterity, we would have become as Sodom, and would have resembled Gomorrah.’ ”
Isaiah addresses an Israel that already is in a state of desolation and on the brink of greater judgment. Only a few faithful remain. Without the remnant, Israel’s devastation would be as complete as Sodom’s.
In Revelation 11, the revealer tells John that for the forty-two months of tribulation the gentile nations will oppress Jerusalem. During this time, two witnesses for God will prophesy and perform miracles against the wicked. Then the Beast or Antichrist will arise from the abyss and kill the two witnesses.
Verse 8 records: “And their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city which mystically is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified.”
The “great city” seems to be identifiable as Jerusalem, especially given the last clause of verse 8. The word (from pneumatikōs) translated “mystically” might more literally be translated “spiritually.” It brings to mind passages in the Prophets, in which are similes and metaphors for Jerusalem and Israel (Isa. 1:9, 10; 3:9; Jer. 23:14; Ezek. 16:46, 49; 23:3, 8, 19, 27). The context suggests that “the holy city” (v. 2) is desecrated because the Gentiles have polluted it. Revelation’s description of judgment by fire and brimstone in 9:17–18, as well as later at 14:10–11, offers a close literary parallel to the manner of Sodom’s destruction described in Genesis 19:24–25.
These two references do not identify the nature of the sin of Sodom, but they directly point our attention to passages in the Prophets of the Old Testament, which in turn point to the historical narrative about the fall of Sodom in Genesis. The writers assume some knowledge on the part of readers, including the sin of Sodom and its judgment, which provides an example for subsequent generations—just as Jesus used it.
2 Peter 2:6
The final two passages mentioning Sodom provide some information about the nature of the sin of Sodom. In his second epistle the apostle Peter sets forth three examples from the early chapters of Genesis to illustrate the double principle that God punishes the wicked but preserves the godly during trial (2:1–11).4 The examples include the angels who sinned (and by implication those angels who did not sin; see vv. 4, 10–11), the ancient world and Noah (v. 5), and Sodom and Lot. The pertinent text (2:6–10a, esp. 6) reads,
And if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly thereafter; and if He rescued righteous Lot, oppressed by the sensual conduct of unprincipled men (for by what he saw and heard that righteous man, while living among them, felt his righteous soul tormented day after day with their lawless deeds), then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the day of judgment, and especially those who indulge the flesh in its corrupt desires and despise authority.
Peter describes the sin that oppressed Lot as “the sensual conduct of unprincipled men” (v. 7). Lot was “tormented” by “their lawless deeds” (v. 8). They were “ungodly” people (v. 6) and “unrighteous” (v. 9), “those who indulge the flesh in its corrupt desires and despise authority” (v. 10). The singular use of the article tous (“the”) in verse 10 argues that those who indulge the flesh are the same as those who despise authority.
Several Greek terms used in 2 Peter 2 suggest sexual vice and occur in LXX contexts regarding Sodom, as well as in the Old Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha (see in this volume chapters 1–2). Among these are the words asebesin (the “ungodly”), athesmōn (“unprincipled or lawless” men), aselgeiai (“sensual”), anomois ergois (“lawless deeds”), adikous (“unrighteous”), epithymiai miasmou (“corrupt desires”), and kyriotētos kataphronountas (“despise authority”). Virtually all of these terms occur in previous Jewish literature, biblical and non-biblical, in contexts dealing with the sin or sins of Sodom (see ch. 3).5
Jude 7
The last passage that mentions Sodom occurs in Jude, verses 5–7. As in 2 Peter, Jude sets forth three examples of God’s judgment in the past, although these differ slightly from Peter’s examples. Jude writes about the unbelieving generation who had been delivered from Egypt, the angels who rebelled, and Sodom and Gomorrah. About the last, Jude writes (v. 7), “Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example, in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.”
The following verse describes the contemporaries of Jude as committing sin “in the same manner” and specifies this as men who “defile the flesh, and reject authority, and revile angelic majesties.”
The words translated “in the same way as these” (v. 7) help identify the event referred to in verse 6 as that of Genesis 6, when the “sons of God” intermarried with the “daughters of men.”
This event was one of the causes for the Flood. “Gross immorality” translates ekporneusasai and “strange [or other] flesh” translates sarkos heteras. Certainly these two phrases and the references in verses 6 and 8 are strong evidence that the sin in view is homosexuality. The “strange flesh” at Sodom refers to the perception of the men of Sodom who thought that they were going after a same-gender relationship when in fact they were pursuing after a different flesh—angelic rather than human.
Support for this view comes from extrabiblical intertestamental Jewish literature
1. Vices in The Wisdom of Solomon 14 include “confusion of sex” (geneseōs enallagē), followed by “disorder in marriage,” “adultery,” and “shameless uncleanness” (v. 26).
2. Second Enoch 10:4–5a (long rec.) describes pederasty as a sin against nature, “child corruption in the anus after the manner of Sodom.”
3. Jubilees 16:5–6 describes the fornication of Sodom as fornication “in their flesh” and polluting themselves and the entire earth (similarly 20:5).
4. A reference to bestiality (7:24) occurs after a reference to the “watchers” who committed “fornication” with the “daughters of men.”
5. Testament of Naphtali 3:4–5 and 4:1 identifies the sin of Sodom as changing “the order of nature,” and ties it to the sin of the “watchers.”
6. Testament of Asher 7:1 charges that the Sodomites “sinned against the angels.”
7. Testament of Benjamin 9:1 warns the Jews not to commit “the fornication of Sodom.”
8. Testament of Levi 14:6 asserts that an “unlawful purification” is “the union like unto Sodom.”
Obviously, Jewish tradition linked an abnormal sexual perversion, homosexuality, with Sodom. Jude simply continues a tradition that arises from the event of Sodom’s destruction in Genesis 19.
De Young, J. B. (2000). Homosexuality: Contemporary Claims Examined in Light of the Bible and Other Ancient Literature and Law (pp. 218–222). Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications.
