We've discussed this topic in detail. You may want to use the search feature in the top right of your screen to review some of the discussion we've had.
While you're doing that I'll just speak to your false assertion here that Leviticus is "obviously irrelevant."
Under the Mosaic Law of the Old Covenant, Leviticus 18:22 proscribed the act of a male lying with another male, classifying it as an "abomination" or "detestable thing." The Hebrew word comes from the root "to abhor," and the image emphasizes both ritually and ethically God's call to reject such behaviors.
Leviticus 18 also included commands against incest, adultery, sacrificing children to Molech and intercourse with animals as similar examples of "defilement" of God's land and people. The chapter's concluding warning entails imagery of the land spewing out those who have made it unclean with their abominations... homosexuality being among them.
Leviticus 20 follows and commands the death penalty for various sexual immoralities, including the "abomination" of males lying together. The images of defilement, land spewing out uncleanness and bloodguiltiness are particularly strong in this section of Leviticus that modern scholars have named the "Holiness Code" (Lev 17-26).
One need only understand history to understand the Leviticus 19:19 prohibition
which was given to forbid the Israelites engaging in the occult fertility cult practices of the pagan Canaanites. See, the Canaanites believed in occultist sympathetic magic, the idea that symbolic actions can influence pagan gods and nature. Mixing animal breeds, seeds, or materials was thought to “marry” them” so as magically to produce “offspring,” that is, agricultural bounty in the future.
The Canaanites also sacrificed their children by roasting them on bronze altars to pagan gods. Sodom and Gomorrah were in Canaan. The Canaanites practiced incest, homosexuality, zoophilia, pedophilia, and child sacrifice. It was a very sexually immoral and wicked ancient nation and the Jews codified a legal system designed to keep them apart from the debauchery.
Unfortunately, many of them like so many today, disregarded God's instructions designed for both their temporal and eternal benefit and proceeded to engage in the sinful activities
anyways.
With the arrival of the Messiah (e.g. Jesus Christ) a New Covenant was established and the Old Covenant fulfilled; however, God's morality did not change as God's morality is an extension of Himself and God Himself does not change (e.g. immutability), see Malachi 3:6. It is for this reason we find Paul using the image of not inheriting the kingdom of God to describe ten kinds of "unrighteous" people (1 Cor 6:9-10) including malakoi (the "soft" or passive participants in homosexual acts) and arsenokoitai (the active instigators-a graphic term for "those who perform male coitus") as well as thieves, drunkards and the covetous.
Likewise, 1 Timothy 1:9-10 adds arsenokoitai to liars and perjurers in listing more than a dozen "rebellious" types for whom the law is made. The point being made here is that we, as Christians, are being prepared for heaven and these activities simply will not be permitted there nor people who refuse to repent from them.
In Romans 1 Paul condemns homosexual acts, lesbian as well as male, in the same breath as idolatry (vv. 23-27), but his theological canvas is broader than that of Leviticus. Instead of treating homosexual behavior as an expression of idolatrous worship, he traces both to the bad `exchange' fallen man has made in departing from his Creator's intention (vv. 25f.). Seen from this angle, every homosexual act is unnatural (para physin, v. 26), not because it cuts across the individual's natural sexual orientation (which, of course, it may not) or infringes Old Testament law (contra McNeill) as we're in a New Covenant, but because it flies in the face of God's creation scheme for human sexual expression.
And understand that the Roman verses contain one of the very earliest combined condemnations of female and male homosexuality alike. Only two earlier texts make the link (Plato Laws I.636c; Pseud.-Phoc. Sentences 191-92). The fact that Paul condemns both female and male homosexuality along with pedastry, makes his statement generic.
While references to homosexual acts are limited in Scripture, they become a powerful image for those who give up God's good gift of healthy sexuality and exchange it for something degrading and unnatural. Homosexual acts become a symbol in Scripture for violating a basic principle of holiness: mixing that which the Lord declared should be separate.
Certainly Paul shared the Gospel with pagans involved in all sorts of normatively immoral behaviors in his travels as should we; however, Paul never condoned those behaviors or misrepresented God's holiness and desire for all humanity to both be justified in Christ and reconciled to Himself and sanctified as per 1 Thessalonians 4:3 which states:
"It is God's will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality" noting that "But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God's holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving. For of this you can be sure: No immoral, impure or greedy person-such a person is an idolater-has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things God's wrath comes on those who are disobedient. Therefore do not be partners with them." -Ephesians 5:3-7.
"Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God." -1 Corinthians 6:9-11.
Etc... etc... etc...
It is one thing to repent and become a Christian in recovery/sanctification struggling with sin issues in life. This is the condition many genuine Christians find themselves in; perhaps all to one extent or another. These are born-again Christians who have aligned themselves with God and His love and holiness. But it is an altogether different thing to malign God's Word to justify sin in rebellion to God's holiness and then live a life of ungodliness while teaching others to do the same.
It is in scripture we find the proper relationship between God's moral law and His agape love. Two equal and opposite dangers must be avoided:
1. Legalism effectively ousts agape love as a dynamic of the gospel and the Christian life by reducing both to obedience or conformity to a set of external commands or rules (after the manner of the scribes and Pharisees in the gospels).
2. Its opposite, antinomianism, ousts God's moral law as a dynamic of the gospel and the Christian life. Antinomianism is heresy that tells Christians it's OK to forget about God's law and concentrate solely on agape love... a course which is a justification for degeneration and immoral license, such as homosexual marriage, rather than promoting the true Christian liberty (i.e. freedom from sin).
The Gospel of Jesus Christ and God's grace in Jesus Christ frees the Christian from both these erroneous tendencies but only if Christians respectfully strive to follow God's moral law and both practice and realize agape love in their lives."
I hope you have found this informative.
Can you tell me which bible verses tell us that homosexuality is wrong? Do not include Leviticus, which is obviously irrelevant, being that it also says shaving your beard, not standing for an elder, planting two different seeds in the same garden, touching a woman who has just given birth, touching things a woman on her period has touched, eating the wrong part of the animal, etc., is sinful.
