Episode 43
Sex & Abortion: The Two Loudest Issues in Today's Church
Why are sex and abortion the loudest issues in today’s church, when the New Testament barely mentions them at all? This episode of Seek Go Create takes a deeper look at what the New Testament actually says—if anything—about these hot-button topics, challenging the modern church’s political focus and cultural battles. Journey through first-century history and scripture to discover if we've missed the real message. If you’re ready to question assumptions and explore faith beyond politics, this episode will challenge and surprise you.
"The things the American church fights the loudest about are the things the New Testament writers addressed the least." - Tim Winders
Access all show and episode resources HERE
Episode Resources:
- NT90 Hub – This is the central website for the 90-day New Testament reading plan, with downloadable, printable plans, background information, and links to all episodes and resources.
Episode Highlights:
00:00 Church Culture Wars
00:58 Series Setup and Reading Plan
02:16 Why These Topics Now
04:17 Disclaimers and Approach
08:01 Old Covenant Hangover
10:29 Rome and Infanticide
12:03 Sex as Power in Rome
17:23 Prostitution and Corinth
21:27 Is the World Worse
25:56 NT on Abortion Silence
28:24 Early Church Response
29:34 NT Passages on Same Sex
31:24 Greek Terms Explained
32:45 Translation History Shift
33:59 Jude and Strange Flesh
35:07 Jesus and Paul on Sex
37:38 Kingdom Versus Rome
39:35 Why Laws Fail
42:43 When Power Breeds Hypocrisy
46:29 Culture War Pillars
48:56 Jesus Method Not Pharisees
53:06 Ministry Over Legislation
56:33 Leaven Strategy Today
59:07 Final Challenge and Resources
Transcript
Sex and abortion, the two loudest battles in the American church.
Speaker:They drive voting guides, denominations split over them, entire ministries
Speaker:exist to fight them, and the New Testament barely mentions either one.
Speaker:Not because the writers were sheltered.
Speaker:They lived inside an empire that practiced routine infanticide and
Speaker:institutionalized sexual exploitation.
Speaker:Every apostle walked past both of them every single day, and they
Speaker:chose to announce a kingdom instead.
Speaker:What does the New Testament actually say about sex and abortion?
Speaker:Less than you think, and not what the modern church claims it says.
Speaker:Welcome to Seek Go Create.
Speaker:I'm Tim Winders, and I've just done a journey where I went through the entire
Speaker:New Testament in 90 days in the order it was written, not the order in your Bible,
Speaker:the order the letters actually went out.
Speaker:What I found surprised me, challenged me.
Speaker:Anyway, just opened up a lot of doors for me.
Speaker:It's really, really cool, and it changed the way I understand scripture and a
Speaker:lot of topics and things like that.
Speaker:This series is where I share those discoveries with you.
Speaker:It's, you know, you could do with it what you want, but this is just
Speaker:where I'm sort of sharing some of my notes, discovery that I went on.
Speaker:If you would like to go through that reading plan like I did, I encourage it.
Speaker:The reading plan is free.
Speaker:I developed it.
Speaker:It is at k2m.foundation/nt90, k2m.foundation/nt90, and
Speaker:you can go download it.
Speaker:It's fairly long.
Speaker:I think it's 8 or 10 pages, something like that.
Speaker:There's are, there are some shorter versions if you wanna try to get that.
Speaker:But it's got a lot of notes, got a lot of things to do, and you could just kinda
Speaker:go through it and see what you find.
Speaker:The link should be down in any of the notes where you are either
Speaker:listening or watching this episode.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:This episode originally is dropping right around the 250th
Speaker:birthday of the United States.
Speaker:Last week, before this one, we released episode 13 in this series.
Speaker:So this is sort of a two-part series covering some extremely light topics.
Speaker:This is episode 14, Sex and Abortion.
Speaker:Last week was War and Slavery, and I'm not making light of those.
Speaker:I'm just thinking about the somewhat warped humor of anyone that would
Speaker:wanna tackle those four items in a few episodes on their podcast.
Speaker:But that's what we do here at Seek Go Create, so welcome to my world.
Speaker:Those are the thoughts that go through my mind, especially when I'm being
Speaker:challenged by what the New Testament actually says about some of these items.
Speaker:These, said it earlier, the two loudest issues in the church are somewhat
Speaker:the quietest in the New Testament.
Speaker:Last week's episode dropped the week before the 250th birthday.
Speaker:We covered war and slavery, what the New Testament actually says about them.
Speaker:This week, the week after the 250th, depending on when you're listening to
Speaker:this, we take that same lens to the two topics where the modern church is loudest,
Speaker:mm, and the New Testament's kinda quiet.
Speaker:Sex and abortion, same question both weeks.
Speaker:What does the New Testament actually say, and what have we added along the way?
Speaker:What did the church add on its own?
Speaker:Over the last several episodes, we have established that the Kingdom
Speaker:of God arrived in the first century, and that the New Testament gives
Speaker:clear instructions for living in it.
Speaker:This episode takes that foundation into the territory the American church,
Speaker:primarily the American church, let's just say first world church, has
Speaker:turned into its political identity.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So I, I need to, before we get too far into this, I need to kinda give some
Speaker:disclaimers to let you know where I stand, because obviously with topics
Speaker:like this, I have the opportunity to offend or make just about everyone mad
Speaker:and upset at me and just in general.
Speaker:And while I don't really shy away from that, that's not
Speaker:what I'm looking to do here.
Speaker:I assumed that these two issues, especially this week,
Speaker:were modern issues, okay?
Speaker:And I'm, I'm a history guy.
Speaker:I've studied history over the course of my life, but I just kind of assumed when
Speaker:we started talking about abortion and, you know, sex and sexual orientation and
Speaker:things like that, that they were just modern issues that had popped up in the
Speaker:last 100, 200 years, something like that.
Speaker:That's … It just seemed that way to me.
Speaker:I spent decades in Christian circles believing things like homosexuality
Speaker:was a recent cultural development, and abortion was a post Roe v. Wade debate.
Speaker:Then, as I've done recently in the study that I've been doing, I read
Speaker:first-century history and I realized something: None of this stuff is new.
Speaker:Rome practiced routine infan- infanticide.
Speaker:I- That's a word I'm gonna struggle with, I'll tell you.
Speaker:There's a few other words that are in this episode that are gonna be, uh, tough.
Speaker:Infanticide.
Speaker:Sexual exploitation was institutional.
Speaker:Same-sex practices were everywhere, not as an identity category, but as a
Speaker:power structure woven into daily life.
Speaker:Every New Testament writer just went past that, all of that, every day,
Speaker:just like I said in the intro, and they were around it all the time.
Speaker:I kept waiting to find the position statements in the text,
Speaker:the clear for or against Here's the deal, they never showed up.
Speaker:The things the American church fights the loudest about are the things the New
Speaker:Testament writers addressed the least.
Speaker:This is what this episode is about, is just addressing that
Speaker:and talking through it and going through some variables on those.
Speaker:Not really taking a side.
Speaker:and I, and I'm kind of s- I'll kind of tell you, I, I haven't always been
Speaker:that way, but I'm sort of leaning that way because of my biblical studies.
Speaker:Not ignoring these issues, that's not what I'm saying.
Speaker:And I'm not actually endorsing them, so don't, uh, don't
Speaker:start throwing that at me.
Speaker:I'm just not taking a side on this because I'm having trouble seeing it in the text.
Speaker:I'm reading the text and sharing what I found.
Speaker:This episode, like I said earlier, is probably gonna make people
Speaker:on both sides uncomfortable.
Speaker:Probably there's gonna be some of you go, "Ooh, Tim, I'm not sure about that.
Speaker:I don't like that." Some of you might go, "Yeah, I'm glad somebody finally
Speaker:said that." And then just a short time later you'll probably go, "Ooh, no, that
Speaker:can't be right, Tim." So get ready to go along on this ride for me because
Speaker:as I've been prepping for this, I've gone through the same thing myself.
Speaker:I'm not sitting here as someone who thinks I know it all and had this figured out.
Speaker:These are some tough topics.
Speaker:I'm just attempting to see what the Bible says about it.
Speaker:Some of you probably think I'm too soft, and you can say things about that.
Speaker:Some of you will think I went too far.
Speaker:That's okay.
Speaker:That is how you know we're reading the text instead of defending a position.
Speaker:So let's kind of take a look at kinda how we've gotten to where we are,
Speaker:especially related to the American church.
Speaker:The reason the American church cannot let go of these battles, something
Speaker:we've talked about in previous episodes, it's the same reason we
Speaker:covered last week with war and slavery.
Speaker:It never fully transitioned to the new covenant.
Speaker:We kind of are still living in this old covenant with the new
Speaker:covenant wrapped around it.
Speaker:The old covenant gave Israel Levitical codes for sexual behavior, boundary
Speaker:markers for clean and unclean categories, for who belongs and who
Speaker:does not, and the modern church kept that operating system running and
Speaker:layered the new covenant right on top.
Speaker:Just a nice little wrapping of the new covenant.
Speaker:Jesus and grace got added to the stack, but the Levitical boundary
Speaker:markers stayed underneath.
Speaker:They didn't go anywhere.
Speaker:That hybrid is what produces the culture wars.
Speaker:If we were truly living out the new covenant, we would not
Speaker:be arguing about these topics.
Speaker:We would be ministering to the people that are caught in them.
Speaker:That is what I'm going to attempt to discuss and kinda walk through as
Speaker:we, as we go through this episode.
Speaker:America just baked old covenant categories into its legal and cultural DNA.
Speaker:From the beginning, the Puritans were not building a new covenant community.
Speaker:They were looking for freedom.
Speaker:Yes, they were.
Speaker:That's what this time of year is all about.
Speaker:They were just building, though, an old covenant society with better weather , you
Speaker:know, in a new country, in a new place.
Speaker:And listen, we inherited that structure.
Speaker:That is why these issues generate so much heat.
Speaker:The Church is fighting with old covenant tools inside a new covenant
Speaker:reality or a new covenant world.
Speaker:The tools just don't fit.
Speaker:That is why there is so much, mm, back and forth fighting
Speaker:and infighting that goes on.
Speaker:We aren't fighting the correct battle, and the people that are caught in the
Speaker:middle are the ones that get hurt.
Speaker:All right, I do want to-- This is kind of where I wanna back up just
Speaker:a little bit and talk about Rome.
Speaker:All right, let me get to that word that I am going to struggle with pronouncing.
Speaker:Infanticide is, it was legal and routine in Rome, and it's sort
Speaker:of a fancy word for abortion, but it's basically one and the same.
Speaker:It's aborting or rejecting a child.
Speaker:A father in the Roman culture could reject a newborn at birth.
Speaker:The child would be left exposed, often at a designated spot in the city.
Speaker:Girls and disabled children were exposed at higher rates.
Speaker:This was what they called family planning.
Speaker:It was not really what they considered a moral crisis.
Speaker:It was really not even debated in Roman society.
Speaker:I've just gone through a deep dive in Roman culture, and it was everywhere.
Speaker:The actual abortion industry existed in Rome in pr- prior to the first century,
Speaker:but definitely in the first century.
Speaker:No legal protection for newborns occurred until the fourth century when the
Speaker:Christians began to influence culture.
Speaker:The practice was so common it barely even registered as a topic worth discussing.
Speaker:It was just how families managed size and resources.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:The modern categories that we've looked at with, as we kind of transition here
Speaker:away from that, the abortion and inf- infanticide, I'll get it, those things
Speaker:were there, but let's kind of migrate into just sex, sexual exploitation,
Speaker:those ti- those kind of things.
Speaker:The categories that we talk about, th- they didn't really
Speaker:exist in the first century.
Speaker:There was no concept of sexual orientation that we define things like today.
Speaker:The Roman sexual framework was about power and status, not really gender preference.
Speaker:Kind of interesting when you really study and read the history.
Speaker:It was interesting for me, and I'm not saying this is a good thing,
Speaker:I'm just giving this reference.
Speaker:A free Roman man could use slaves, freedmen, and boys without scandal.
Speaker:The only shame, listen to this, was in being the passive partner.
Speaker:Romans were all about man, manhood, and it involved all of the things that
Speaker:I just mentioned because that was a status violation if you were passive.
Speaker:If you were manly and you were in control, that was good, even in all
Speaker:of these different sexual situations.
Speaker:but it wasn't really a moral one.
Speaker:It was a status type thing.
Speaker:All right, here's another word that's kind of interesting
Speaker:pederasty, P-E-D-E-R-A-S-T-Y,
Speaker:Pederasty was not a fringe practice.
Speaker:It was basically institutional, and it was accepted.
Speaker:The pattern goes back centuries before the New Testament era.
Speaker:I first kind of picked up on it when I was doing a study on Alexander the Great
Speaker:and his father, Philip II of Macedon.
Speaker:He had, multiple wives, and he also had a male companion.
Speaker:And in fact, there's some rumors that the male companion were, was
Speaker:part of the group that had Philip killed that led to Alexander moving
Speaker:into leadership at a very young age.
Speaker:So anyway, and it was accepted.
Speaker:It wasn't like people were hush-hush about it.
Speaker:Nope, it was there.
Speaker:Alexander had a few.
Speaker:He traveled and was at war, and there were two male companions that Alexander had.
Speaker:And in fact, I think we know that he never really had a female and,
Speaker:didn't have children, of course.
Speaker:Julius Caesar was mocked, as we mentioned earlier, not for his
Speaker:relationship with King Nicomedes of Bithynia, but for allegedly being the
Speaker:passive partner in the arrangement.
Speaker:That scandal was status, not about gender.
Speaker:Tiberius on Capri was notorious for his use of young boys.
Speaker:Suetonius describes it in graphic detail.
Speaker:Nero, who if you've studied the New Testament and all that went on
Speaker:there, he married two men in public ceremonies, one where he literally
Speaker:played and dressed up as the bride.
Speaker:Hadrian and Antinous, those are the most well-documented examples.
Speaker:Hadrian deified the boy after his death and built temples in
Speaker:his honor across the empire.
Speaker:Trajan, Domitian, Commodus, the list keeps going.
Speaker:Everyone.
Speaker:In fact, as I was reading through the emperors of the Roman Empire, there
Speaker:was only one or two that did not have some type of relationship like this.
Speaker:I mean, it was fascinating to me, interesting, bothersome,
Speaker:whatever words you wanna use.
Speaker:It was like, wow, this was… I mean, I was just trying to picture what that would
Speaker:be like in our modern culture, and, uh, you know, it just would not be acceptable.
Speaker:Common in Rome.
Speaker:It was not hidden.
Speaker:It was not debated.
Speaker:It was the way that power worked.
Speaker:You had the power, you could do whatever you want, and you did whatever you want
Speaker:with whomever you wanted to do it with.
Speaker:Having a boy was like having a villa, a privilege of rank.
Speaker:The boy had no choice.
Speaker:The slave had no voice.
Speaker:Consent, it wasn't really even a category.
Speaker:And the machine did not stop.
Speaker:It went underground after the church became more of a, a common thing.
Speaker:Institutional abuse in the church became, unfortunately, common too.
Speaker:Trafficking, exploitation, wherever authority goes unchecked, it's
Speaker:just part of what has always been.
Speaker:I am not saying it is good.
Speaker:I am not saying that I like it.
Speaker:I'm just giving the facts so that we understand what is going on in the world.
Speaker:The uniform changed, the operating word did not.
Speaker:Ownership, not stewardship.
Speaker:Same pattern that we discussed last week when we talked about war and slavery.
Speaker:All right, let's move on to some more fun topics.
Speaker:Prostitution, it actually was legal, taxed, and regulated.
Speaker:Rome had registered prostitutes and brothels.
Speaker:They were normal in the city infrastructure.
Speaker:Pompeii's ruins, which were beautifully captured because of the volcano that
Speaker:layered over it, and it was almost instantaneous in the way it did.
Speaker:Pompeii's ruins show brothels with menus painted on the walls, not
Speaker:hidden, not shameful for the customer.
Speaker:Prostitutes were overwhelmingly slaves or freed women.
Speaker:No legal standing.
Speaker:Exploitation built into the economy, not sexual freedom.
Speaker:A free Roman man visiting a prostitute was really not a big deal.
Speaker:It was unremarkable.
Speaker:It was expected.
Speaker:His wife Was for producing heirs, prostitute slaves, and
Speaker:concubines, or for everything else.
Speaker:And as we mentioned earlier, boys, mostly younger boys.
Speaker:Paul's Corinth was especially notorious.
Speaker:There's a Greek verb, and I'm gonna try to get this right, Korinthes
Speaker:zesti, to act like a Corinthian, literally meant to be sexually immoral.
Speaker:That is the city that Paul is writing to in 1 Corinthians 6 when he says, "Your
Speaker:body is a temple." He's injecting kingdom principles into this place where very
Speaker:few people are taking that seriously.
Speaker:Your body is a temple.
Speaker:The honest picture in all of this, Rome was a sexual
Speaker:free-for-all for people with power.
Speaker:Men with status had unlimited access.
Speaker:Everyone without status, slaves, freedwomen, boys, existed as sexual
Speaker:resources for the people above them.
Speaker:This, I'm, I'm not trying to be graphic with all of this, I'm not trying
Speaker:to, you know, make any points other than this is the world that the New
Speaker:Testament writers were addressing.
Speaker:They were living in it as they were writing the text.
Speaker:This is the context of what we're reading when we read the New Testament.
Speaker:When Paul says, "Flee pornia," he is not talking to people tempted
Speaker:to hold hands before marriage.
Speaker:He's talking to men who could walk into a brothel on the way home from
Speaker:church, and nobody would blink.
Speaker:The kingdom ethic, your body is a temple, honor one another, mutual
Speaker:submission, was radically precisely because it said everyone's body matters.
Speaker:Not just the powerful, everyone.
Speaker:The modern church treats sexual ethics like they are protecting
Speaker:people from temptation.
Speaker:The first-century church was protecting people from a system that treated human
Speaker:beings as consumable, as property.
Speaker:It's a different problem.
Speaker:It's a different problem entirely, and we have to understand that if
Speaker:we want to understand the context of the New Testament All of these
Speaker:things, all of it, infanticide, sexual exploitation, prostitution,
Speaker:pe- pederasty, background noise in Rome, all of it was just going on.
Speaker:It wasn't not-- it wasn't the emerging controversies.
Speaker:It wasn't the political back and forth.
Speaker:It existed every day, and it wasn't controversial at all.
Speaker:It wasn't cultural flashpoints.
Speaker:It's just the way things worked, and the New Testament writers
Speaker:lived right inside all of that.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:This is something that I wanna kinda merge to here because it's real important,
Speaker:and it's something that sorta bothers me when you start studying these kind
Speaker:of things, and it feeds into one of the catalysts for me to even begin this New
Speaker:Testament study in context and order.
Speaker:And that is this end of the world, things are about to end
Speaker:mindset that a lot of us have.
Speaker:So we just looked at Rome, and we saw what was going on there,
Speaker:and I was pseudo-graphic, but not as graphic as I could have been.
Speaker:I could have been, uh, beyond the PG-13 with some of the things
Speaker:I've been reading historically.
Speaker:I know that you have heard, and you may have said it, I may have said it,
Speaker:that things are worse than they have ever been, especially when we talk
Speaker:about some of these cultural issues.
Speaker:It's like, oh, this is so horrible, all that's going on with, with
Speaker:the sexual issues and the sexual identity and abortion and the way
Speaker:things are treated and y- you know, trafficking and things like that.
Speaker:And I'm not saying, I'm not saying they're great, okay?
Speaker:I'm-- That's not what I'm saying here.
Speaker:But what I'm saying is this: after what we just covered, just lightly,
Speaker:we can't say that that's true.
Speaker:We cannot say that, oh, things have just been getting worse and worse and worse.
Speaker:No They haven't.
Speaker:They might be bad, they might be the same truthfully, but
Speaker:infanticide was legal for centuries.
Speaker:Slavery, as we talked about last week, it's been universal
Speaker:across almost every civilization.
Speaker:Public execution, as we saw if you, you know, look at the cross, that
Speaker:was like weekend entertainment.
Speaker:You know, the things that they did for entertainment in the games,
Speaker:that was, like, incredibly violent.
Speaker:Women were property.
Speaker:Children obviously were expendable.
Speaker:Life expectancy was 25 to 35 years.
Speaker:Why?
Speaker:Because just about anything could kill you.
Speaker:Things were bad.
Speaker:The very idea that every person has inherent worth really did not exist
Speaker:until the movement that the New Testament launched carried it forward.
Speaker:By almost every measurable standard, infant mortality, literacy, life
Speaker:expectancy, violence per capita, legal protections, access to food and medicine,
Speaker:the world is better than it has ever been.
Speaker:It's not perfect.
Speaker:There's a lot going on, a lot of stuff happening, no doubt,
Speaker:and we've got access to it.
Speaker:We could see it with social media and the news.
Speaker:It's not even close to perfect, but measurably, it's demonstrably better.
Speaker:So why do people believe it?
Speaker:Like I said earlier, because we see everything now.
Speaker:It's in front of us.
Speaker:It's on our phones.
Speaker:We see it everywhere, all over the world.
Speaker:Rome's atrocities happened basically in silence.
Speaker:You know, they had some news, they had some things that were
Speaker:shared, but they, as best we could tell, they were pretty advanced.
Speaker:They didn't have television, they didn't have cell phones,
Speaker:they didn't have smartphones.
Speaker:Nobody live-streamed the exposure sites.
Speaker:We see every tragedy on the planet in real time and assume it is new.
Speaker:It is not new.
Speaker:It is just more visible And there's another reason.
Speaker:The worse than ever narrative needs you to be scared.
Speaker:Scared people do not ask questions.
Speaker:They follow instructions.
Speaker:They buy books.
Speaker:They keep going back to churches and institutions and keep paying tithes there.
Speaker:Scared people are a great group to have following you.
Speaker:It's very easy to manipulate them.
Speaker:Institutions really run on people who follow instructions.
Speaker:If things are getting worse, you need the building, you need the pastor, the system.
Speaker:You need that tithe.
Speaker:Fear keeps the machine running.
Speaker:That is not a biblical worldview.
Speaker:That is actually a business model.
Speaker:Rome was doing worse things before breakfast than most Americans
Speaker:will encounter in a lifetime.
Speaker:The difference is nobody had a phone to record it.
Speaker:All right, so let's start moving, though, towards what this is really all about.
Speaker:Let's look at what … This is kind of the heart of this episode.
Speaker:What does the New Testament, with all of that going on, with all of
Speaker:the … You know, we just compared our world to the Roman world, and
Speaker:we saw what was happening in Rome.
Speaker:Now let's jump into the New Testament and see what these authors, what the
Speaker:New Testament was really saying about all of those issues that were happening.
Speaker:we're going to be looking at what these topics actually said in the New Testament.
Speaker:All right, so let's start about what the New Testament says about abortion.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Here are all the verses
Speaker:Zero.
Speaker:There are none.
Speaker:There are no verses in the New Testament that reference abortion,
Speaker:infanticide, anything like that.
Speaker:Not one word, not a prohibition, not any permission to do it, not a
Speaker:passing reference, nothing at all.
Speaker:The loudest political issue in the American church has no direct New
Speaker:Testament support on either side.
Speaker:And again, I wanna be clear on this, I am not saying I am for abortion.
Speaker:That's not what I'm saying here.
Speaker:I'm just saying the New Testament had nothing to say about it.
Speaker:The closest you might get is Jesus said, "Let the little children
Speaker:come to me," in Matthew 19:14.
Speaker:that is not quite an anti-abortion message.
Speaker:The, the kingdom ethic that revalues the powerless is sort of what's being shared
Speaker:there, but it's actually about living children, not a statement on abortion.
Speaker:In Luke 1, this is another sort of thing that comes up.
Speaker:John leaps in Elizabeth's womb.
Speaker:It's often cited as proof of personhood before birth, and that's fine and that…
Speaker:And it does, but the text is really not addressing that.
Speaker:It's really about the prophetic recognition of the Messiah, not a
Speaker:policy statement on when life begins.
Speaker:I mean, yeah, it shows that, but it's two really indirect references.
Speaker:Neither one is addressing abortion.
Speaker:Outside the canon, we could recognize this.
Speaker:The Didache, late in the first century, says it plainly, "You shall not murder
Speaker:a child by abortion nor kill that which is born." Obviously, this is
Speaker:late in the first century, and the Christian world is getting around
Speaker:to addressing it, especially with all of it that was going on in Rome.
Speaker:We've already addressed that.
Speaker:The early church really clearly opposed it.
Speaker:It's not like we're saying they didn't, but just saying
Speaker:it's not in the New Testament.
Speaker:Um, the Didache is kinda like a church manual that was
Speaker:written after the apostles.
Speaker:And then here's what really matters most.
Speaker:The early church's response was really not to change the political
Speaker:structure or establish laws.
Speaker:They actually went to the exposure sites and took the babies home.
Speaker:They didn't lobby Caesar or the empire.
Speaker:They did not organize a march.
Speaker:They acted.
Speaker:The kingdom revalued every life.
Speaker:It did not need a policy position.
Speaker:It changed who counts as a person.
Speaker:All right, now let's move into the sex and the homosexuality
Speaker:and the sexual identity issue.
Speaker:Here is every … We're gonna go through it right here.
Speaker:Every relevant passage about those items in the New Testament.
Speaker:In Romans 1, this is one of the big ones, 26 through 27, Paul describes
Speaker:people who exchanged natural relations for those contrary to nature.
Speaker:Now- Little bit of an odd thing here in that some will say, and I actually
Speaker:happen to lean this way, that that was more about men, God's creation, having
Speaker:sexual relations, very similar to, what we saw in Genesis 6 and also in Sodom
Speaker:and Gomorrah with angelic beings, so with something outside their realm.
Speaker:Now, it could be males with males and females with females,
Speaker:and there is a reference there.
Speaker:But it seems to read a little bit different.
Speaker:Let's read that context.
Speaker:Verses 18 through 25 set up the entire passage as a description of
Speaker:idolatry-driven degradation, people who exchange the glory of God for images and
Speaker:were given up to dishonoring passions.
Speaker:Paul is describing Roman excess flowing from idol worship, not
Speaker:writing a systematic sexual ethic.
Speaker:Many in the first-century audience would've connected this to the
Speaker:exploitation and excess tied to pagan worship, and like I mentioned earlier,
Speaker:some would connect it all the way back to Genesis 6 where the angelic
Speaker:beings came down, saw that the, the daughters of men were beautiful, and
Speaker:there was some commingling that went on.
Speaker:Anyway, in 1 Corinthians 6:9, there are two Greek words that are in a vice list,
Speaker:and I'm gonna give these words a shot.
Speaker:Arsenokoitai and malakoi.
Speaker:And the first word, I'm not gonna try to repeat again, is a compound word,
Speaker:arsen meaning male and koita meaning bed.
Speaker:It is rare.
Speaker:It appears only here and in 1 Timothy.
Speaker:No surviving usage before Paul, which means he may have
Speaker:some say made this word up.
Speaker:He may have coined this word.
Speaker:Most likely it describes the active partner in exploit- exploitative male
Speaker:sexual practices in the Roman power system that we discussed earlier, men in power
Speaker:having a young boy at their disposal.
Speaker:Not necessarily orientation, though, not that it's your
Speaker:identity or something like that.
Speaker:Malakoi literally means soft ones, used broadly in Greek for moral weakness
Speaker:and luxury, in the sexual context, likely the passive exploited partner,
Speaker:often, as we mentioned earlier, a boy or a slave with no choice.
Speaker:The word homosexual that we throw around today was not really used as a
Speaker:translation for either of those words- Until the 1946 RSV version of the Bible.
Speaker:So 1946 is when that word first came to be.
Speaker:Before that, English Bibles used phrases like abusers of themselves with mankind.
Speaker:And so that's kind of an interesting twist there.
Speaker:And then let's go to 1 Timothy 1:10.
Speaker:That's that word arsenokoitai, arsenokoitai appears again in
Speaker:another vice list paired with enslavers and slave traders.
Speaker:The pairing with slave traders suggests that Paul is describing
Speaker:exploitative sexual practices tied to the trafficking system, not necessarily
Speaker:consensual adult relationships.
Speaker:Again, I am not saying I'm in favor of these things.
Speaker:I'm just saying that- It doesn't show up in the New Testament, and we've taken some
Speaker:of these scriptures out of context and made them huge deals in modern culture.
Speaker:Over in Jude 7, this is an interesting one that kind of goes
Speaker:back to what I mentioned earlier.
Speaker:Sodom and Gomorrah indulged in sexual immorality and pursued sarkos heteras,
Speaker:literally other flesh or strange flesh.
Speaker:That goes back to what I said.
Speaker:It echoes Genesis 6 and 19.
Speaker:The other flesh is angelic, not human.
Speaker:Very odd.
Speaker:Some people have not heard some of those things.
Speaker:I used to breeze right through Genesis 6, but if you start really studying
Speaker:that and reading the Book of Enoch and other things like that, you kind
Speaker:of go, "Hmm, there's more going on here." I think there's more going on
Speaker:when we talk about these topics, too.
Speaker:The men of Sodom wanted to assault, literally assault, there's a stronger
Speaker:word I could use there, I don't wanna have it bleeped out, assault the angels.
Speaker:This is about bound- boundary crossing between human and the divine.
Speaker:Don't confuse it with same-sex attraction.
Speaker:That's not what that meant.
Speaker:And what did Jesus say about homosexuality, same-sex identity,
Speaker:same-sex attraction, things like that?
Speaker:Let's get ready for it.
Speaker:Here's all the scriptures.
Speaker:None.
Speaker:Nothing.
Speaker:Not one recorded word.
Speaker:Now, we don't have everything that Jesus said.
Speaker:He may have said some things about it.
Speaker:We just do not have access to it because it's not there.
Speaker:On sex broadly, Paul's most extended teaching is 1 Corinthians.
Speaker:Remember who he, who he was talking to.
Speaker:1 Corinthians 7, marriage as the context for sexual expression, mutual
Speaker:obligation between husband and wife.
Speaker:His personal preference was for singleness practice, practical pastoral
Speaker:guidance, not systematic theology.
Speaker:In 1 Thessalonians 4, he said, "Abstain from porneia. Learn to control your
Speaker:own body in holiness and honor, not in passionate lust like the pagans."
Speaker:The contrast is always with the Roman system of an unchecked, lustful appetite.
Speaker:We could probably look at that and learn from that message today.
Speaker:Here's the summary.
Speaker:Zero verses on abortion, four passages on what may be considered homosexuality, all
Speaker:of them addressing Roman exploitation, idolatry, or angelic boundary crossing.
Speaker:None of them really addressing orientation or committed relationships between equals.
Speaker:The category did not exist in the first century.
Speaker:A handful of broader passages on sex, all of them sort of contrasting
Speaker:kingdom identity with the Roman system of sexual consumption.
Speaker:And Jesus said nothing about homosexuality, really sexual identity,
Speaker:and really nothing about abortion.
Speaker:The American church, especially the politicized American church, has built its
Speaker:two biggest political platforms on zero verses and four disputed passages about a
Speaker:world that looks nothing like the modern conversation Okay, so let's look at, and
Speaker:I brought this up quite a bit, I just wanna mention this briefly because it's
Speaker:important as we begin to wrap up here.
Speaker:Three kingdoms, as I've said before, in that first century, three kingdoms were
Speaker:operating simultaneously during that time.
Speaker:You know them.
Speaker:Rome ran on power.
Speaker:The religious system or the, the temple system, it ran on boundary markers.
Speaker:And then the Kingdom of God, which is really the topic of our New Testament, the
Speaker:Kingdom of God ran on identity and worth.
Speaker:And if one really understood identity and worth and inserted themselves,
Speaker:accepted themselves, moved themselves into the Kingdom of God, they operated
Speaker:differently than those other systems.
Speaker:The kingdom did not enter either system to argue on their terms.
Speaker:It entered like we saw in the Bible, like leaven enters dough.
Speaker:Jesus didn't protest Roman sexual ethics.
Speaker:He did not really speak against infanticide.
Speaker:He planted an identity inside his followers that made exploitation
Speaker:and disposability incompatible with who they were becoming.
Speaker:That is leaven.
Speaker:Doesn't replace the dough, it transforms it from within.
Speaker:The early church, what we see in the New Testament, it did
Speaker:not lobby against infanticide.
Speaker:They just showed up.
Speaker:The kingdom entered the situation through the hands and feet of citizens who already
Speaker:lived under a different value system.
Speaker:They served a different king.
Speaker:All right, now let's take a look.
Speaker:Let's kind of fast-forward.
Speaker:So we've kind of been going back and forth.
Speaker:First century, modern day, first century.
Speaker:Let's go back to the contrast that we see in our world today, okay?
Speaker:Before I go any further- Kind of did this earlier, but let
Speaker:me kind of be direct here.
Speaker:Silence is not endorsement.
Speaker:Just because the New Testament does not build a political platform
Speaker:on abortion does not mean that I think, and I said this earlier,
Speaker:that abortion is a good thing.
Speaker:It is not.
Speaker:Just because the New Testament addresses sexual exploitation in Rome rather
Speaker:than modern relationship categories does not mean I am endorsing anything.
Speaker:I'm not.
Speaker:Don't, don't even begin to say that.
Speaker:That's not what I'm doing here.
Speaker:What I'm saying is this, the first century church lived with all of these
Speaker:realities at full volume, infanticide, sexual exploitation, every variation
Speaker:you can imagine, and they did not make those issues the center of their mission.
Speaker:They made the kingdom the center.
Speaker:They focused on living out kingdom principles and loving people
Speaker:where they were, like Jesus did with the woman at the well.
Speaker:For those of you who understand history, these issues have been
Speaker:part of the world system forever.
Speaker:They were here before Rome.
Speaker:They were here during Rome.
Speaker:They are here now.
Speaker:They'll be here after us.
Speaker:I don't care how much hollering and screaming and legal system changes
Speaker:occur, they are still gonna exist.
Speaker:No political campaign has ever eliminated them.
Speaker:No culture war has ever won, and changing the law does not really change
Speaker:anything Roe v. Wade was overturned.
Speaker:Abortions still did not stop.
Speaker:They just moved.
Speaker:They went underground.
Speaker:They crossed state lines.
Speaker:Legislation moved the problem.
Speaker:It didn't solve it.
Speaker:The same is true for every sexual issue the church has tried to legislate away.
Speaker:Laws change behavior on the surface.
Speaker:They do not change hearts.
Speaker:The kingdom changes hearts.
Speaker:That is why it works and legislation does not.
Speaker:But leaven, the leaven works.
Speaker:It always has.
Speaker:The early church did not try to fix that Roman system from the outside.
Speaker:They entered into it, and they lived differently, and it changed the world,
Speaker:and it continues to do it today.
Speaker:Maybe, just maybe, we can learn from that.
Speaker:Maybe the strategy is not to fight harder on issues that have existed since
Speaker:the beginning of human civilization.
Speaker:Maybe the strategy, the mindset, what we should be spending our time doing
Speaker:is not to pass another law that moves the problem instead of solving it.
Speaker:Maybe the strategy is to do what they did.
Speaker:Live the kingdom.
Speaker:Love the people.
Speaker:Let the leaven work
Speaker:And here, this is a tough one.
Speaker:Here's the part nobody wants to say out loud In the 300s, I was just reading
Speaker:about this the other day with Constantine, and when Christianity be- Christianity
Speaker:became official, it became okay.
Speaker:You know, they weren't being persecuted and killed.
Speaker:When Christianity became the official religion of the empire in the 300s,
Speaker:the church finally had the political power to ban these practices.
Speaker:Constantine outlawed infanticide.
Speaker:Later emperors criminalized same-sex acts.
Speaker:The church got what it wanted, laws on the books.
Speaker:And what happened?
Speaker:The practices did not stop.
Speaker:They migrated.
Speaker:They went underground.
Speaker:And in some cases, they moved inside the institution itself.
Speaker:This is what should bother us.
Speaker:The same religious system that condemns sexual immorality on the surface has been
Speaker:hiding priests with boys for centuries.
Speaker:The same pattern that defined Roman pederasty, owner and owned, powerful
Speaker:and powerless, the uniform changed only.
Speaker:Now, God was part of the equation.
Speaker:They were using their power to do it.
Speaker:The, the crime didn't stop, but the uniform and where it happened did.
Speaker:And before, I know a lot of us as evangelicals might say, "Well,
Speaker:that was the Catholic Church."
Speaker:Before we say that that is the Catholic problem, it is not.
Speaker:Many may remember the name Ted Haggard, big megachurch pastor, the pastor of
Speaker:one of the largest evangelical churches in America, New Life Church in Colorado
Speaker:Springs, near where I hung out and went to Bible school and lived for a little while.
Speaker:He was the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, and he
Speaker:preached hard against homosexuality, and he did it from one of the
Speaker:biggest pulpits in the country.
Speaker:Yet, in 2006, he was exposed for a multi-year relationship
Speaker:with a male escort.
Speaker:The man who led the evangelical charge against homosexuality was
Speaker:living the very thing he condemned.
Speaker:And we've seen this often, not just the church, the political system the church
Speaker:built alliances with, the political parties that they kind of joined
Speaker:forces with have had the same problem.
Speaker:Larry Craig, a U.S. senator from Idaho, voted against gay rights his entire
Speaker:career, And then, some of you may remember this story, in 2007, he was arrested
Speaker:in a Minneapolis airport, not, not even in his own home, in a dang airport.
Speaker:airport restroom for soliciting sex from an undercover male officer.
Speaker:The senator who voted no on the Senate floor was saying yes, it's not funny,
Speaker:in the airport bathroom in Minnesota.
Speaker:2,000 years later, still there.
Speaker:Rome did it in the open.
Speaker:The church hid it in the rectory.
Speaker:the evangelical pastor hid it behind the pulpit.
Speaker:The senator hid it behind his voting record.
Speaker:The behavior never changed.
Speaker:It just found new rooms.
Speaker:That is what happens when you try to legislate heart change.
Speaker:The behavior does not disappear.
Speaker:It finds new rooms to hide.
Speaker:And, and when those rooms belong to the people doing the condemning, you
Speaker:have the deepest hypocrisy imaginable.
Speaker:With that said Here's what the modern church did.
Speaker:It took the two topics where the New Testament is most silent
Speaker:and turned them into the two pillars of its political identity.
Speaker:Abortion, zero direct New Testament verses, became the
Speaker:single issue voting litmus test for millions of American Christians.
Speaker:Entire denominations organized their political engagement around it.
Speaker:Voter guides, marches, sidewalk protests built on something that
Speaker:the New Testament was silent about.
Speaker:Homosexuality, sexual identity, a handful of verses addressing Roman
Speaker:exploitation, not modern relationships.
Speaker:It became the defining culture war battle of a generation.
Speaker:Denominations split.
Speaker:Parents and children split.
Speaker:Relationships split.
Speaker:Families fractured.
Speaker:Entire ministries built on four disputed passages applied to a situation that the
Speaker:writers do not appear to be addressing.
Speaker:Meanwhile, the things Paul actually hammered on, unity across ethnic and
Speaker:social lines, care for the poor, rejecting the old covenant boundary system, mutual
Speaker:submission, identity in Christ over identity in the empire, those barely get
Speaker:a mention in modern Christian politics.
Speaker:The kingdom that has been working like leaven inside
Speaker:these situations got hijacked.
Speaker:The church started using moral categories, the religious system's
Speaker:tool, and political power, Rome's tool, to fight culture wars on issues
Speaker:the apostles chose not to legislate.
Speaker:The leaven was replaced with boundary markers and voter guides.
Speaker:Here is the very uncomfortable question: If the apostles had the Holy Spirit, lived
Speaker:inside the Roman world at full volume, and chose not to build political positions on
Speaker:these two issues, what does it say about us that we made them the center of ours?
Speaker:Not sure
Speaker:I think that what we could do is we could look at an example that we saw.
Speaker:Let's look at the Pharisees.
Speaker:The old covenant, the religious system, all of that did was identify the sin,
Speaker:label the sinner, enforce the boundary.
Speaker:We've talked about that in other episodes.
Speaker:You are unclean.
Speaker:You're out.
Speaker:Come back when you have fixed yourself.
Speaker:The entire religious system ran on sorting people into categories and
Speaker:controlling access, identifying people, putting them in corners.
Speaker:Most American churches, as we said earlier, still run on that method,
Speaker:whether they would admit it or not.
Speaker:Let's look at the contrast of that, the Jesus method that
Speaker:we saw in the New Testament.
Speaker:Every time Jesus encountered someone the religious system had
Speaker:excluded, He did the opposite.
Speaker:Women caught in adultery in John 8 The woman caught in adultery, John 8.
Speaker:Pharisees brought her to be condemned.
Speaker:Jesus knelt in the dirt and sent the accusers home.
Speaker:"Neither do I condemn you." He did not endorse the behavior.
Speaker:He refused to let the religious system use her as an example.
Speaker:Zacchaeus, I love the story of Zacchaeus in Luke 19.
Speaker:Tax collector, traitor, publicly despised.
Speaker:Jesus invited himself to dinner.
Speaker:The religious crowd grumbled.
Speaker:Zacchaeus changed on his own after being seen.
Speaker:His encounter with Jesus Christ was not just leaven, it was massive.
Speaker:It changed him.
Speaker:Not after being shamed, after coming into contact with the Kingdom of God,
Speaker:the, the living and walking Kingdom of God that was embodied in Jesus Christ.
Speaker:He was changed.
Speaker:The woman, oh, I love this story.
Speaker:The woman at the well, John 4.
Speaker:She's a Samaritan.
Speaker:She'd had five marriages, currently living with someone.
Speaker:Jesus did not lead with her sexual history.
Speaker:He identified it.
Speaker:He led with living water.
Speaker:She actually, if you really study it out, seems to have become the
Speaker:first evangelist to her entire town.
Speaker:It says all of them heard that good news because she shared it in that town.
Speaker:Lepers, untouchable under the purity code.
Speaker:Jesus touched them.
Speaker:The Old Covenant said contamination flows outward.
Speaker:Jesus reversed that direction.
Speaker:Wholeness flowed from Him into them.
Speaker:The Kingdom of God went from Him into them because He touched them.
Speaker:Every encounter, Jesus entered the situation, met the person where they were,
Speaker:and let the relationship do the work.
Speaker:He never sorted people out first.
Speaker:That's the religious system of the first century.
Speaker:Truthfully, it's the religious system of today.
Speaker:He never required cleanup before contact.
Speaker:He never used someone's sin as a reason to withhold his presence.
Speaker:The Pharisee method says, "Fix yourself, then you can belong." The
Speaker:Jesus method says, "You belong now.
Speaker:Let us grow together." You know, we looked at it in other episodes,
Speaker:the latter in 2 Peter 1:5-7.
Speaker:It kind of lays out the Kingdom growth model, and it starts with faith, not
Speaker:performance, and then it ends, of course, the destination is love, not compliance.
Speaker:It's a path It's not a gate.
Speaker:It's not a big old wall that people can't get over.
Speaker:It's a path, and it has an open door.
Speaker:Nobody gets kicked off that ladder for being on a lower rung.
Speaker:Apply this.
Speaker:A woman considering abortion does not need a voter guide.
Speaker:She needs a community that will walk with her, support her, help
Speaker:her raise the child, or connect her with a family that will.
Speaker:Remember what the early church did with the exposed infants.
Speaker:They didn't protest.
Speaker:They didn't change the system.
Speaker:They just showed up.
Speaker:A woman who has had an abortion and is grieving does not need condemnation.
Speaker:She needs someone beside her.
Speaker:The church that screams from the sidewalk outside the clinic has
Speaker:no ministry for her the day after.
Speaker:A person with same-sex attraction does not need to be told how horrible they are.
Speaker:They need a community where they can be honest without being cast out.
Speaker:People dealing with exploitative attractions or compulsive behaviors or
Speaker:any of those things, any type of sexual type issues, they don't n- they just
Speaker:really need guardrails and community.
Speaker:They need to interact with the kingdom of God They need to see Jesus, and that's
Speaker:what the kingdom of God does through us.
Speaker:Hopefully those that are in the kingdom, they don't need to be
Speaker:exiled, and that's what we really have done, is we've exiled those people.
Speaker:We've told them they don't belong.
Speaker:That's not what we see.
Speaker:The New Testament response to these issues was never legislation.
Speaker:It was ministry.
Speaker:Not you are wrong, but you are here and you belong, and here is a path forward.
Speaker:The modern church replaced the ladder with a gate, and the gate only opens for people
Speaker:who already look like they have arrived.
Speaker:Now let's take a look at that first century audience.
Speaker:They heard a kingdom announcement that revalued every human life without
Speaker:launching a political campaign.
Speaker:The response was embodied, not legislated, The modern church
Speaker:reads the New Testament backwards.
Speaker:We're scanning it for ammunition.
Speaker:What is that scripture that will allow me to put people out?
Speaker:The context gets stripped, the Roman world disappears, and the text gets conscripted
Speaker:into culture wars it never signed up for.
Speaker:The kingdom ethic says every person has worth.
Speaker:The unborn child, the person whose sexuality makes you uncomfortable,
Speaker:the teenage, the teenager questioning their identity, all of them.
Speaker:The moment we use one group's worth to deny another's, we have left the kingdom
Speaker:and we've picked up Rome's playbook.
Speaker:The kingdom was never a political party.
Speaker:The moment it became one, stopped transforming, started conforming.
Speaker:The apostles chose a different strategy.
Speaker:They did not fight.
Speaker:They did not endorse.
Speaker:They really did not legislate.
Speaker:They lived differently inside those realities.
Speaker:That is still the strategy All right.
Speaker:I know that some of the things I have brought up here have
Speaker:made some people uncomfortable.
Speaker:It actually kind of has been for me.
Speaker:I knew it would.
Speaker:Some of you are already composing or getting ready to type out your comments
Speaker:on YouTube or social media if you've seen clips and things like that.
Speaker:I'm okay with that.
Speaker:I understand this is not a comfortable topic.
Speaker:But here's what I keep coming back to.
Speaker:The New Testament writers, they weren't naive.
Speaker:They weren't ignorant.
Speaker:They were not sheltered.
Speaker:They lived in a world where infanticide was routine and sexual exploitation
Speaker:was a privilege of power, and they chose to talk about a kingdom.
Speaker:They did not avoid these topics because they were afraid.
Speaker:They entered those realities with something that works from the inside
Speaker:out, like leaven, like a mustard seed.
Speaker:They built communities where every life mattered, where bodies were honored,
Speaker:where exploitation had no place, not because they legislated it away,
Speaker:because the identity they carried made it incompatible with who they were.
Speaker:And they were doing that inside that Roman world system that we discussed earlier.
Speaker:They made it work even when they were being persecuted.
Speaker:Maybe the church's job was never to win the culture war
Speaker:on abortion or homosexuality.
Speaker:Maybe it was to be the leaven inside every situation, including the uncomfortable
Speaker:ones, the ones we may not understand, the m- the ones we may not get.
Speaker:I don't understand a lot of this stuff.
Speaker:I don't understand those things.
Speaker:Maybe we're not supposed to.
Speaker:The kingdom does not need political power to do its work.
Speaker:It just needs presence, our presence, citizens living the principles inside
Speaker:whatever system they find themselves in, whatever situation, whatever
Speaker:country, whatever world, whatever nation that we happen to be in.
Speaker:The results may not look like the perfection we desire,
Speaker:but the kingdom is in there.
Speaker:Why is the kingdom in there?
Speaker:Why is the kingdom in there?
Speaker:Because you're in there.
Speaker:It has been in there since the first century.
Speaker:The kingdom enters these realities and works from within.
Speaker:That is what leaven does.
Speaker:And the nature of the king we serve doesn't need the credit.
Speaker:The principles work whether the system acknowledges the king or not.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:Now Some of this has been welling inside me since I started reading
Speaker:this New Testament in context.
Speaker:As I said at the beginning, I encourage you to do the same.
Speaker:Go check out that reading plan, k2m.foundation/nt90.
Speaker:I'm not saying you'll start thinking like me.
Speaker:You might still go, "Tim, I don't ever wanna go down this
Speaker:path." I think you need to.
Speaker:Get you thinking differently because what I'm saying, what I'm hearing coming out
Speaker:of my mouth is very, very different than what came out of my mouth before I read
Speaker:the New Testament in context and in order.
Speaker:K2m.foundation/nt90, just go get it.
Speaker:Start reading through it.
Speaker:I think it will be helpful for you.
Speaker:Thanks for listening in.
Speaker:This is a tough, tough, tough topic.
Speaker:I want you to hear my message, though.
Speaker:The kingdom is here, and you represent it.
Speaker:Take that seriously.
Speaker:This is Tim Winders.
Speaker:Keep digging, keep studying, keep learning.
Speaker:See you in the next episode
