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Both Jesus and his brother James discuss how temptation turns into sin. For Jesus, hating or lusting mentally commits murder or adultery. James concurs with Jesus’ teaching and discusses how desire, temptation, and sin interrelate.
Since getting temptation, desire, and sin right matters so much for our personal growth, we need to get this right. And besides, current discussions on same-sex attraction revolve around these same subjects. So it is also a timely subject for discussion.
If you are coming here via social media, consider reading my article where I clarify my argument by clicking here.
According to Christian theology, God created humanity in his image as both male and female. And so humans live and marry according to these sexes: males marry females. The first marriage recorded in Scripture narrates such a relationship: Adam marries Eve. They cleaved together.
Yet some people romantically desire those of their same sex. And the reality is that many Christians today have experienced same-sex attraction, do experience it, or will experience it in the future. For this reason, believers should seek to understand those who experience same-sex attraction. That way, we can gain understanding in order to increase our ability to love and to support others.
By looking at Scripture and history, we can start to understand same-sex attraction through the biblical concept of desire. Scripture defines desire as a neutral organ that can either tend to vice or to virtue. The theologian Maximos (580–662) understood desires similarly and provides conceptual clarity on the matter of desire.
Jesus denied pleasure in the desert and embraced pain at the cross for our sake. In each synoptic Gospel, Jesus begins his ministry after his baptism by his temptation in the wilderness. And in each Gospel, Jesus ends his sufferings at the cross. Jesus denies the pleasures of temptation in the wilderness and embraces the pain of death at the cross. He did both for our sake.
Maximos the Confessor (580–662) observed this twofold overcoming of temptation in his twenty-first reply to a bishop named Thalassios. And I think he is on to something (if not in whole, in part).
Here’s how I think it works. Jesus overcame the temptations of pleasure in the desert and pain at the cross in order to defeat demonic powers, disarming them, and providing us
Anthony Bradley recently lamented the influence of what he calls Great Commission Christianity (GCC) because it only represents a partial understanding of the Gospel (he calls it “accidentally deficient”). What GCC misses, argues Bradley, is a right focus on the Gospel’s effect of restoring the creation. Pointedly, for Bradley, this means that GCC Christians do not prioritize social issues and so social justice.
His alternative, Cosmic Redemption Christianity (CRC), affirms what GCC does but also includes cosmic restoration. Put simply, it includes evangelism and the drive “to liberate creation from the power of the devil until Christ returns.”
Is he right? Is GCC an accidentally deficient version of Christianity? As is often the case, things are not so simple. Here’s a short review of the two sides which will hopefully clarify the current debate.
One of the challenges of the twenty-first century is its theological diversity. Right now within evangelicalism, a number of theologians affirm some form of divine change or passibility. But Christianity has seen such an affirmation as a Category One breach of orthodoxy.
How should we understand this? Answer: we should be slow to speak, quick to listen, and try to get behind the language of these theologians.
According to the Bible, Jesus is divine. More accurately, divinity and humanity unite in the person of Jesus. Jesus grew, lived, and still now lives as a true human. Yet he also has always been divine.
But don’t take my word for it. Take the Bible’s.
