Did Jesus talk about Homosexuality?

I have heard the retort for a great number of years: Jesus did not say anything about homosexuality. Typically, the person making the retort does so while holding that homosexuality is a Biblically permissible lifestyle. Many Christians struggle to answer the question because most of the Scriptures that they may know are not in the Gospels: Genesis 1: 27-28; 2: 24; Leviticus 18: 22, 20:13; 1 Kings 15: 12; Romans 1: 17, 26-27; 1 Corinthians 6: 9; 7:2; 1 Timothy 1: 8-11; Jude 1: 7.

Jesus spoke about homosexuality in three respects:

(1) In two places of Scripture we see Jesus reference the practice of homosexuality as a sin: Mark 7: 18-23 and Revelation 2: 14. In both passages, English translations of the Bible will use words like fornications, sexual immorality, acts of immorality, etc. to translate for the original word “porneia”. The Greek word was an umbrella term for many sexual immorality acts: prostitution, fornication, homosexuality, adultery, etc.

(2) To suggest that Jesus did not reference homosexuality in His teaching is to denounce the deity of Jesus (to say that He was and is not God). Who wrote the Bible? If you believe that God wrote the Bible and that Jesus, the son, and God, the father, are one then you not only do well (James 2: 19) but also should believe that Jesus is the author of the Bible. If the Bible condemns something then Jesus also condemns it as well.

(3) Culturally, Jesus did not have to mention everything. In the Old Testament (Torah), in Jewish practice and in cultural ethics of the day, homosexuality was considered sinful. Jesus did not identify everything wrong in some list to make sure that we heard HIm state that it was incorrect. The listeners and culture of Jesus would have understood that homosexuality was sinful. The context, for which Jesus taught, held a certain worldview (as spelled out in the Old Testament) concerning ethical behavior that the people of that day understood. The fact that Jesus did not PROMOTE it, as to correct misunderstandings of previous teaching, is condemning enough.

If you are not cautious and align yourself with a “Bible” teacher that promotes homosexuality then you could have the same condemnation found from Jesus in Revelation 2:20-22. The passage tells us that people that promote sexual immorality to others are like Jezebel. Paul wrote to the believers in Colossae, “6 Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, 7 having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and overflowing with gratitude. 8 See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ (Colossians 2: 6-8, NASB95).”