Jesus, a Lover of Man?
Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus, therefore, saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing by, He said to His mother, “Woman, behold your son!” Then He said to the disciple, “Behold your mother!” And from that hour that disciple took her to his own home.
John 19:25-27
The question surrounding the sexuality of Jesus has troubled theologians for ages. Since the Gospel is very silent on this issue, theologians have articulated that Jesus stayed unmarried because his mission was to die for the sins of people and not to start a family. The Da Vinci Code might be the first movie to portray Jesus in a different light as a married man (although the Gnostic writing of second century give some hint) and the recent Netflix movie “The first temptation of Christ” displays Jesus as a homosexual, while the play “Jesus the queen of heaven” by Jo Clifford shows Jesus as a transgender woman because she (he?) wants to see her (him?) as she (he?) is. Paul Oestreicher, an Anglican priest on the Guardian, writes:
That disciple was John whom Jesus, the gospels affirm, loved in a special way. All the other disciples had fled in fear. Three women but only one man had the courage to go with Jesus to his execution. That man clearly held a unique place in Jesus’s affection. Heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual: Jesus could have been any of these. There can be no certainty. Which? The homosexual option simply seems the most likely.
Was Jesus gay? Probably
It is true that Jesus became “one of us in human nature,” which doesn’t mean he’s a transgendered figure or bisexual. If that is the case, is it the correct image that a guy with schizophrenia sees Jesus as having the same disorder, using biblical data of prayer? You see, Bible interpretation is a tedious task. Dr. Carson described it as “thinking God’s thought after him.” We aren’t to see Jesus as we are, but we are to see Jesus as he is and get transformed into the image of the Son of God. That’s the Christian goal.
It was not exactly that he became more “one of us” in a way that
Jesus in History, Thought, and Culture, pg. 839
modern secular people would recognize, but rather that his divine humanity
came to be seen as more tender, more to be loved and empathized with, in its
simplicity and purity.
Selective reading of Bible passages can lead to errors in biblical interpretation. One can select a certain portion of text and use it to describe the entire truth (e.g., looking at a certain passage to see Jesus as gay and using it to describe the whole sexuality of Jesus), but the conclusion is devastating. Both cultural and historical contexts are mandatory to achieve a closer understanding of closer to the meaning of the text. Reading ancient literature with a modern perspective is one of the worst fallacies people fall into these days. Some examples:
John 4:7-28: Jesus alone with a Samaritan known for her lewd lifestyle in the community. (Why?)
John 6:52:55: Jesus is preaching cannibalism. (How weird?)
John 11:5: A bisexual Jesus? The text says Jesus loved Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. (Something is not right here.)
John 21:15-19: Jesus chatting with Peter. (You being a guy ask a guy for a proposal.)
Does the idea of John being the disciple whom Jesus loved suggest some kind of homosexual nature? By no means. There’s not a single instance of Jesus claiming John to be his “most loved disciple.” There are five instances where the beloved apostle is mentioned (13:23, 19:26, 20:2, 21:7, 21:20), and not a single one hints at any sexual connection with our Lord Jesus. How perverse is the human mind to destroy the holy nature of Jesus? Remember that it’s the John who identified himself with that title. I like the way Spurgeon described the situation in his sermon:
Let us not, because John was specially loved, think less, even in the slightest degree, of the love which Jesus Christ gave forth to the rest of his chosen… Knowing it to be the truth, he does not hesitate to say it: he was sure that Jesus loved him better than others, and, though he wondered at it more than anyone else did, he so rejoiced in the fact that he could not help publishing it, whatever the consequences to himself might be.
You can select any events from the life of Christ (or the entire Bible) and prove any point you wish to make. That’s what the Pharisees did. They saw Jesus preaching and teaching to the “marginalized” people and called him a “sinner and drunkard.” They saw Jesus healing the sick and called him “demon-possessed.” They saw him preaching the way of life and called him “blasphemer” and crucified him. Let us not again fall into the same trap of the “intelligent” people and crucify the Lord of Life by mishandling the word that he gave to us.
References
https://www.spurgeon.org/resource-library/sermons/the-disciple-whom-jesus-loved#flipbook/
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-46551824
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2012/apr/20/was-jesus-gay-probably
Jesus in History, Thought, and Culture, pg. 839
Exegetical Fallacies, D A Carson, pg 10, 30
Note: The review was originally published on the author’s blog and reposted with her permission.
