Sunday, February 23, 2025

Today's Scripture
1 Timothy 1:1–14

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope, To Timothy, my loyal child in the faith: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. I urge you, as I did when I was on my way to Macedonia, to remain in Ephesus so that you may instruct certain people not to teach any different doctrine, and not to occupy themselves with myths and endless genealogies that promote speculations rather than the divine training that is known by faith.

But the aim of such instruction is love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith. Some people have deviated from these and turned to meaningless talk, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make assertions. Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it legitimately. This means understanding that the law is laid down not for the innocent but for the lawless and disobedient, for the godless and sinful, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their father or mother, for murderers, fornicators, sodomites, slave traders, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to the sound teaching that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, which he entrusted to me.

I am grateful to Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me, because he judged me faithful and appointed me to his service, even though I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.

Reflection

In his 2006 book, Sex and the Single Savior, the biblical scholar Dale B. Martin writes that the interpretation of the Greek word arsenokoites, found in verse 10 above, as a condemnation of modern homosexuality, is “driven more by ideological interests in marginalizing gay and lesbian people than by the general strictures of historical criticism.”

You can see an evolving sensitivity to the translation of this term (and its cousin, malakos, found elsewhere in the New Testament) in current English Bible translations. The NRSV, published in 1989, rendered the term in 1 Timothy 10 “sodomites,” but the updated edition of the NRSV published in 2021 changed it to “men who engage in illicit sex,” and there’s a footnote to explain that the meaning of the Greek term is uncertain.

With apologies to those who prefer devotions that avoid this subject altogether, the experience of LGBTQIA+ people of faith requires that we approach very seriously the interpretation of scriptures that have been used to condemn peoples’ sexuality. Another biblical scholar (Martti Nissinen, Homoeroticism in The Biblical World: A Historical Perspective) observes that 1 Timothy 10 “has had a deep influence in the way homosexuals have been treated in Christian communities, in spite of the fact that the actual meaning ... is ambiguous.” It matters how we interpret a single biblical word.

Martin’s study of appearances of arsenokoites in other, non-biblical Greek literature show a connection to economic exploitation. As it does here in 1 Timothy, the term almost always appears in a list of other sins, but Martin points out that those lists are almost never related to sex. Instead, they include transgressions related to robbery and theft. So the sin being condemned in between murder and slave-trading is likely to be some expression of sex that was economically exploitative in some way and not homosexuality as a whole.

The way we understand peoples’ sexual orientation today differs from the ancient (including biblical) apprehension of sexuality as expressed through a range of acts and behaviors (men could have intimate relationships with other men and not be considered “gay,” for example). Our understanding and our experience have shown us that people experience fulfilling, faithful, intimate relationships with people of the same sex just as they do with people of the opposite sex, because intimate relationship involves our whole selves, created in the image of God, and not just discrete acts.

Surely, scripture insists that our intimate relationships bear on our faith; each of us is called to love God and love our neighbor through this area of our lives (recall Paul’s description of love in 1 Corinthians 13 as “patient ... kind ... not envious or boastful or rude”). Only, let us be sure that our appropriation of scripture does not pronounce condemnation where it is not warranted.

“There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1).

Prayer
Creator God, we bless you for creating us in your image, male and female, for relationship with one another. May we honor your image in all our relationships, and may the love we give be a source of encouragement, compassion, and justice. In Christ, with Christ, through Christ. Amen.

Written by Rocky Supinger, Senior Associate Pastor

Reflection and Prayer © Fourth Presbyterian Church

Devotion index by date | I’d like to receive daily devotions by email