What Does the Bible Say About Homosexuality?

A handful of passages speak to same-sex sexual behavior directly: the account of Sodom (Genesis 19), two prohibitions in the Law (Leviticus 18:22; 20:13), and three places in the New Testament (Romans 1:26-27; 1 Corinthians 6:9-11; 1 Timothy 1:10). That is a short list, and it is worth being honest about its size — the Bible says far more about pride, greed, and the love of money than it does about this. But the passages are not nothing, and the historic Christian reading has understood them to place same-sex sexual activity outside God's design. An honest answer takes the texts seriously without inflating them beyond their place in Scripture.

The traditional Christian view does not actually begin with the prohibitions; it begins with the design. When Jesus is asked about marriage, He reaches back to creation — male and female, joined as one flesh (quoting Genesis 1 and 2). In this reading, the Bible's positive vision is that sexual intimacy belongs within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman, and every other sexual expression — heterosexual sex outside marriage included — falls short of that design. The point is not that same-sex relationships are uniquely terrible, but that the Bible holds out one specific picture of marriage as the place sex belongs.

For roughly two thousand years, the overwhelming majority of Christians across every tradition have read these passages to mean that same-sex sexual activity is not part of God's design for human flourishing. But notice how Paul handles it in 1 Corinthians 6. He lists same-sex behavior alongside greed, drunkenness, theft, and slander — a sweeping catalog that implicates nearly everyone — and then says, "and that is what some of you were." The accent falls on transformation and welcome, not exclusion: "you were washed." The historic view has never been that this sin is unforgivable or that those who experience same-sex attraction are beyond grace. Quite the opposite.

Honesty requires naming that a minority of sincere, Bible-believing Christians have come to a different conclusion. They argue that the biblical authors addressed exploitative acts — temple prostitution, abuse, excess — rather than the kind of loving, committed same-sex partnership not in view in the ancient world, and that the Bible's deeper trajectory is toward inclusion. The majority of scholars and churches across history have not found these readings persuasive, and we think the traditional view best fits the texts. But this is a real disagreement among people who love Jesus and take Scripture seriously, and it should be named honestly rather than caricatured. We can hold our convictions firmly and still treat those who differ with respect.

This distinction matters enormously, and it is often missed. In the traditional Christian framework, temptation is not the same as sin — Jesus Himself was tempted in every way, yet without sin. Experiencing same-sex attraction is not something a person chooses, and it is not itself an act of disobedience; it is one of countless ways every human being experiences desires that must be stewarded. Many faithful Christians experience same-sex attraction and follow Jesus in costly obedience, whether through celibate singleness or other paths. To treat the attraction itself as uniquely shameful is both untrue to the Bible and deeply unkind. The call to all of us — gay or straight — is to bring our whole sexuality under the lordship of Christ.

Whatever a person concludes about the ethics, the Bible is unmistakable on this: every human being is made in the image of God, infinitely valuable, and deeply loved by Him. The church has too often failed here — meeting gay people with contempt, cruelty, or cold exclusion rather than the love of Christ. That is its own sin, and it grieves God. Jesus reserved His harshest words for the self-righteous and His tenderness for those the religious crowd despised. A Christian who holds the historic view and uses it as a weapon has misunderstood the gospel entirely. Truth and love are not rivals; in Jesus they are never separated. Every person — without exception — is welcome to come to Him.