BJUnity

Jeffrey Hoffman

“A brother at Scetis committed a fault. A council was called to which Abba Moses* was invited, but he refused to go to it. Then the priest sent someone to say to him, ‘Come, for everyone is waiting for you.’ So he got up and went. He took a leaking jug, filled it with water and carried it with him. The others came out to meet him and said to him, ‘What is this, Father?’ The old man said to them, ‘My sins run out behind me, and I do not see them, and today I am coming to judge the errors of another.’ When they heard that they said no more to the brother but forgave him.”
— from The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, translated, with a foreword by Benedicta Ward, SLG

One of my little regrets in life is that I have not yet had the opportunity to learn to read Koine Greek, the original language of much of the New Testament. It isn’t enough to have good friends who do, I find. I simply want to ferret out meanings and nuances of meaning for myself. But for now I must take the word of those whose scholarship is recognized in order to understand where translated scriptures are unclear. More on that later…

Very often, when I have told a fundamentalist friend or family member for the first time that I am gay while also affirming my continued belief in Jesus Christ, I have heard some version of this response: “What about Romans 1?” Inevitably, these people are fixated on verses 26 and 27 of that first chapter in Romans which the King James version renders as “For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.”

I will let others, more skilled in the linguistic application and the cultural zeitgeist of vestigial Hellenistic Judaism in St. Paul’s day explain who and what is being discussed in Romans 1: 26-27. I want to talk about the more obvious thing that is going on here in this text.

When we approach the Bible, we have to remember that it was not divided by its authors into chapters and verses. Those are much later editorial divisions made for convenience’s sake. Rather, like most writers, these authors used sentences and paragraphs to organize their thoughts in much the same way I am writing here.

Romans is a pastoral letter from St. Paul to the local church in Rome. Before his conversion on the road to Damascus, we know St. Paul was a lawyer; a sort of prosecuting attorney for the Sanhedrin who persecuted Christians. That his writing would therefore have a cause-and-effect logic to its reasoning and a persuasive rhetorical tone seems likely. In fact, it does. The legal reasoning is close to the surface throughout Romans.

St. Paul spends the first part of this chapter talking about idolatry among pagan peoples who do not believe in the one true God, but have instead exchanged His glory for that of graven images, expressly forbidden in the Ten Commandments, and abhorrent to any believer of the Abrahamic tradition of God, golden calves notwithstanding. If we back up in Romans 1 just a few verses before the verses of seeming condemnation for gay people we read “Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.” So, the great Apostle is saying that whatever he is talking about in Romans 1: 26 and 27 — whether it be temple prostitution, as some scholars claim, or masturbation, as others claim — is the effect, the end result of this pagan idolatry, not its cause. I suggest that those who are reading condemnation in these two little verses are reading the entire passage upside down.

Bearing in mind, as we have, that St. Paul did not think in terms of chapters and verses when he was writing this letter, we must continue reading. We turn the page to Romans chapter 2 and we suddenly find that “Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things. ”

He seems to be saying in Romans 2, “well, you thought you didn’t see yourself in what I said before (in Romans 1), but you aren’t going to get off so easily. You are guilty, too.” This echoes and amplifies the seventh chapter of St. Matthew’s gospel, where Jesus says “Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”

Those of us who memorized the so-called Romans Road to salvation as children will start to pick up the larger theme in the epistle at this point: the argument that the Apostle Paul is making is summarized in Romans 3:23 “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” [There is that theme of God’s glory, which carries straight on through from the first chapter.] He even goes to the trouble to spell it out again in chapter 3 that justification is through faith, and not by keeping the works of the law. In other words, he is making the rhetorical case for the universal need for a salvific Messiah, the person of Jesus Christ.

An over-arching theme in St. Paul’s writings is that the law condemns all. “There is none righteous, no not one,” he says in Romans 3: 10. But the good news, the gospel, is that “He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. ” (II Corinthians 5: 21) That means my sin is covered. So is yours.

I find it tremendously comforting and profoundly humbling to read the account of the woman who was taken in the very act of adultery (the one “sexual” sin actually mentioned in the Decalogue) in John 8: 1-11. At first, Jesus ignored the assembled crowd, writing on the ground and feigning not to hear them. Finally, he rose and said “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. ” The crowd sheepishly dispersed. And then Jesus asked the woman who is condemning her. She said “no one.” And he responded with those wonderful, pastoral, tender words that show the magnanimous heart of the great Redeemer “Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.”

If Jesus Christ, the King of the Universe does not condemn me, how can I, a sinner saved only by His grace, condemn another person? Judge not, that ye be not judged, indeed.

*Abba Moses was a fourth-century hermit who converted to Christianity late in life. Of Ethiopian heritage, he settled in the desert of Egypt and was among the founders of monasticism who are collectively known as the Desert Fathers.