Does Jesus Love Gay People?

How would Jesus treat the homosexual community? Dave Gibbons discusses how love supersedes law.

Questions for Discussion and Personal Reflection

  1. What do you think of the idea that love supersedes the law?
  2. How might a focus on being loving change the way you act or speak?

You know, I think Christians tend to, uh, you know, their foundational focus is the spiritual authority, and so there's, like, what we would call these clobbering passages from the book of Romans, right? You know, that talks about homosexuality being, like, a sin, and so people— Christians will take that as clobber the LGBTQ community with that. I see it. You know, I get it. I come from that but to me it's like, well, what if you take the whole of scriptures, too? Like, there's this biblical theology or we could say it like, these narratives, and the evidence that talks about, like, the primacy of love. So practically, it's like, sometimes we could see the law like Jesus did, but then you— we can also see what Jesus actually lived out. So there's a law, and there's sometimes how Jesus lived. And love would supersede sometimes even the law. And so I think the way Jesus would approach my friends in my— who I consider like my family in the LGBTQ community— is I think he'd treat them like family. And, uh, I think if you have, like, a son or a daughter, or a brother or a sister that told you they were gay, I think it'd cause you to wrestle a little bit more with your theology and about how you say things so strongly. I think it'd actually cause you to be more human and, and to be loving. So for me, what I've reconciled is that Jesus, again, was able to deal with the mystery, and he was able to deal with the messiness— understand that God would do his good work. And he saw people as broken, of course— that they were working it out. But he'd accept them right where they are, and so I see Jesus having a primacy of love with the way he moved and flowed, and I also see him treating people like brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers. I think if we're to do that while understanding the beauty of messiness, I think we'd take a different position. I think we would, we would act differently. We'd speak differently.