How would you respond to someone who said the following:

“Christians can be homosexuals. Jesus never condemned homosexuality, and the Old Testament Law doesn’t apply to Christians. You can’t use Leviticus 18:22 to prove that the Bible condemns homosexual behavior because the Law doesn’t apply to Christians any longer. The same book has a law against wearing clothing made of two types of material (Leviticus 19:19) and many other laws that we do not follow today. Why should the law in Leviticus 18:22 be any different?”

Those are some good points. I think it begs the question,

How does the Law apply to Christians today?

This is the big question that we need to address.

The New Covenant vs the Old Covenant

Jesus said, “Do not think I have come to abolish the Law of the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matthew 5:17). Jesus came to accomplish redemption by meeting the righteous requirements of the Law, requirements that we were unable to meet. Through His sinless life, substitutionary atonement on the cross, and resurrection from the grave, Jesus established the New Covenant, a covenant rooted in the inward power of the Holy Spirit (2 Cor. 3:6) rather than the old way of the written Mosaic Law (Rom. 7:6). The New Covenant is an inward, organic working of God’s life, transforming the believer into the image of Christ (2 Cor. 3:16–18; Rom. 8:29).

Christians are no longer bound by the Old Covenant because of Christ’s finished work on the cross, but that does not mean the Mosaic Law is useless. The Old Covenant served several purposes for ancient Israel such as revealing God’s nature, enacting God’s righteous judgments, outlining blessings and curses associated with obedience and disobedience, and establishing a proper system of worship and living. The Mosaic Law was often written in a narrative context to address specific scenarios, and through understanding these case laws, Jews could apply these to other situations.

The Law’s Purpose for Christians

Today, the Law functions primarily to reveal the character of God. While specific case laws no longer apply for Christians today, the different types of laws reveal the heart of God — His desire for holiness, purity of heart, loving others, and worshiping Him alone as the one and only true God. This is most clearly seen in the 10 Commandments which reveal timeless, universal truths that apply to all believers across all time. These are still authoritative today as 9 out of 10 of these commandments are referenced throughout the New Testament.

We also ought to understand the Law as Jesus understood it when the Pharisees asked Him what the greatest commandment in the Law was:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets” (Matt. 22:37–40).

The Law shows us how to rightly worship God and love our neighbor, and these two truths should guide us as we seek to understand the various laws in the Old Testament.

Can Christians be Homosexual?

Back to the original question about homosexuality. Leviticus 18 describes different types of unlawful sexual relations. Like the rest of Leviticus, this chapter is meant to warn the Israelites against specific examples of sexual deviancy that they might encounter among the Canaanites.

As New Covenant Christians, we are under the Law of Christ which forbids allforms of sexual immorality. Now, what is the one lawful form of human sexuality? The answer is a lifelong marriage between a man and a woman. This is rooted in the creation of mankind in Genesis. Both Jesus (Matt. 19:4–5) and Paul (Eph. 5:31) quoted Genesis 2:24 as God’s standard of human sexuality which says, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” Genesis 2:24 establishes God’s design of human sexuality, and Leviticus 18 outlines the numerous ways people pervert God’s perfect design.

So, Leviticus 18:22 can be used to condemn homosexual behavior because it is rooted in the universal, unchanging principle of God’s design for marriage as the union between a man and a woman. All other deviations of this design are sinful and dishonor the holiness of God and harm the souls of others.