An Apologetic to a modern claim.

If you have taken any time to listen to modern teachings on the Bible regarding cultural affirmations, such as homosexuality, you have undoubtedly heard someone say, “Jesus never talked about (insert modern cultural issue here).” This is usually followed up by an affirmative statement of what Jesus did teach with something like, “Jesus actually taught us to love God and love others.” These sound like a fair and valid point at first, but upon further consideration, they start to fall apart. I want to provide you with a few reasons why this line of thinking is deficient and some rebuttals to these claims.  

Examining the Claim

First, examine the claim: If Jesus did not directly address an issue as sinful then it is not inherently sinful, and what Jesus truly taught us was to love God and love others. This argument makes a few assumptions; 1) Everything Jesus ever taught and said is contained completely in the four Gospels. 2) Jesus taught against the Law of God and only teaches us to love, practically abolishing the law. 3) The teachings of Jesus can be separated from the rest of the Scriptures, both the Old and New Testaments. Let me break down these assumptions.

Assumption 1: Everything Jesus ever taught and said is contained completely in the four Gospels.

This is, to me, by far the simplest assumption to refute. A simple answer is to look at the historical context of Jesus’ day. He did not teach on homosexuality directly because the Law of God forbade it and it was culturally taboo, homosexuality was not an issue that even needed to be affirmed among first-century Jews. If I go and teach a group of East African farmers, you will likely not hear me say much about the dangers of sports betting on ice hockey games to a crowd of farmers from the bush. If the issue comes up I might, but in all likelihood, I will speak with them about the biblical issues that are relevant to them the most.

However, there is also a more logic-based answer here. To claim that because Jesus never taught on an issue means it is not a sin, is a logical fallacy called argument from silence. Jesus did not say anything about a lot of things, especially sins that can be found condemned in the Old and New Testaments. Jesus never said anything about pornography or pedophilia, both of which Christians teach that the Bible condemns, and even our secular culture currently condemns one of those. But. as we move into an increasingly AI-generated world, the possibility of realistic illicit videos and images made at no harm to an individual will become more common and, God forbid, mainstream. Do you see what I’m getting at here? Does Jesus’s lack of a statement on such materials determine his moral stamp of approval, or is there an undergirding principle he taught by?

In a practical sense, we do not take a chapter out of an author’s book or remove a volume from a series and claim that is all the author had to say. If I only read the Two Towers in the Lord of the Rings series and then start talking about how strange it was for Tolkien to start the story in such a strange place and leave the story where it ends, people are going to tell me to start over and read the rest of the series! In the same way, we cannot divorce Jesus from the rest of the Scripture. To claim we have all of Jesus’ teachings and everything he said by four narrative accounts of his three-year ministry leading up to his death and resurrection is to take only a small portion out of Jesus’ scriptures and claim them to be the fullness of what he taught. No! The fullness of what Jesus teaches is found in the fullness of the Scriptures.

Assumption 2: Jesus taught against the Law of God and only teaches us to love.

This question helps us tackle the second assumption. In the Gospels, Jesus affirmed the Scriptural principle of marriage and sexuality (Matthew 5:27-28, Matthew 15:19-20, Matthew 19:4-6, Mark 7:21-23, Mark 10:6-9) Why did he teach this if not for a guiding principle he was pulling from somewhere? Though the Gospel of Christ is the proclamation that we are free from the Law, we are not free because Jesus has done away with the Law. In truth, we are free because he has fulfilled it for us (Matthew 5:17-18) and his account is applied to us by faith in his death and resurrection. But this does not mean we are freed from living out any moral standard.

This second assumption infers that the only moral assumption that Jesus wanted us to live by was to love God and love others. In many respects, this is true. But what does loving God look like? What does loving others look like? This is why we have the rest of the Scriptures, to know how to love God and follow his commands and how to love others. If it were true only the Gospels were enough to teach us the fullness of the Christian life, then the Holy Spirit would not have had to inspire the entire New Testament which details this for us. The Spirit tells us through Paul in Romans 6:15.

If sin is simply defined as not loving God and others, then that leaves a wide door open to all kinds of anti-Scriptural activities. We must look at the scriptures to know what Jesus would have called sin or not. I could say more but I will move on from there.

Assumption 3: The teachings of Jesus can be separated from the rest of the Scriptures.

This is the most important and insidious assumption. Usually, when I hear or speak to people who make the initial claim, they are attempting to separate Jesus from the rest of the Scriptures. This cannot be done. Why? Because separating Jesus from the rest of Scripture is Christological heresy. John 1:1-3 says:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning. All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created. 

-CSB

Verses 14, and 17-18 say:

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Indeed, we have all received grace upon grace from his fullness, for the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. The one and only Son, who is himself God and is at the Father’s side —he has revealed him.

–CSB

Jesus is the preexistent Word of God, the Son of God who reveals the Father, One with God. The Scriptures are the Word of God and Jesus is the Word made flesh. Jesus did not simply affirm the Law and the prophets; he is the embodiment of those scriptures. All the Scriptures teach and say are contained in him because he is the author. His Spirit is the inspirer of the whole New Testament just as the Old.  To separate Jesus’s life and teaching from the rest of the Scriptures is to claim that Jesus is not the “Word made flesh.” This is a Christological heresy as it divorces Jesus from part of his deity and identity as the Son in the Godhead.

There is much more to be said, but I wanted to keep this simple. I do not intend these to be “gotcha” arguments. Dismantling these assumptions will only bring to light other faulty assumptions from those who do not believe, but to those who have an ear to hear why the statement, “Jesus never talked about ‘X’” is contrary to logic, the nature of the grace we have been offered, and the identity of Jesus, these arguments can serve well to spark deeper conversations.