Our culture sees sexual and romantic love as the most potent kind. Its only rival is maternal love. But on the night he was betrayed to his death, Jesus declared to his disciples:
This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:12-13)
In the Bible, married love, parental love, and friendship love are all held up as precious. But only this last kind of love is mandatory. Christian marriage at its best declares that Jesus loves us in an exclusive, flesh-uniting, sacrificial, life-creating way (Ephesians 5:22-33). But Jesus’ words on friendship mean that this relationship too must picture Jesus’ love for us, as Christians lay down their lives for one another.
Jesus modeled sacrificial love supremely on the cross. But the Gospels also give us glimpses of his love relationships with certain individuals. John calls himself “the disciple Jesus loved” and describes himself leaning against Jesus’ chest at the Last Supper (John 13:23-25). Some say this points to a romantic bond. But this just illustrates the shrunkenness of our modern view of nonerotic, nonromantic love. In fact, John’s Gospel shows us multiple disciples whom Jesus loved. When Mary and Martha of Bethany send for Jesus because their brother Lazarus is sick, they say, “Lord, he whom you love is ill” (11:3). Not “Lazarus” but “he whom you love.” John underlines this love still more: “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus” (v 5). We don’t see Jesus in the Gospels saying no to love between believers of the same sex. Instead, we see him calling all his followers to love each other just like he loves them.
In modern Western culture and within the church, we’ve drained the blood from same-sex friendship. Those who want to follow what the Bible says about same-sex relationships must urgently transfuse it back.
Like Jesus, Paul both models and commands love between believers of the same sex. Paul calls Onesimus his “very heart” (Philemon v 12). Likewise, he calls three different Christian men in Rome “my beloved” (Romans 16:5, 8, 9), and Timothy “my beloved child” (2 Timothy 1:2). Paul speaks of how heartbroken he would have been to lose Epaphroditus (Philippians 2:27), and he calls the Christians in Philippi “my brothers, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown ... my beloved” (4:1). The word translated “brothers” here can be used inclusively, so it could also be translated “brothers and sisters,” and indeed, Paul had a close relationship with some of the women in the church in Philippi as well (v 2-3). The point is that Paul is unashamed to verbalize his love for fellow Christians, male and female, and he calls believers to express their love for one another physically (Romans 16:16; 1 Corinthians 16:20; 2 Corinthians 13:12).
This is no shriveled view of love between believers of the same sex. It’s a robust, expansive, and life-giving love built round our common mission in the world. We are, to use a Pauline image, fellow soldiers (Philippians 2:25; Philemon v 2), “striving side by side for the faith of the gospel” (Philippians 1:27). But this great “Yes” to love between believers comes with an emphatic “No” to any form of sexual immorality. Time and again in Paul’s letters, we see commands to brotherly and sisterly love paired up with prohibitions on all sex outside of male-female marriage. Paul writes to the Galatians:
Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control.(Galatians 5:19-23a)
“Sexual immorality” is first on Paul’s list of “the works of the flesh.” “Love” kicks off the list of “the fruit of the Spirit.” Far from producing “bad fruit,” the New Testament’s strict teaching against sexual immorality is paired with the good fruit of the Spirit.
We see the same contrast between sexual immorality and love in Paul’s letter to the Colossians: “Put to death... sexual immorality,” Paul writes, and “put on love” (Colossians 3:5, 14). Likewise, he instructs the Ephesians:
Walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. (Ephesians 5:2- 3)
The counterpoint to any form of sexual immorality is love. Conversely, any relationship founded on sexual immorality falls short of love. If a friend of mine got legally married to someone of their same sex, however lovingly my friend and his or her partner might act toward each other, it would not make their relationship good because it is founded on affirming sexual sin. If they were not Christians, this would be one of many areas of life that would need to be repented of if they came to believe in Jesus. Likewise, when Christians draw each other into sexual sin of any kind, they’re not showing love to one another—however much they might believe they are. Any relationship that’s intertwined with sexual sin must be repented of.
We see the opposition between sexual sin and brotherly love with striking clarity in Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians:
This is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God; that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things. (1 Thessalonians 4:3-6)
This stark warning against sexual immorality comes with an equally strong call to sibling love:
Now concerning brotherly love you have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, brothers, to do this more and more. (v 9-10)
Brotherly and sisterly love is not an optional extra for followers of Jesus. It’s a biblical command. We’ve seen that Paul could not be clearer in his “No” to sexual immorality of all kinds. But he could also not be clearer in his “Yes” to love. In fact, the two go hand in hand.
Rebecca McLaughlin holds a PhD in renaissance literature from Cambridge University and a theology degree from Oak Hill College in London. She is former vice president of content at the Veritas Forum, where she spent almost a decade working with Christian academics at leading secular universities. She's the author of several books including Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the World's Largest Religion, and Is Christmas Unbelievable?
