A few days ago Jack Phillips broke his silence for the first time since the announcement that the Supreme Court would be hearing his case. He appeared on “The View” to answer questions about his reasoning for refusing services to a homosexual couple. As you can imagine, the women on “The View” went for the jugular, and Joy Behar made a very presumptuous statement that deserves attention. With quite a bit of confidence, Behar insisted that Jesus would have baked the cake for the two homosexual men who entered Jack’s bakery.
Although the conversation that surrounded Jack Phillips’ discrimination case contained many erroneous statements and false ideologies about Christianity and the reliability of the Bible—consider the following reasons why the Jesus of the Bible would not have baked a cake for a homosexual wedding celebration.
Jesus Is God
First of all, Jesus is not a baker. Jesus is God. Jesus made that abundantly clear in his earthly ministry through his signs and wonders—and his preaching. Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58). God does what he wants, when he wants, and all of it for his glory. That being said, Jesus did not dance to the tune of the popular opinion of his day. Read the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7).
The same Jesus who made the wind and waves submit to his cry of peace is the same Jesus who was with the Father during the days of the Old Testament when massive rocks of fire and brimstone came crashing down upon the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. It is theologically impossible to disconnect the Jesus of the New Testament from the God of the Old Testament—they are one—co-equal and co-eternal.
Jesus Is Committed to Biblical Marriage
The first miracle of Jesus’ public earthly ministry was pictured at a wedding in Cana of Galilee (see John 2). That was not by accident. It’s a clear reminder that Jesus celebrated the true biblical marriage as God originally designed it. Jesus turned the water into wine at a wedding celebration, and just as Jesus celebrated God’s true design of marriage—we should do the same in our present day.
Jesus is committed to the definition he crafted from the beginning. Keep in mind, Jesus was not absent when Eve was presented to Adam in the Garden of Eden at the very first wedding ceremony (Gen. 2:18-25). As Colossians teaches (see Col. 1:15-20), when the creative genius of the Trinity was bursting forth and the entire universe was being fashioned by God’s powerful word—Jesus was present and involved.
Marriage is not something that man thought up as a nice idea for human civilization. Marriage was instituted by God from the very beginning and since God wrote the original dictionary for the family—Jesus would not support nor celebrate any revision or change to his original plan. Suppose a graffiti artist from New York was invited into the Sistine Chapel to reshape and change the work of Michelangelo. Do you think Michelangelo would support the new updated graffiti renditions to his original work? Not in the slightest degree. The new changes and alterations to biblical marriage are a far greater insult to Jesus who instituted marriage.
Jesus Condemned Homosexuality as Sinful
Many people want to claim that Jesus never said anything about homosexuality. That simply is not true. Jesus said something very clear about the subject of sexual sin. According to Jesus, “For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person” (Mark 7:21-23). The word translated “sexual sin” is the Greek term—πορνεία. This particular word encompasses many different and varied definitions of sexual misconduct including beastility, adultery, homosexuality, and various forms of fornication.
We know that Jesus embraced the totality of God’s Word as truth and reliable, therefore, as we consider the other references to such sin in the New Testament, we find Paul condemning it as well in Romans 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9, and 1 Timothy 1:10. For Jesus to celebrate a homosexual wedding by making a wedding cake in their honor would be for Jesus to contradict the Word of God that came to us by the ministry of the Holy Spirit. This would mean something far more than Jesus merely disagreeing with a written document. This would result in a fracture among the Trinity as Jesus violated the Father’s ordered plan in creation and the work of the Spirit in the Scriptures.
Why Did Jesus “Hang Out” with Tax Collectors, Drunkards, and Gluttons?
Often we hear people make a mistake by concluding that Jesus condones sin because he was seen spending time with the outcasts, sinners, and the reproachable of his day. We must be clear regarding Jesus’ intentions. First and foremost, spending time with people should not be equated with condoning their sin. That’s simply not an appropriate conclusion—not reasonable or logical—and certainly not theologically accurate.
It must likewise be pointed out that while Jesus spent time with sinners, his goal as the “friend of sinners” was to bring the outcasts near to God. Jesus came on a mission of salvation. Jesus came preaching repentance—not tolerance. The ambition of Jesus’ friendship with sinners was to show mercy to the outcast (1 Cor. 1:26-29) and to bring people out of darkness into the marvelous light of Christ (John 8:12; 1 Pet. 2:9). Jesus never once encouraged or condoned people to remain in a perpetual lifestyle of sin.
To put it bluntly, the women on “The View” made it clear in their presumption that they don’t know the Jesus of the Bible. If they had known the Jesus of the Bible, they would not see any contradictions between Jesus’ friendship with sinners and his preaching of repentance. They would have been able to clearly see that Jesus’ preaching ministry clearly called out sexual immorality as sinful. Furthermore, they would not have suggested that the true faith of Jesus is “progressing” and “changing” to accept homosexuality. The world, the flesh, and the devil will always work to be tolerant of sin. Sometimes religious groups will swerve from the true faith, but Jesus said, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15).
Any true definition of “repentance” will surely show that Jesus was not playing the tolerance game. Keep in mind—if Jesus was the messenger of “tolerance” rather than the gospel, he would likely have never been crucified on the cross in the first place. Jesus came as a preacher of righteousness and was crucified on the cross as the Savior of sinners. As Jesus died on the cross he was paying the sin debt of many who would engage in the sin of homosexuality. That’s why some of the church at Corinth had been spared from that lifestyle, because they were cleansed by Jesus Christ. Jesus went to the outsiders in order that they would become insiders. Jesus did not come to praise sinners—he came to save sinners.
1 Corinthians 6:9-11 — Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, [10] nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. [11] And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (ESV)
