Unmasking Mel White, Part III

 

     THE THIRD PREMISE: “PAUL & PETER CAN CHANGE, WHY CAN’T YOU???”

      Believers in the New Testament dispensation have always struggled with understanding how the work of Christ alters the Old Testament ceremonies and judicial laws of the Mosaic economy. The writer of the book of Hebrews sheds a great deal of light on this in chapters 7-10. As the writer explains in Heb. 10:1, the old covenant ceremonial and civil laws were never intended to stand alone, and that they always foreshadowed the reality that the work of Jesus Christ would eventually bring into being. 

       But where genuine Christians see a challenge to overcome by careful study and prayer, Mel White not surprisingly sees an opportunity to advance the homosexual agenda. In this third premise, White introduces another theme that recurs again and again in the way he interprets Scripture to suit his cause. White exploits the transition between the Old and New Testament to support his radical belief that the Word of God alters with time and social circumstance. Unlike the fixed Rock Christ says His Word is in Matthew 7:24-27, White would lead his readers to believe it is more like the shifting sand described in the same parable.

•         The Apostle Paul.

“It took a blinding light from heaven to help the apostle Paul to change his mind about certain Hebrew texts,” (White, p. 6). 

        Paul did no doubt change many of his views of OT Scripture after Christ appeared to him on the Damascus road. But to characterize Paul’s transformation primarily as intellectual or academic is wrong. This is significant because I submit that the ”gay Christian” movement White is advancing has at its root this very fundamental misconception of what true conversion really is. Paul’s mind was affected by his conversion, but it was simply an outworking of the larger change that took place in his heart. Paul explains this himself in Romans chapter 6:3,4,

 ”Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.”  

        The problem with White’s understanding of Paul’s experience is really his misapprehension of the nature of the new birth. True conversion is about dying to sin and being resurrected to walk in newness of life, not changing your mind about the Bible. This is key because White himself has apparently never experienced this. One might suspect that White believes his own “conversion” is related to his new understanding of Bible texts that justify homosexuality. But in Romans 6, Paul explains that the earmarks of this new birth have specific traits that bear no resemblance to someone claiming to be a “gay Christian.” A converted person walks “in newness of life.” He is “dead to sin.” He does not justify his sin. 

• The Apostle Peter

        White also references Peter’s vision in Acts 10, but here again, the change recorded in Peter bears no resemblance to the change White advocates for his readers about homosexuality. In Acts 10, Peter’s understanding about the Jewish dietary laws is challenged by the Lord Himself. But these laws that are being dispensed with are done so with great care by the New Testament writers in other places as well, as they explain in each case how these changes have reference to the completed work of Christ in the new covenant. God is not just tired of the old way of doing things. According to White’s logic Hebrews 7-10 would be superfluous information for a Christian that doesn’t need to know why things have changed, but only that they have. In reference to the Jewish dietary law, the Bible explains why it had to change:

 ”Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ,” Colossians 2:16, 17.

        The highlighted words above show that when the Bible changes something, it only does so expressly and for a stated reason. This is a critical to why White will fail to make his case. Because we have no passages that expressly retract prior words of Scripture regarding the sexual conduct of the believer, we have no grounds to believe that God’s mind has changed on the matter at all. Far from relaxing it, the coming of Christ has in fact reinforced the believer’s obligation to maintain sexual purity, as Scripture elsewhere teaches.

“Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid… For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s,” 1 Corinthians 6:15,20. 

        Glorifying God in our bodies is not left to the Christian as an open-ended proposition to work out for himself in his own way. As Paul continues to teach in 1 Corinthians chapter 6, the believer is to “flee fornication,” v. 18. Along with Romans 6, this passage of Scripture is devastating to White’s case. His assertion that God is not concerned with how we utilize our bodies in His service flies in the face of Paul’s overall argument in 1 Corinthians 6, especially regarding sex. As members of Christ’s body, we have an obligation to put away what God views as unclean behavior. White later takes issue with the wording of verse 9, but his real problem is the force of the entire chapter.