You have obviously never read the Bible. Go back to the translation you prefer and read just the Gospel of John and then tell me that Jesus said love covers all sins.
Jesus took the Pharisees to task for their adding to the Law not because they mistranslated it. The Pharisees took one commandment: “Ex 31:14-15
14'Therefore you are to observe the sabbath, for it is holy to you. Everyone who profanes it shall surely be put to death; for whoever does any work on it, that person shall be cut off from among his people. NAS” and came up with in excess of 600 sub-laws to define work. A couple of those sub-laws were routinely violated by the Pharisees every Sabbath. Jesus also called them hypocrites over tithing “mind, dill, and cumin” luxury goods at that time and not “honoring their father and their mother”. Jesus lived the spirit of the Law to the letter. You are not reading with understanding. Read the Sermon on the Mount and see how Jesus interpreted the Law more stringently in some places than even the Pharisees. Jesus equates our thought lives with the act. Lust = adultery; anger = murder; Jesus made the Law more difficult to obey to show that it is impossible to keep the letter of the Law.
Why does the cow go moo? Because it is a cow and that is how God created cows and cows cannot be evil. Only man has that capacity. Will an answer to this question save you or your eternal soul? What does the way animals vocalize have to do with this discussion?
I have a politically active lesbian cousin who is a genius, quite literally. She graduated from a major university Phi Beta Kappa, #1 in her class with a major in languages. She can read, write, and speak 19 languages including Biblical and Classical Greek, Koine, Hebrew, Chaldean, all the Romance languages, Russian and many others. Even she will not take the same stance you have about the Greek word "agapao" and she can and has read copies of the manuscripts used for Bible translations.
Your absolutely correct "love" is not a sin. It is not a sin to love another person. It is not a sin for two men or two women to love each other after all Christ loved His 12 disciples. However, the love Jesus is talking about is not sexual love. And to add that connotation to His teaching is heresy. Jesus also taught that salvation was only through Him and to be His disciple required abiding in Him and His word. That means “living” in Him and His word. Real Biblical “love” is tough love, which tells the truth. The Pharisees hated the truth that is why they wanted Jesus dead.
Why was Jesus crucified and resurrected, for the atonement (forgiveness) of sin. Your definition of the word “love” makes Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross superfluous and without meaning since every man, woman, and child loves someone. Who defines sin? God is not the God of a democracy where we can vote on what constitutes sin. His authority is absolute and He will judge those who teach others heresy and hypocrisy without mercy.
Look at 1 Corinthians 6:9 “Or do you not know that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, NAS”
- fornicators (sexual sin)
- idolaters (serving other gods, which includes temple prostitution)
- adulterers (sexual sin)
- effeminate (passive position in homosexual acts)
- homosexuality (same-sex sexual activity)
These sins listed as unrighteous are sexual sins.
However, according to you same-sex attracted people can never be unrighteous so I guess you are saying gay men, lesbian women, and the intersexed are a law unto themselves who will never see judgment? Just how arrogant can you get?
Being gay is not of and in itself sinful. It is what a person does about that attraction that constitutes sin. Acting on it is sin.
You talk about the way the different Bibles translate “malakoi” without offering a better translation. Find 5 people who understand Classical Greek and ask them to translate a Greek passage and you will get 5 different sentences based on their culture and mother language. There is a lot of uncertainty among some scholars about the word “arsenokoites” because they are searching secular Greek texts for the explanation and totally ignoring the religious Hebrew translations into Greek. BTW, sissie is simply another word that has been used for effeminate gay men for centuries. I guess you can do what the JW’s do in the New World Translation when they find a word that is difficult to translate; they just transliterate the word and leave the passage incomprehensible.
Jesus and the Bible tells us we are saved by
grace through
faith in Jesus Christ. So no matter how much you love your neighbor if you do not have faith, which is the prerequisite for grace, you are totally lost.
You can hold to your universalist theology and preach love is the end of all sin and still experience the lake of fire. This is your choice.
My theology is based on a careful, personal, in depth study of the Bible from Genesis through Revelation. During my study I threw out everything I had been taught in institutional, denominational churches and researched my own way. I did the same with homosexuality. I researched the subject from Sparta through today including the research done by Hammer, LeVay, and other scientists into a genetic predisposition and studies done by psychologists and psychiatrists dating back a couple decades. I refused to allow anyone to tell me what to believe when I could research the subject for myself. Have you done the same? It just might amaze you at the hypocracy of the APA action in 1973 in view of the books they were praising just 4 years earlier. Your god of psychology can't seem to agree or decide on many issues.