And thou shalt not lie with mankind as one lieth with a woman it is an abomination.
Leviticus 18 gives command after command about sexual conduct, and this verse names one act and calls it an abomination. The God who speaks here is Israel's own God, and He warns that a land can throw out the people living in it.
Between Egypt and Canaan
The chapter opens by naming two countries: one Israel had left, one they were walking toward.
The opening verses of Leviticus 18 show that the Lord was looking back on Egypt and forward to Canaan. Both lands were in the grip of very degrading idolatry. So Israel met that infection both before and after their journey through the wilderness. They were not to follow the evil but to keep God's statutes and judgments, and by doing so they would live in them.
God's Order in Nature
These commands guard an order God set in nature, and He holds His people to it.
In Leviticus 18 God now treats the people as a holy people, and He firmly and solemnly forbids everything that goes against the order of God in nature. It is important to hold the same principle always. God does not release anyone from what offends His natural order. Grace may bring us into a higher place, where we do not take up the freedom nature allows; but God still keeps His own order there, and so should we… Neither Egypt nor Canaan may set the practice of Israel: the One who spoke to them was Jehovah their God. He laid down the broadest principles, and He also knew how to go down into the smallest details that concerned His people.
What the Verse Protects
The verse forbids an act, and it also guards a gift God gave: marriage.
Closely connected with this is the strong prohibition of the abominable practice of homosexuality (v. 22). God has provided the honorable institution of marriage between a man and a woman. Yet out of sheer selfishness people dare to abuse the very best that God has given. We know too that such things bring painful repercussions (Rom. 1:26-27). God is not mocked. People may feel they get away with evildoing, but whatever one sows he will also reap (Gal. 6:7).
Open Among the Nations
This was not a rare or hidden practice. Whole nations carried it on openly, and God found the same act more offensive in His own people than in anyone else.
The unnatural cruelties of verses 22 and 23 are plain enough. What is less known is how shamelessly the nations practised them, even the Greeks and the Romans. What abomination!… So God punished the land for its sin. The land threw out the people living in it. Israel had to be careful, then, not only for themselves but for any foreigner living among them… Such evil was intolerable in His eyes, and even more offensive in His own people than in anyone else. The Jews soon forgot that truth, and the Christian world later forgot it too. God keeps souls from evil through the good He gives — His word, and above all His Christ.
The Root Underneath
One writer traces such acts back to what people do with God's revelation.
The most unnatural crimes and vile things mentioned in verses 22-23 belonged to the idol worship of the nations around Israel. Egypt and Canaan both practised them. Romans 1:18-32 gives the inspired history of the degradation of the Gentile world. Idolatry and moral degradation always go together… Rejection of God's revelation leads into idolatry (not necessarily idols of wood and stone) and moral decline.
Where the Story Does Not End
The New Testament names these sins again, and then turns to people who had once lived in them.
"Do not err: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers… nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners shall inherit the kingdom of God. And these things were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God" (1 Cor. 6:9-11). How real and great is the depravity of man left to himself and Satan! How real and still greater is the delivering grace of God in the name of the Lord Jesus and by His own Spirit!
Summary
- Order. God set an order in nature, and He does not release anyone from what offends it. Grace may lift a person higher, but it never overturns that order.
- Gift. The verse refuses the abuse of a gift — marriage between a man and a woman, the very best God has provided.
- Pressure. Israel stood between Egypt behind and Canaan ahead, both gripped by degrading idolatry. Neither country could set the standard for God's people.
- Consequence. The land grew unclean and threw out the people living in it. God finds the same evil even more offensive in His own people.
- Rescue. The New Testament list of such sins ends with people who had lived that way and were then washed, sanctified and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus. Man's depravity is real; God's delivering grace is greater still.