Not only is it bad exegesis and bad logic to make unrepentant homosexual practice less severe than feelings of pride or possession of wealth, akin to an act of disobeying one’s parents, but it is also bad pastoral theology. In the story of the sinful woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears, wiped his feet with her hair, and kissed them with her lips, Jesus explained to the Pharisaic host that the one who was forgiven more, loves more (Luke 7:36-50). One doesn’t have to lower the severity of sin in order to reach out to an offender. In fact, the greater the need, the greater should be the loving outreach.

Megan Basham, in her new book Shepherds for Sale, was right to be critical of the views on sexuality and homosexuality presented by Rev. J. D. Greear, who is Neil Shenvi’s pastor (note: Neil has attempted to take Meg to task over her statements about Greear) at The Summit Church in Durham, North Carolina and president of the Southern Baptist Convention from 2018 to 2021.

The 2019 Sermon Controversy

Greear tried to diminish the significance of the issue of sexual ethics in general and homosexual practice in particular in a 2019 sermon. Then when a furor arose, he issued a correction that left many erroneous views intact and largely blamed others for misrepresenting him.

His slippery attempts at rescuing himself from critique in the SBC in this matter (another was his initial endorsement of Preston Sprinkle’s erroneous “transgender pronoun hospitality”) have a Clintonesque quality in which every sentence must be carefully parsed.

The “Whisper” Statement

Greear declared in a widely publicized sermon in Jan. 2019 that the Bible only “whispers about sexual sin,” with homosexual practice especially in view, while it shouts about “materialism and religious pride.”

Much controversy erupted over this wrongheaded claim, leading Greear two-and-a-half years later (June 26, 2021) to issue “A Statement about My Sermon on Romans 1” which some took as an apology for his previous remark. A careful read of the statement, however, shows that Greear ended up more blaming those whom he alleged “misrepresented” him, perhaps intentionally, than apologizing and correcting his errors.

What Greear had said in the 2019 sermon (among other missteps) was this:

“In terms of frequency of [Paul’s] mention and the passion with which he mentions it, it would appear that quite a few other sins are more egregious in God’s eyes than homosexuality. Jen Wilkin, who is one of our favorite Bible teachers here and who is actually leading our Women’s Conference, said, ‘We ought to whisper about what the Bible whispers about and shout about what the Bible shouts about.’ And the Bible appears more to whisper when it comes to sexual sin compared to its shout about materialism and religious pride. In fact, Jesus not one time ever said that it was difficult for the same-sex attracted to go to heaven. He did say that it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it was for a religiously proud or materially successful person to enter into the kingdom of God.”

2021 Clarification

Greear’s “clarification” in 2021 was not entirely successful. He stated:

“I applied that quote to the difference in the emphasis Jesus places on the dangers of pride and greed versus sexual sin and said that given the sheer number of times Jesus talks about pride and greed, it is as if he saved most of his volume to warn about pride and greed. Thus, I said, we should look more fearfully at our own prideful, greedy hearts than we do haughtily at the sexual dysfunctions of others. The key word in the point was ‘compared.’ ‘Compared to what he said about pride and greed… it is as if he shouts about… and whispers about.’

“It was a rather clumsy way of making the point. However, I was in no way trying to imply that sexual ethics are muted in Scripture, that we should not speak clearly about them, or that we should [not?] be embarrassed by them. The preceding point of that message, in fact, which was not included in the clips that got passed around, makes that abundantly clear. In that point, I state plainly Scripture could not be clearer about these matters and that rebellion in sexual sin, as 1 Cor 6:9–11 states in no uncertain terms, is a matter of eternal destiny.”

Persisting Misconceptions

As we shall see, Greear was still wrong about important things: (1) Determining the severity of a given sin by counting up the number of explicit mentions in the Bible; and (2) contending that the universal struggle with pride and materialism is worse than engaging in homosexual practice.

Moreover, (3) his claim in 2021 that he presented “rebellion in sexual sin” in that 2019 sermon as “a matter of eternal destiny” is at conflict with that sermon where he denied that homosexual practice could send someone to hell and depicted homosexual practice as no worse than any other sin, including an outburst of temper, a feeling of envy or greed, a boast, or a rebellious attitude toward one’s parents.

He apologized “for any confusion that my clumsy wording may have caused” but devoted the rest of his comments to blaming others for misrepresenting him and did not rule out that the misrepresentation may have been intentional. In the end, his statement was more about those misrepresenting him than about what he stated, which was not merely “clumsy” but also incorrect on its face.

Response To Criticism

At one point, he blamed “Tom Ascol and a few of the same pastors seemingly looking to trap me in my words” for not reaching “out to me for clarification.” It was Tom’s Founders Ministries that produced the video in which I had a short appearance addressing the “whisper” statement.

Let it be said that I sent Rev. Greear an email on June 11, 2019, regarding my assessment of the entire sermon in question, stating: “I have written an open letter to you that appears on my Facebook and may soon be appearing elsewhere. For the moment you can view it at [then supplied the Facebook link].” I left not only my email address but also my cell phone. If he had had any issue with what I wrote, he could easily have contacted me. He never did.

Here were my observations in a 2021 post (modified slightly to adjust tenses for a 2024 reissuing) on Greear’s 2021 statement and on his 2019 sermon.

1. Jesus’ Silence On Same-Sex Attraction

Let’s begin by looking at Greear’s claim in his 2019 sermon that “Jesus not one time ever said that it was difficult for the same-sex attracted to go to heaven.” We wouldn’t expect Jesus to address “the same-sex attracted” specifically since homosexual practice was not an issue among the Jews of Jesus’ day. Nor would we expect him to condemn people for experiencing (but not acquiescing to) an involuntary impulse.

What Jesus did do is warn that sexual sin could get you thrown into hell. Matthew placed the Jesus saying about tearing out one’s eye or cutting off one’s hand if it threatens one’s downfall between Jesus’ prohibition of adultery of the heart and remarriage after (at least invalid) divorce, offenses that he obviously didn’t regard as severe as the violation of the male-female prerequisite that he treated as the foundation of sexual ethics (5:27-32; cp. 19:4-6). Granted, he didn’t use the precise expression “eye of a needle” here but that is a pedantic, not substantive, point.

2. Misguided Hermeneutics

In his 2021 statement, Greear still operated with the erroneous hermeneutical premise that the severity of sins is determined by the number of mentions that they get by Jesus or by the Bible generally. He reiterates:

“I applied that quote to the difference in the emphasis Jesus places on the dangers of pride and greed versus sexual sin and said that given the sheer number of times Jesus talks about pride and greed, it is as if he saved most of his volume to warn about pride and greed.”

In his sermon, he also made the same point about the apostle Paul.

Counting often gets the interpreter to the wrong conclusion. Some sexual sins are so egregious and corrupting to the young, and thus so infrequently committed in Israel by Jews, that the very mention of them in Scripture is kept to a minimum.

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