Category: Doctrine

The Sin of Sodom & Gomorrah Summarized: A Warning to the United States of America (and a Reason for Hope)

It may be worse then you think and more relevant than you assume

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Since I noticed how Ezekiel summarized the sin of Sodom & Gomorrah earlier this year, I wanted to take a closer look. Ezekiel’s summary was surprising to me, and I wondered, “What did I miss in reading the story?”

I thought it was about sexual sin, and specifically homosexual sin, but Ezekiel doesn’t even mention sexual sin in his summary. This is what Ezekiel says, speaking to Israel:

“You not only followed [the ways of Sodom] and copied their detestable practices, but in all your ways you soon became more depraved than they. As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, your sister Sodom and her daughters never did what you and your daughters have done.

‘Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me.'”

(Ezekiel 16:47-50) Obviously, the story of Sodom & Gomorrah isn’t what I thought it was.

Like most people, I was taught a simple version: God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because of homosexuality. End of story.

But when I actually took the time read the text carefully, I realized the Bible tells a far more unsettling story, and a story that is far more relevant to our world today than I imagined. The Bible contrasts hospitality and hostility to strangers (angels) to highlight the root of Sodom & Gomorrah’s sin.

I did a careful exegesis of the Sodom & Gomorrah story previously that demonstrates what the primary the sin of Sodom & Gomorrah was, but today I am just going to summarize it. The summary needs to include the context in which the story of Sodom & Gomorrah is embedded in the Bible.

Before Genesis 19 where we find the story of Sodom & Gomorrah is the story in Genesis 18 of Abraham’s and Sarah’s magnanimous hospitality to three strangers who turn out to be “the Lord” and two angels on their way to Sodom. The one called “the Lord” remained behind talking to Abraham, while the two angels continued on to Sodom where Lot sees them sitting in the gateway of the City. Lot calls to them, invites them in, and shows them the same magnanimous hospitality Abraham showed. (Gen. 19:1-3)

The parallel stories of Abraham’s and Lot’s hospitality that mirror each other in the same pattern set the stage for God’s judgment on Sodom. That’s when things go sideways. The men of the town surround Lot’s house and demand that Lot send them out to be violated sexually.

Abraham welcomes strangers with generosity and honor. Lot does the same, but the men of Sodom do the opposite. They rage against the strangers. They threaten Lot because he is a “foreigner”, and they warn Lot they will treat him worse than what they plan to do to the strangers in Lot’s house if he doesn’t comply.

The town’s men resented Lot being there and resented him inviting other foreigners into his house. They formed an angry mob to humiliate and violate Lot’s guests as a warning: you are not welcome here!

As Ezekiel says, the reason for this conduct is because they were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned about others. They did not help the poor and the needy. Worse, they didn’t just turn the foreigners away; they didn’t just drive them out of town; they tried to punish, violate, humiliate, and shame them.

The Lord told Abraham that He was responding to the great outcry against Sodom & Gomorrah due to the grievousness of their sin. (Gen. 18:20) Such an outcry is the response of people when great injustice is done to them. The scene echoes the story of Cain and Abel when Abel’s blood was said to cry out from the ground in Genesis 4. The same word is used for Israel’s outcry under Egyptian oppression in Exodus 2.

God responds to injustice. God responds specifically to the outcries of people who bear the oppression of that injustice, and God judges those who are unrepentantly responsible for that injustice.

The story of Sodom & Gomorrah is a story of God’s judgment on sin, but it isn’t sexual sin that brings God’s judgment. The sin that prompted God to respond was the sin that caused people to cry out under the weight of injustice.

Jesus later confirms that the sin of Sodom & Gomorrah is inhospitality when he warns towns who do not welcome his followers, saying, “it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.” Jesus says this in Mathew 10 when he sent his 12 disciples to proclaim the kingdom of God, and Jesus says it again in Luke 10, when he sent out 72 of his followers to heal the sick and proclaim the kingdom.

The context of these statements was the hospitality (or lack of it) shown to his followers. There is no mention of sexual sin—only refusal to welcome, refusal to listen, refusal to be hospitable.

Ezekiel is very specific about the sin of Sodom & Gomorrah:

“This was the sin of your sister Sodom: pride, excess of food, prosperous ease—but she did not help the poor and needy.”

Pride. Comfort. Indifference. Not just lack of empathy, but downright cruelty to the poor and needy – the vulnerable. That is the Bible’s own summary of the sin of Sodom & Gomorrah.

The angels/foreigners in the story of Sodom & Gomorrah are just one category of vulnerable people. Elsewhere, Scripture often mentions widows, orphans, and foreigners together to describe the vulnerable people in the ancient near east who God desired His people to protect and watch over – because God’s heart is to protect and watch over the vulnerable and needy.

Yes, there is sexual sin in the story, but the root of that sin is hostility toward others. In the context of the story as it sits in the greater context of the previous story about Abraham’s radical hospitality, the sexual act is a weapon of the people of Sodom. They use it out of arrogance, out of desire to guard their own wealth and comfort from foreigners, to humiliate, shame, and drive out the foreigners who dared to encroach on on what they had. It is the final expression of a society that idolized comfort, wealth, and lifestyle. Because they didn’t love God, they didn’t love people.

Sodom wasn’t destroyed because it was too permissive. Sodom was destroyed because its people were too proud, too full, too comfortable, and too cruel in their efforts to protect what they had from outsiders.

God heard the cries of those crushed by that system—and He acted.

That’s what makes this story disturbingly relevant today. The sin of Sodom isn’t ancient or obscure. It shows up whenever a society values its own prosperity above allegiance to God and clings to its own comfort, despises the stranger, and silences the cries of the vulnerable to protect what it has.

And that should give Christians (and non-Christians alike) pause in 2025 in the United States of America. God is no respecter of persons. People reap what they sow. God did not spare the people of Israel from His judgment when they repeatedly gave in to idolatry (putting their own interests above God’s interest) and oppressed their neighbors. He will not spare a country or a even a group of believers who do that.

The good news is that God is always, always faithful. He is aways just to forgive those who ask to be forgiven and repent of their ways. I pray that we can be such people.

A Review of Principalities Powers and Allegiances: Submission in Enemy Territory

Untangling submission to authority and allegiance to God

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A friend posted an glowing endorsement of the book, Principalities Powers and Allegiances, by Matt Mouzakis & Will Ryan, that intrigues me because the subject is a topic I have spent some time considering and writing about. The book is an exegesis of biblical passages that have posed challenges to modern Christians like myself: Romans 13:1-7 and 1 Peter 2:11-17.

These passages instruct Christians to submit to earthly authorities “for the Lord’s sake” (1 Peter 2:13). Mouzakis and Ryan provide background and Scriptural insight that sheds some fresh light on these passages. It is not new light. In fact, it is ancient light that was likely understood by the original readers of those words, but which has been lost in the centuries since that time.

I do not have the book, but I was curious because of my own interest in the tension between faithful adherence to the Gospel and submission to governing authorities, so I asked Google Gemini for a summary of the book. More specifically, I asked for a summary of the exegesis of Romans 13:1-7 for comparison to my own exegesis. (How Should the Church Act Regarding Authority? and more recently Submitting to Authority For the Lord’s Sake Like Peter, Paul, and Jesus Did)

The exegesis of Romans 13:1-7 offered by Mouzakis and Ryan is a departure from modern reading that views government as God’s benevolent institution for all time. They argue that the passage must be read through the lens of the Deuteronomy 32 worldview and the larger narrative of sin and God’s judgment in the book of Romans.

The Deuteronomy 32 worldview, in a nutshell, is that Yahweh, is the sole supreme Deity, and that the gods of the other nations are lesser, created spiritual beings (“sons of God” or elohim). It pulls from the judgment following the Tower of Babel that included the scattering of the people:

“When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance,
    when he divided mankind,
he fixed the borders of the peoples
    according to the number of the sons of God.”

(Deut. 32:8)(ESV)

The “sons of God” are sometimes translated “sons of Israel”, but Israel was not yet a nation at that time. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (whose name was changed to Israel) from which God formed His people were not yet born. God called Abraham out from among the nations and formed a people of God, the nation of Israel, separate and apart from the nations. Thus, Jews identified only two sets of people: the Jews and the Gentiles.

The Deuteronomy 32 worldview notes that the “sons of God” (the elohim) rebelled. They demanded the worship that belonged only to Yahweh, and they lead the nations into idolatry and violence. They are the principalities and powers that Paul speaks of who rule the “world system.” Jesus defeated those principalities and powers by his life, death, and resurrection (Colossians 2:15), broke down the dividing wall between Jews and Gentiles (Ephesians 2:14), and established his Church for the purpose of reclaiming the nations for the Kingdom of God.

Romans 13 needs to be read in the context of the sweep and arc of the story of God and what He is doing in space and time. Here are the key points of their specific interpretation of Romans 13:

1. The Context:

From Handing Over to Submission

The authors connect Romans 13 directly to Romans 1:21-23, where Paul describes God “handing over” (paradidomi) humanity to the consequences of their idolatry. In the Deuteronomy 32 worldview, this “handing over” included disinheriting the nations and appointing elohim (spiritual beings) to govern them.

The Problematic Authorities:

By the time of the New Testament, these spiritual beings—the principalities and powers—had fallen, becoming demonic forces that oppose God. When humanity rejects God, they are handed over to the “world” and to these spiritual powers, which are associated with the consequences of “sin and death.”

The Assertion:

The Roman government (specifically the Empire under Nero in the 1st Century) is viewed as aligned with these demonic forces. Paul’s message is that because Christians serve KING JESUS, they are no longer slaves to these demonic forces, even while living under their political rule.

2. The Nature of “The Authorities”

The Greek word used for “authorities” in Romans 13:1 is exousiai, which refers both to human governing authorities and spiritual powers (seen in Ephesians 6:12). Mouzakis and Ryan contend that Paul is deliberately using this ambiguous term to encompass the reality that earthly governments are influenced by unseen spiritual powers.

When Paul says the authorities are “instituted by God,” he does not mean God approves or blesses their actions. Rather, God established them as the temporary framework of consequences and judgment that the world is subjected to—a framework that God ultimately controls in his sovereignly.

3. The Ruler as “God’s Servant”

The authors evaluate the terms used for the governing official: leitourgos (minister/servant, v. 6) and diakonos (servant/minister, v. 4).

A Tool of Wrath:

The ruler is called both “God’s servant for good” and an “avenger who carries out God’s wrath” (v.4)(ESV). This wrath is seen not necessarily as God’s positive blessing on good governance, but as the execution of the consequences already outlined in Romans 1—the judgment of being “handed over” to a system that operates by the sword. the “good” is the carrying out of God’s purposes. The government’s function is to maintain basic civic order and punish wrongdoers, which is a necessary restraint in a fallen world, but the government itself is not necessarily acting righteously.

Consistent with this, we can find multiple times in Scripture where unjust nations are identified as servants of God. Isaiah identifies Assyria as the “the rod of my anger, in whose hand is the club of my wrath!” even as Isaiah pronounces, Woe to the Assyrian!” (Is. 10:5-6) Jeremiah called the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar, God’s servant. (Jer.25:9 & 27:6) to bring God’s judgment.

The Non-Endorsement:

The term leitourgos neutral. It refers to public servants, generally. It means a tool or agent of God, like Assyria and Babylon were to accomplish God’s purposes in exiling his people. It is not an endorsement of them as God’s representative.

4. Allegiance vs. Submission

The most crucial distinction is between submission and allegiance:

Allegiance is to Christ:

The Christian’s primary and ultimate loyalty is to Jesus and the Kingdom of God. Our allegiance (our citizenship in the kingdom of God) made the Christian community a rival kingdom to the Roman Empire. That is why Christians were viewed with suspicion and called “atheists” (because they didn’t bow to Caesar and they didn’t worship the Roman pantheon of gods). Jesus was crucified, in part, because he was perceived to claim to be the King of the Jews, though his kingdom is not of this world.

Submission is Tactical:

The command to “be subject” (hypotassō) is a call for voluntary, orderly yielding to maintain peace, prevent anarchy, and avoid creating unnecessary offense that would hinder the spread of the Gospel. Peter says to submit “for the Lord’s sake”, so that the Gospel message is not hindered. It is an act of discipleship lived out in enemy territory.

Taxes and Honor:

Paul’s only specific instruction about submitting to the governing authorities is to “pay to all what is owed them” (v.7), including taxes. He echoed Jesus in this who told us to pay unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to his disciples to pay the Temple tax. It is a call to fulfill one’s basic civic duty (giving to Caesar what bears Caesar’s image). However, the ultimate message is a remez (a subtle link or hint) to Jesus’s teaching to give yourself wholly to God because you bear His image.

In summary, for Mouzakis and Ryan, Romans 13 is not a command for blind obedience to the state, but a strategic directive for Kingdom citizens to live non-violently and orderly in a world ruled by lesser, fallen powers, while reserving ultimate worship and allegiance for King Jesus.

If you are interested in what the authors have to say about the book, this video features Dr. Matt Mouzakis discussing the process of writing the book and exploring its underlying theological themes in a conversation about writing worship music. Write Biblically Accurate Songs For The Church with Dr. Matt Mouzakis

If you want to read what I have written about the tension between submission to authority and allegiance to God, see How Should the Church Act Regarding Authority? and more recently Submitting to Authority For the Lord’s Sake Like Peter, Paul, and Jesus Did.

Did AI do a good job summarizing the book? I have added to the AI summary I obtained. Did “we” do a good job? If you have read the book, please let me know.

If this helped you, made you curious, or even if you disagree, please feel free to start a conversation in the comments.

Submitting to Authority For the Lord’s Sake Like Peter, Paul, and Jesus Did

Both Peter and Paul defied authority by speaking, but spoke about submitting to authority

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Bas-relief portraying the emperor Nero at the Certosa di Pavia

One of the most discussed texts in early Christian ethics is 1 Peter 2:13–17, because it calls believers to “submit… to every human institution” and to “honor the emperor,” even in times when those institutions were hostile or unjust. Peter, who penned this admonition, ultimately lost his life to an arbitrary, capricious, and unjust Roman Emperor.

“13 Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human authority: whether to the emperor, as the supreme authority, 14 or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. 15 For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people. 16 Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God’s slaves. 17 Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the emperor.”

1 Peter 2:13–17

Paul, who lost his life to the same Roman Emporer, says similarly,

“Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2 Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.”

Romans 13:1-2


These two passages speak to the way Christians should honor and submit to earthly authorities. They have posed challenges to Christians from the time there were written. In Peter’s and Paul’s time, Nero was the Roman Emperor. Nero was a brutal, harsh, paranoid ruler who had his own wife and children killed to protect himself and to advance his own ends. Peter and Paul were both martyred by his decree.

The great American story is a far cry from the brutality and caprice of Roman history, but we have lived through our own unjust laws, including laws that protected the institution of slavery and the laws that perpetuated Jim Crow after slavery was finally prohibited. In more recent times, American have laws protected the practice of abortion, and we could find other examples of unjust laws and laws that protect unjust practices if we dig deeper.

I doubt I am exaggerating to say that no nation governed by men has ever been perfectly just, and I doubt no nation of men will ever be perfectly just. How then should Christians in any age govern themselves in light of Peter’s and Paul’s admonitions to honor and submit to governing authorities, including unjust ones?

I previously tried to parse these tensions when I published How Should the Church Act Regarding Authority? the day after January 6th, when supporters of Donald Trump, including many people flying banners of Christian faith, stormed the Capitol building in response to what they thought were unjust election results. At that time, I was critiquing the “insurrection” against the election and inauguration of President Biden. Even if the election results were unjust, shouldn’t Christian have submitted to them?

Now, I find myself critiquing the Trump Administration’s unjust enforcement of immigration laws. Some of the people who defended Trump’s complicity with the January 6th insurrection are now defending the current immigration enforcement practices based on the biblical mandate to honor and submit to authority. It seems to be a tangled mess!

We should obviously be consistent, and not selective, about the law and order we submit to, but how we should live that out in the face of injustice may not seem crystal clear. It’s important, though, that we do the work to rightly divide the Word of God

Continue reading “Submitting to Authority For the Lord’s Sake Like Peter, Paul, and Jesus Did” →

Waiting for the Fullness of Time – the Day of the Lord

What if the Day of the Lord, the Second Coming, is not fixed?

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Marty Solomon makes some bold statements in the 2nd episode of Season 5 of the BEMA Podcast (Episode 192, Telling a Story) (starting about 20 minutes in). He says the early Christians were not wrong to believe the return of Christ was imminent. He believes Christ’s return actually was imminent (and still is) – if only the time was right

Solomon basically believes that Jesus might have returned within a generation or two of his death if the right things developed. He believes that the date was not and is not fixed. This is not how I have viewed it nor how I believe most people view the return of Jesus.

I have always assumed that God has fixed a date for the return of Jesus. It seems to me that this is what is generally taught or assumed. This is why we struggle with Jesus saying no one knows the hour or day of his return – not even Jesus. This is why we wrestle with the message of the imminent return of Jesus that bleeds through the New Testament.

Jesus didn’t return, so can it be possible that they were wrong about that? If they were wrong about that, what else are they wrong about?

Marty Solomon says they were not wrong about the potential, imminent return of Jesus. It could have happened, if only the time was right, if only the right things happened, if only the circumstances were such that his return was appropriate.

This is a radically different view than what I have assumed, but I was intrigued by the thought of it. As I mulled it over, I began to see some some things, and that inspires my writing today.

Continue reading “Waiting for the Fullness of Time – the Day of the Lord” →

Training in Godliness

Training in godliness may be a bit different than what you suppose.

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Life is a journey, and each day is a leg in that journey. Proverbs says that a man makes his plans, but God directs his steps. Basically, God is ultimately in control, but we have something to say in the process. Where we end up depends on whether and how we align ourselves with God and HIs purposes.

The weekly reading for the small group I am in (and the subject of the sermon this coming Sunday) is 1 Timothy 4:7-10. That passage inspires my writing today as part of the leg of my journey that I call today. My focus will be the following two verses:

Have nothing to do with godless myths and old wives’ tales; rather, train yourself to be godly. For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.

1 timothy 4:7-8 (niv)

I was fortunate today that I didn’t just set out to check off this reading for Wednesday night. I came at this reading with a more intentional and devoted mindset, which I suppose is appropriate for the topic. I can’t say that I always have the mindfulness to do that, but today I did.

I might otherwise have assumed I knew what “godless myths” are and what “godly” training is. I might have glossed over those phrases without really understanding what Paul is saying, but I realized as read them that I didn’t really know what he meant by “godless myths” and training to be “godly.”

Acknowledging this, I took one step back to read these verses in context. I read verse 6, which says:

If you point these things out to the brothers and sisters, you will be a good minister of Christ Jesus, nourished on the truths of the faith and of the good teaching that you have followed.

1 Timothy 4:6 (emphasis added)

Of course, then I had to step further back to see what Paul meant when he said, “If you point these things….” What things? The previously verses contain those “things”:

The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron. They forbid people to marry and order them to abstain from certain foods, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and who know the truth. For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.

1 Timothy 4:1-5

I am still not sure what “deceiving spirits” these people followed or what “teachings” Paul references here, but the fact that Paul calls these teachers “hypocritical liars” who taught ascetic religious practices (forbidding marriage and ordering abstinence from certain foods) is a clue. Affirming that God created everything good and receiving those good things with thanksgiving and prayer is another clue.

it seems that another clue lies in the use of the word, hypocritical,” which I learned recently was not meant in exactly the same way modern people think of it. We think of hypocrisy as saying one thing and doing another. The Greek word, ὑπόκρισις (hupokrisis), that we translate as hypocrisy literally means “to act under a feigned part.”

In other words, a hypocrite is an actor. A hypocrite according to the Greek meaning is someone playing a part, a person pretending to be someone or to know something than who or what they are.

As I considered these things, I realized that the Greek words translated into English as “godless myths” and training to “godly” might also give me a better understanding of what Paul is saying. When I dove into the Greek, the meaning became clearer, and it isn’t necessarily what I might have thought.

I might have answered, if someone pressed me, that godliness is how a person behaves. I might have said that godliness means doing right, living according to God’s rules, and conforming to biblical morality, but that isn’t what Paul is saying here. To be sure, godliness does bear the fruits of the Holy Spirit, but we should not confuse the fruit for the root.

Continue reading “Training in Godliness” →