Hardness of Heart Principle

In my previous post, I showed that adultery was listed as a crime in the Ten Commandments. However, this law was never enforced by Moses.

Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning (Matt 19:8).

Moses did not enforce the law against adultery, because the people’s hearts were hard. There were so many people committing adultery that applying biblical sanctions would have been unacceptable. God does not want his law to be enforced on a society that is opposed to it. If a law is constantly disobeyed, the authority of the entire law will be undermined. If adultery were widespread, a law against it would be a joke. Better to put the law on hold until society has changed.

If a law is being ignored, the state should stop enforcing that law. This is what Moses did. Instead of undermining respect for God’s law by failing to enforce a law against the adultery that the people did not want, he chose not to enforce it. This same principle also applies to homosexuality. In a society, where homosexual activity is widespread and most of society would oppose it, enforcing a law against a law against it would be impossible. This law should be taken “off line” due to “hardness of heart”.

This is the key to the question of what the state should do about homosexuality. The answer is that it should do nothing until the church has changed society (by the Holy Spirit changing hearts, not by force). Until the church has effectively preached the gospel and most people are Christians, the state should ignore homosexuality.

The full article on this topic is here.

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