While those who adhere to the historic Christian faith love to champion the shepherd boy’s bold defeat of Goliath, they are much less comfortable with David and Jonathan’s relationship. In 2 Samuel 1:26, David famously pens the following oration for his dead friend, “I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; very pleasant have you been to me; your love to me was extraordinary surpassing the love of women.” Finding some parallels between David’s language above and that of the various sexual revolutions, some theologians have concluded that David had a romantic relationship with Jonathan. Such claims rightfully trouble those who defend the historic understanding of the Scripture’s sexual ethics. But do the such claims have merit?

Context Matters

While the hypothesis that Jonathan and David were friends with benefits makes sense of the modern belief that unrestrained sexual expression is the highest good, it does not make sense of David’s world or of adherence to Biblical morality. The ancient Jews believed that communion with the Lord and not sex proved to be man’s greatest good. David said of himself in Psalm 16:9 that, “My heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices; my flesh also dwells secure” because “The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup (Ps 16:5).” David found his validation not in the bedroom with his latest lover but in the Lord’s sanctuary worshiping. As David wrote in Psalm 145:16, The Lord satisfies “the desire of every living thing.”

This is not to say that David forever found joy in the Lord. He did transgress God’s sexual ethic. A few pages over in 2 Samuel 3:2-5, the author of Scripture reveals that David had six wives. Moreover in 2 Samuel 11-12, the author explores David’s affair with Bathsheba and resulting judgment in detail. In other words, the Scriptures never whitewashed David’s sins or violations of God’s commands, presenting and condemning them as sin. Had David’s funeral oration implied a sexual relationship with Jonathan, a violation of Leviticus 18:22 which declared that laying with “a man as a woman” was “an abomination,” readers would expect the author of 2 Samuel to have offered an editorial condemnation of David’s actions. But no such condemnation exists.

David was not discussing a sexual connection. To imply otherwise, readers must negate both the historical setting of David’s words and the witness of David’s other Scriptural writings. They must give the text a meaning that David did not intend and that his original readers would never have seen. In short, the homosexual reading of this text so transforms David’s words that they come mean the very opposite of what author originally intended to convey.

What was David Saying?

Rather than exhorting the glories of male sexuality, David was championing the glories of faith-based friendship. In other words, David is answering the question of “what is better than sex?” His answer is: “Friendship that is built upon a shared trust in the Lord.” In 1 Samuel 14, readers meet Jonathan scaling up a mountain to almost single-handedly defeat a garrison of philistines. He does so because he believes that “The Lord has given them into the hand of Israel.” Similarly, David burst onto the scene against Goliath declaring, “This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, I will strike you down and cut off your head…that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel (1 Sam 17:46-47).” The men bonded over their shared love for and trust in the Lord. Jonathan famously testified to the nature of their relationship when by faith in God’s future promises he asked the then fugitive David to care for him and his family, saying, “If I am still alive, show me the steadfast love of the Lord, that I may not die; and do not cut off your steadfast love from my house forever, when the Lord cuts off every one of the enemies of David from the face of the earth (1 Sam 20:14-15).” Jonathan’s friendship proved better than sex for it pointed David to the Lord who satisfies every desire through the keeping of his promises.

Like David and Jonathan, Jesus also affirms that humans find their greatest fulfillment in worship and not sex. Commenting on an odd question from the Sadducees about marital relations in heaven, Jesus said, “For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven (Mk 12:25).” At death, sex ends. However, the worship of the Lord and relationship with both God and man continue. Thus, for the Christian, the greatest friendships are not tied inherently to sex or to procreation but to the unity built upon a shared trust in the Lord. Thus, Paul can say that he wished all believers were single as he was (1 Cor 7:7). Sex ends. Our love for God and those who love God does not.

So What About Marriage?

Though David praises Jonathan for his friendship, the shepherd’s friendship with the crown prince does not negate the beauties of marriage. The Bible exhorts men and women to marry because the institution pictures Christ’s love for the church (Eph. 5). Moreover, sex should not be a joyless, professional duty for the purpose of procreation. As Solomon says of his bride, “For your love is better than wine (1:2).” Rather God designed it to be a joyful expression of a unity built upon a shared faith in Christ whose fruit can produce both children and salvation. The biblical ideal is for couples to experience both spiritual and physical oneness.

But David’s relationship with Jonathan also warns against pursuing sex apart from a shared embrace of God’s Word. A single man or woman in a god-fearing asexual relationship with someone of the same gender can achieve a greater sense unity, love, and fulfillment with a believing friend than a believer can achieve with an unbeliever in the marriage bed. Sex cannot satisfy or make up for a lack of spiritual unity. Sex will fade and then disappear at death. But friendships built on a shared love for the Lord will last forever. May we never exchange eternal relationship for momentary gratification.

Final Thoughts

Though the secular mind declares most every sexual impulse to be a good and a rightful means of fulfillment, the Scriptures present a different narrative. They declare that man’s chief end is found in glorifying God. The truest and best relationships end not in sex but in worship. Though a Christian marriage should result in both spiritual and physical oneness providing the world with a beautiful picture of Christ and his church and a new generation of children, spiritual unity can be achieved outside the bonds of marriage. In other words, David was not a homosexual but a heterosexual man who delighted in the eternal joy that comes from having a friend who pointed him to the Lord. May we all (single and married) find such a friend and be such a friend!