The Rainbow in the Bible

It may seem odd for a faith-based nonprofit to participate in Pride Month. It may seem even stranger for a ministry to display a pride variant on its socials. While the church has an admittedly fraught relationship with our neighbors who identify as LGBTQ+, we feel it is necessary to make two points clear.

1) SOS Feeding Ministry is not a church; we are a registered 501 (c) (3) nonprofit, and as such, we serve all of our neighbors, regardless of gender or sexual identity.

2) Jesus did not avoid sexual sinners (Luke 7:36-50); he said he was sent to redeem them. (Matthew 9:12)

This should not be seen as Jesus affirming sinful behavior; however, there is no biblical witness to Jesus proclaiming judgment against any of these sinners in the Gospel accounts. Jesus does say at one point to the Pharisees that “the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going ahead of you into the kingdom of God.  For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes did believe him. And when you saw it, you did not even change your minds later so as to believe in him.”(Matthew 21:31-32 LEB)

On the subject of the rainbow, did you know it is a biblical symbol of God’s willingness to forgive sinful humans?

In Genesis, after God destroys almost all life on the planet with a flood, and reboots creation with Noah and his family, as Noah and his family disembark, God realizes that Noah and his family is just as sinful as the humans from before. In Genesis 8:21, God says, “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.” (NIV) Then God says, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth… Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind.” (Genesis 9:14-15 NIV)

The rainbow is again mentioned in Ezekiel 1:28, in a passage about the figure of a man sitting on a divine throne “I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up he looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire, and that from there down he looked like fire; and brilliant light surrounded him. Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him.” (NIV)

Here we find the rainbow is associated with God’s promise that even though humans are sinful, he will not abandon us, in fact, his default posture is to forgive our sins, even though we will face consequences. (Exodus 34:6-7)

And again, scripture says that “ Here is a trustworthy saying: If we died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him. If we disown him, he will also disown us; if we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot disown himself.” (2 Timothy 2:11-13 NIV)

Knowing all this, it is not our job to judge or hurl insults at other sinful humans, as we are all sinners. We will work on removing the plank from our own eyes, before we worry about the speck in our neighbor’s eyes. (Matthew 7:1-6)

Jesus told us to love our neighbors, and he did not qualify that statement with exceptions, so neither do we.