Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ the Redeemer Church, Manhattan, KS, 09 May 2010, 19 May 2024
As we come up on our third sermon on Ethics, it may be surprising that there is so much to say about it – after all, good is good and bad is bad, right? God says what is good and bad, and that should settle it,
but so often we either don’t know what God says about things (the problem of Biblical ignorance),
or we are not willing to obey what God has said on the matter (the problem of spiritual rebellion)!
At the end of the last sermon I left off in the middle of describing one of the problems of ethics, and that is the problem of calling things bad that God has not called bad. It’s not o.k. to call good Evil -
even if everyone else is doing it,
even if you would really like to legalistically add rules to expand on God’s rules, and
even if something painful has happened and you would really like to take over the role of God and call Him evil.
Job’s haunting question to his wife bears consideration, “Shall I accept good things from God and not bad things?” (Job 2:10).
David also stated, “It is good to me that I have been afflicted, in order that I learn Your statutes.” (Psalm 119:71).
The second problem of Ethics that I want to get into now is the problem of calling good what God considers bad. One of the key ways in which this happens is when we reject His laws. There’s a big word for that: Antinomianism (a compound word which can be broken down into anti=against + nomos=law); it is the denial that any outside law should be imposed upon us.
I have already pointed out some problems earlier with Secular libertarianism, a form of antinomianism which says we should get rid of all the laws and let everybody do what they want. I don’t see a need to pursue this farther.
However, in Christian circles, there are also some who argue that God no longer has a law code and that we shouldn’t either. It is this “Christian” form of antinomianism I wish to address further. I’ve heard Christians actually argue that the 10 Commandments are no longer binding. Why? They quote scriptures like:
“I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, not like the old covenant… I will write my law on their inward parts…” (Jer. 31:31-33)
and “We’re no longer under law but under Grace” (Rom 6:15b)
In his book Introduction To Biblical Ethics, Robertson McQuilken answered this misunderstanding well. He wrote: “[I]t is important to emphasize that the New Testament uses the term “law” to refer to:
the moral requirements of God (Rom 2:14-15, 4:15, 7:2-22, 8:3-7, 13:8-10, 1 Cor 7:19, Gal 3:13, 5:14, 6:2, 1 Tim 1:8, Heb 8:10ff, 10:16, James 1:25, 4:11),
the Mosaic system of regulations (John 1:17, Rom 5:13 & 20, Gal 3:17-23, 4:4-5 &21, 1 Cor 9:20), and
the figurative use of the law referring to obedience to the Mosaic law as a means of salvation. (Rom 3:20 “…by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified… for through the law comes the knowledge of sin.” See also: Gal 2:6 &21, Gal 3:2-18, Phil 3:9)
[as well as others]
McQuilken continued, “Because ‘law’ is used in many different ways and often with several meanings overlapping, it is important to be sure from the context which meaning was intended by the author. Otherwise we shall be applying a teaching concerning the law that does not actually apply. For example, if we speak of being free from the law and use this to refer to the moral law of God when in fact Scripture is referring to the condemnation resulting from the law or the Old Testament system of sacrifices, we are making a great error.1”
We might further break the law of Moses down into three components:
Ceremonial Law – The Ceremonial law would be those laws regarding offering sacrifices and governing the rituals at the temple in the Old Testament.
These ceremonial laws have been superseded by the things Jesus instituted as our great High Priest.
The whole book of Hebrews tells us that these things were “shadows” of what we would experience in the New Covenant2.
For instance, we no longer offer sacrifices, and we no longer have the presence of God localized in a particular temple.
Still, there are many principles of continuing significance which can be gleaned from the ceremonial law, such as the importance of reading God’s word and singing and praying in worship services, the importance of confessing sin and being cleansed of sin before God, as well as little things like whether or not it’s o.k. to have artwork in church. Those are all in the ceremonial law.
Civil Law is the next category. Civil law has to do with the government of people. It includes the rules given to kings and judges to follow in governing the nation of Israel.
Civil law would include things like how to judge an accidental murder vs. an intentional murder (Deut. 19), or what to do if a dead body is found and nobody seems to know who the murderer is (Deut. 21). That can all be found in the civil laws of the Bible.
We should also note instances in the Bible where believers worked in the context of a civil government that was not based on God’s law – Daniel the prophet and Paul the Apostle, for example. These men of God did what they could to affirm what was right in those governments (Rom. 13), and they did what they could to reform those things that they recognized as out-of-line with God’s principles of civil justice.
For instance, Daniel intervened to talk the Persian king out of killing all his wise men (Dan. 2:12-16), and Paul used his rights as a Roman citizen to keep himself from being flogged without a trial (Acts 22:25), and he appealed his case to Rome when it was apparent that local politics were obstructing his freedom of speech. (Acts 25:11). God did not condemn His people for working within the context of the Persian or Roman government.
Moral Law is the third category.
This would basically be the 10 commandments: Do not steal; Do not worship the wrong god, Honor your parents, etc.
These things define right and wrong behavior for all people at all times and are not limited to Israel.
Let me note, however, that these three categories of Abrogated Ceremonial law, Non-binding Civil law, and Universally-binding Moral law are not in neatly-segmented lists for us in the Bible. They’re all mixed up together, and many of them are inter-related so closely that it is challenging to figure out what category each one goes into.
For instance, murder crosses all three categories because it is a moral evil, yet the civil ruler has to implement civil law to judge and punish murderers, and yet it was the Jewish rulers’ unjust execution of Jesus that fulfilled God’s conditions of the ceremonial law for the forgiveness of our sin.
So, although the categories of Ceremonial, Civil, and Moral law are useful for thinking about the Old Testament laws, they don’t answer all of our questions. The law is just something we have to meditate on so that we grow in wisdom over a lifetime.
Towards the end of the “not under law but under grace” passage in Romans7:12, we find this remarkable statement, “…the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, and righteous, and good.” What God calls good, we should not call evil; there is nothing wrong with the 10 commandments! (cf. 1 Tim. 1:8, Psalm 19:7, 119:1)
Furthermore, there is nothing wrong with all the rest of the law either.
Nowhere does the Bible tell us that any of its laws are bad.
Granted, the law does not save us and there are certainly ceremonies that the New Testament writers declared have passed away with the coming of Jesus,
but, as Paul wrote to Timothy, “all scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching” (2 Tim. 3:16), and Paul was especially talking about the Old Testament.
Even the civil laws of the Old Testament are “profitable for training in righteousness,” because that’s what God has said. To call them bad is to forsake Biblical ethics and go back to man deciding what is good and bad.
For instance, the requirement that everyone in society rest on the seventh day is good.
In the French revolution, secular humanistic thinkers tried to re-make laws in rebellion against God. In their mad dash into man-made law, they created a calendar system based on ten-day weeks instead of seven-day weeks. They thought that productivity would go up with longer work-weeks, so they got rid of the archaic system of church laws.
Well, productivity didn’t go up; it went down, because workers were not getting enough rest. God made people to need one day in seven to rest. (The French decimal calendar also didn’t work because it ignored the God-given cycles of the moon that we call months, putting the French out of sync with the natural order of creation too. The decimal calendar had to be abandoned.)
When you try to make your own laws in defiance of God’s law, it creates more problems.
Once, when I was at a city council meeting and said something like that, a woman shot back at me, “What? Are you saying we should go back to stoning children like the O.T. law says?”
Well, I don’t imagine that I can come up with a better way of organizing civil society than God can, so let’s look at that law. It’s in Deuteronomy 21:18-21 “If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son that will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they chasten him, will not heed them, then his father and his mother should grab him… and they shall say unto the elders of his city, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice. He is a glutton, and a drunkard.’ And all the men of his city shall stone him to death...”
Note that this is not a child, he is old enough to be an alcoholic and to establish residence in “his city” as opposed to his parent’s city.
Note also that this son has been a long time in rebellion: He has been exhorted and disciplined by his parents until they have given up on him.
Next, note that it is the parents who are to bring this man before the elders. The parents – the people who would naturally love him the most – are going to be slower than anyone else in reaching the conclusion that their son should receive capital punishment.
Finally note that there is one more safeguard against exasperated parents giving a son up rashly, for the elders of the city are to judge the case and make the final decision of whether the rebellious son should be stoned to death, because they are the ones to do the stoning.
Whether or not you believe that this particular law is for today, I hope you can see that it contains safeguards which should remain as important principles in the justice system today, such as the denial of anonymous accusations, and the right to a trial. It is not bad after all!
Time doesn’t permit further investigation into the wisdom of the rest of the O.T. law, such as :
the sanitary measures God commanded, including burial of sewage (Deut. 23:13), washing of hands (Lev. 15:11), and not eating meat that has been sitting out unrefrigerated for three days or more (Lev. 7:18),
or the justice of the requirement that a conviction of a crime must not be merely by the testimony of only one witness (Deut 17:6), or the justice of the requirement that repeat offenders be punished more severely than first-time offenders (Ex. 21:36),
or the fairness of forbidding dishonest weights and measures (Prov. 20:10) in business transactions and of requiring truth-telling (Zech. 8:16),
God’s laws are good!
So, am I saying that we need to scrap the U.S. government and substitute it with the book of Deuteronomy? No. But I am saying that anyone who takes a position in the government of our city, county, state, and federal government should:
submit themselves to God as the ultimate decider of what is right and wrong,
read the O.T. laws over and over so that they have a growing grasp of the way God thinks and the principles in the Bible by which to decide the best ways of governing (Deut 17:18),
and they should implement those principles by repealing laws which call evil Good and good Evil – as God defines good and evil, and by enacting and enforcing laws which call good Good and evil Evil – as God defines good and evil in the Bible.
“But you can’t legislate morality!” I’ve heard people say that too.
But, if you’ve been following what I’m saying, you’ll see that there is no such thing as a law without a religiously-ethical basis. All law is fundamentally rooted in the likes or dislikes of someone who acts as deity.
Somebody’s ethical standards are going to be implemented when it comes to making laws for any community.
The question should not be, “How can we keep law secular?” Rather the question should be, “Whose standards of right and wrong will be used to decide good laws from bad ones?”
Isaiah 5:20 warns us, “Woe to those who say to evil, ‘Good!’ and to good, ‘Evil!’ setting darkness for light and light for darkness, setting bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Woe those who are wise in their eyes and in front of their faces consider themselves intelligent… 24. Therefore, as a tongue of fire consumes stubble and flame withers the dry grass, their root will be like rottenness, and their flower will go up like dust, for they have rejected the law of Jehovah of Hosts, and the word of the Holy One of Israel they have despised.”
Proverbs 8:13a “The fear of Jehovah is to hate evil” That means worshipers of God should identify evil and hate it.
However, humans have a tendency to fail to recognize as evil what God calls evil.
We even call evil things good! Isaiah 41:7 “The craftsman strengthens the goldsmith, and he who smooths with the hammer, him who strikes the anvil, saying of the soldering, ‘It is good,’ and they strengthen it with nails so that it cannot totter.” In Isaiah’s day, they looked at an idol and said, “It is good!” But it is not o.k. to call an idol Good.
Hananiah, Mischael, and Azariah (aka Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego) believed this: It is not o.k. to call an idol good. But these guys lived in Persia, where the king was believed to be god over all gods. And since it is a function of deity to decide right from wrong, those Persian kings made up laws for the whole nation to follow. One time, the king of Persia told everyone to bow down to an image that looked like him. Did Hananiah, Mischael, and Azariah obey that law? Why not? Because it contradicted God’s law which says not to worship any other god besides Yahweh! They refused to bow to that idol and call that morally-evil law Good. They were willing to call evil Evil, even if it meant they would lose their jobs - even if it meant they would be thrown into the fiery furnace. They refused to bow and declare that idol good.
Today we have many opportunities to call evil Evil in the face of a culture which calls so many evil things good: For instance, God calls homosexuality evil:
Leviticus 18:22 “Do not lie with a man, as lying with a woman; this is an abomination” (cf. Lev. 20:13, Rom. 1:27).
This, of course, is not acceptable to say in our post-modern American culture – it might offend somebody who has made up their own contradictory ethic. But the ethics of Biblical Christianity are not driven by whether or not a practice is offensive to other people; they are driven by faithfulness to what our God says He hates and loves.
Thoughtfully warning those who are doing what God hates while inviting them in to what God loves is what we Christians are called to do. This is not hateful and rude and mean – it shouldn’t be; our motivation should be love that wants what we believe is best for a fellow human being.
Not speaking up against wrong is also wrong. Being tolerant of evil – extending tacit consent that allows evil to happen unhindered – is not essentially different from practicing evil yourself, according to Romans 1:28 &32 “And even as they refused to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up unto a reprobate mind... who, knowing the ordinance of God, that they that practise such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but also consent with them that practise them.” We can’t stop all evil from happening, but where God gives us opportunity to speak into things we must call evil Evil.
Some people are confused because they think that since they agree with God that heinous crimes are bad, that God thinks they are wrong for the same reason that we humans think they are wrong.
For instance, folks today think that the Holocaust was bad because one group of humans was trying to wipe another race of humans off the map, whereas that is not the reason God would say the Holocaust was bad, seeing as He actually commanded Jews to wipe out entire races of people in the book of Joshua.
There are probably many sins wrapped up in the Holocaust, for which we could Biblically say it was bad, including hating good, man-worship, oppression of the poor, and murder.
But just because Secular Humanists and Christians agree that the Holocaust was bad does not mean we have the same reason for calling it bad. We as Christians need to be consistent in explaining why evil is evil – things are not evil simply because they are socially unacceptable or simply because life is harmed; they are evil because God says they are evil.
This responsibility of Christians to declare God’s ethical standards is part of our priestly role.
Deuteronomy 31:9-11 says, “Moses wrote this law and delivered it to the priests… and unto all the elders of Israel. And Moses commanded them, saying, ‘At the end of every seven years… you must read this law before all Israel in their hearing.’” One of the roles of the priests was to tell the people what God’s laws were, and we should do the same today.
In 1 Peter 2:9, Christians are called “a kingdom of priests… that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.” Did you hear that? Priests “proclaim [God’s] excellencies”! We should explain what is right and wrong in church as well as to those outside the church – even to government officials.
When the English Puritans were writing out their doctrinal standards in the Westminster Confession of Faith they asserted that one of the things church synods and councils can do is to give “advice, for satisfaction of conscience [to] … the civil magistrate.” (31:5) It’s our job to tell the world what God says is right and wrong.
Telemachus was a Christian during the time of the Roman empire when people would go to the Coliseum and watch gladiators fight and kill each other for entertainment. He took a tour of Rome, but was horrified at what he saw inside the Coliseum. He got so upset that he jumped down into the arena and ran up to the gladiators, yelling, “For God’s sake, stop it!” The gladiators promptly killed Telemachus, but when the emperor heard what happened, he decreed an end to the gladiator fights. You see, the emperor at that time was a Christian, but he lacked the resolve to bring an end to the sport of watching men kill each other because it was so popular. The courageous act of Telemachus gave the emperor the courage to call evil Evil.
Could God be calling you to be a modern-day Telemachus who calls evil Evil and imparts courage to people in our government with the political authority to stop and punish evil?
This leads me to a final point concerning law. Earlier, I alluded to Hananaiah, Mischael, and Azariah’s refusal to bow down to the idol of the king of Persia. Although we as Christians normally should do all we can to honor, support, and obey our governing authorities, there are times when we must violate a man-made law in order to obey God’s law.
The principle behind civil disobedience is submission to proper authority, not rebellion. God is the only one who can truly decide what is right and wrong, so if humans enact a law that commands us to do what is evil in God’s sight or a law which commands us not to do what is good in God’s sight, we believe that God’s law is higher than man’s law, and that God’s law must be obeyed rather than man’s law in such situations.
This was the case in the Apostles’ time when Peter and John were arrested and commanded by their authorities to stop preaching about Jesus. Peter told the rulers, “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29), and he kept on preaching Jesus, even though it was forbidden by his civil and ecclesiastical authorities.
Breaking the law is not something to take lightly. It should be unusual. If we can at all give the benefit of the doubt to our government, we should comply with the laws of the land.
And furthermore, if we decide to violate a law out of conscience, we must be willing to suffer the punishment for breaking that law even though we believe it is an immoral or unjust law.
Hananiah, Mischael, and Azariah told their king that even if God did not deliver them – even if they got burned alive in the fiery furnace, they would still not worship any God but Yahweh (Dan. 3:18). The king had decreed the death sentence, and these men of God decided they were willing to die in order to obey God’s law.
This kind of resolve thrilled God’s heart, and He delivered them, proving to the world that the ethical authority of God was greater than the ethical authority of the King of Persia.
Man is not good; God is.
Psalm 58:1-2 “Do you… speak righteousness? Do you judge uprightly, you sons of men? No, in heart you work wickedness...” Man is not basically good and cannot accurately tell good from evil.
The God of the Bible, on the other hand, is
good.
In Mark 10:18 Jesus said, “…No one is
good except one – that is God”
We must therefore look to God and grow in the
knowledge of His law,
submitting to His word on what
is good and evil, and
implementing His standards in
our spheres of influence.
This will include refusing to follow the crowd, explaining God’s standards of right and wrong, and may even include disobeying bad man-made laws.
The supreme good is the happiness and pleasure of God.
If you’re a humanist, then your god is yourself and you would consider your pleasure and happiness to be the supreme good. (This is one reason why recreation has become so important in our humanistic culture.)
Corliss Lamont, in his book Philosophy of Humanism, says that as long as man “pursues activities that are healthy, socially useful, and in accordance with reason, pleasure will generally accompany them; and happiness, the supreme good, will be the eventual result.”3
The position of Biblical Christianity, however, is that Jesus is God, and His happiness and pleasure is the highest good, therefore worshiping Him is the most important thing.
John Piper, in his book, The Dangerous Duty of Delight, wrote, “[W]e glorify God by enjoying Him forever4. This is the essence of Christian Hedonism. God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him… It is what the whole universe is about. The radical implication is that pursuing pleasure in God is our highest calling. It is essential to all virtue and all reverence.” (p.21)
This submission to the God of the Bible will result in good behavior.
This behavior, is a matter of the heart, not of mere outward performance. John Murray, in his ethics book entitled Principles of Conduct, reminds us that, “If we are thinking of the notes of biblical piety, none is more characteristic than the fear of the Lord.5” It is not out of a desire to look good to other people that Christians should do good; rather, Christians should do good out of reverence to the Lord Jesus.
The Apostle Peter was particularly concerned that Christians live their everyday lives in an ethical manner: 2 Peter 3:10-13 “But the Day of the Lord will arrive like a thief {in the night}, in which the heavens will pass away with a rush, and the elements will be disintegrated by being heated, and the earth and the works in it will be burned up. Therefore, concerning all these things being disintegrated, what sort of persons must y'all be in holy lifestyles and godlinesses, anticipating and hastening the coming of the Day of God? ... let us look forward to new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness resides!” (See also 1 Pet 3:2, 13-16, and James 3:13-18)
1ibid, p.36.
2The word “shadow” is found in Heb. 8:5 and 10:1.
3 Noebel, Understanding the Times, p.93
4This is an allusion to the first question in the Westminster Catechism.
5Murray, Principles of Conduct, p.229