The Functions of Deity: Ethics 3 - Don’t call evil what God calls Good

Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ the Redeemer Church, Manhattan, KS, 09 May 2010, 19 May 2024

Intro

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,


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 -


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.

  1. 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),

  2. 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

  3. 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)

  4. [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

      1. 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        • These ceremonial laws have been superseded by the things Jesus instituted as our great High Priest.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.

      2. 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.

      3. 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.

        • 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.

        • 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.

Conclusion

  1. Man is not good; God is.

    1. 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.

    2. 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”

    3. 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.

    4. 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.

  2. The supreme good is the happiness and pleasure of God.

    1. 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.)

    2. 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

    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.

    4. 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)

  3. This submission to the God of the Bible will result in good behavior.

    1. 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.5It 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.

    2. 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

3