Biblical Ethics, Part 2 - The Church
28th April 2023
Last week I began writing about ethics, setting out what the Bible teaches about a nation that turns its back on God, as England is doing in our generation. This week, I'd like to focus on the church.
It cannot have evaded your attention that the teaching and practice of morality in some English churches, but not all, have changed in the same timeframe as the ethics taught nationally have changed. You may also have noticed that the church doesn't change in step with the nation, but a few years behind. It seems that many in the church want to mirror the people around us, rather than be distinct from them. It's nice to fit in. It's nice to avoid persecution.
Some Christian leaders have so little faith in the Bible that they're willing to ignore its less comfortable passages. Some seem to have found ways to re-interpret some passages of the Bible. But let me ask two questions:
- Firstly: Is it really likely that the church has been wrong on all these issues for 2,000 years, and we've only started interpreting the Bible correctly in the last 60?
- Secondly: is it a coincidence that they've invented these new interpretations of scripture at the same time as the nation have invented its new morality, and that the new interpretations coming from some so-called Christian leaders are the same as these new national ethics?
Is it not more rational to believe, as I do, that some in the churches are willing to torture the scriptures to make them say what the world wants them to say?
We're not supposed to agree with the world, we're supposed to separate ourselves from the world. Consider:
1 Peter 2v9
… you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people
belonging to God…
2 Corinthians 6v15-17
What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer
have in common with an unbeliever?
What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the
temple of the living God. As God has said: "I will live with them and walk
among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people."
Therefore, "Come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no
unclean thing, and I will receive you."
God calls us to separate ourselves from the people around us, and the ideas around us, and the ethics around us. This is not to separate ourselves geographically from our neighbours. We need to live in their streets, befriend them and spend time with them. How else can we tell them about Jesus? But God calls us to be a distinctive people. We should not live as those around us live. We should not want what those around us want. We should not think as those around us think.
Of course the people around us believe things that are untrue. Of course they want things that are selfish and impure. If God hadn't saved me, so would I.
Ephesians 2v-5
All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our
flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by
nature deserving of wrath.
But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy,
made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions — it is
by grace you have been saved.
But we have been saved out of the world, and we should think and speak and act as those who have been saved out of the world.
James 4v4
… don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred towards God?
Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.
How clear do you want it? It is that stark a choice.
Romans 12v2a
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the
renewing of your mind.
Don't settle for the philosophy and ethics the world gives you, plus a bit of Jesus. Be fully submitted to the Bible. The church should not be a slightly wishy-washy copy of the world. The church should be a radical alternative to the world. The church should not accept worldly ethics. The church should challenge worldly ethics by preaching and living godly ethics, and so demonstrate that godly ethics are vastly superior.
But some Christians don't accept the clear moral teaching of scripture, as it has been studied and accepted since the days when Christ walked among us and died for the forgiveness of our sins. So what does God say – what does the Bible say – about those Christians who preach secular ethics rather than Biblical ethics? What do God and the Bible say about those who will pervert the scriptures to make them agree with the world? I suggest the answer to that question is found in:
Isaiah 5v20-21
Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light
and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.
Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight.
Of course God is displeased by the sin – and it is a sin – committed by some Christians of adopting worldly ethics, either ignoring the Bible or perverting it. God hates it when we compromise our Father's ethics. He promises woe to Christians who do that. In particular, God will judge Christian leaders who teach worldly ethics. I'll write about Christian leaders next time.