Lights in the World - PH40-02

Advanced Bible Doctrine - Philippians 2:14-15

He says that we should be this, "In the midst of." The word "midst" is the Greek word 'mesos." and that simply means "middle." It has reference to something that completely surrounds the Christian. You and I as believers are completely surrounded by something. That something he says in verse 15 is a "crooked and perverse generation." The word "crooked" is the Greek word "skolios." "Skolios" means "dishonest." That is an atmosphere lacking genuine morality, and finding expression in dishonesty. We are living in a dishonest society. Furthermore, he describes it as one which is perverse. This is the Greek verb "diastrepho." "Diastrepho" means "to twist" or "to distort something." It connotes being turned aside or being corrected. Again, it is being turned aside from what is morally good to something that is morally evil.

The issue in this context, of course, is departure from the moral absolutes of the Bible to a relative system of morality such as we know today in situation ethics called the new morality. The issue here is moral corruption. It is in the perfect tense, which means that he is describing something that began in the past in the society at some point when a group of people began abandoning the absolute principles of biblical morality, and the results of that abandonment have continued on.

We tried to show you in a previous session what happened to the Roman Empire as Rome gradually abandon the moral principles upon which it operated in a previous era of its history. The nation gradually disintegrated. It is passive which indicates that a society automatically suffers the bitter consequences of moral degeneracy. You don't have to do anything more when the moral absolutes of the Bible are rejected. They were set in a gradual self-destructive effect upon that society and upon the individuals themselves. It is a participle grammatically which means it's a signal to us that this is a principle concerning social disintegration.

He calls this a nation. It is the Greek word "genea" from which we get our English word "generation." It does mean generation. It is simply referring to a certain period of human history such as the one in which we live today. So what the apostle Paul says here in the middle of verse 15 is that we as believers should be without more blemish in a society that's just filled with moral blemish. It's a society which has gone to the extreme degree of moral degeneration and breakdown. Our generation today certainly can be described in these terms as "a crooked and a perverse generation."

The new morality of situation ethics surrounds every one of us, and it's a very tempting thing. The new basis of morality is not the Bible, but it is man guiding his own decisions as to what is right and what is wrong, and the guideline that is declared to be is love. So it doesn't matter whether it's stealing; wife swapping; or, price-fixing when the butcher lays his heavy thumb on the scales. Nothing is right and nothing is wrong if the person feels he is acting in love. So when you go to buy two pounds of steak, and the butcher feels that you are putting on weight, he puts his thumb on the scale. You get only a pound-and-a-half. He's doing a loving thing because he's keeping you from putting on weight that you don't need to put on.

So, in the new morality, love is defined, consequently, as being what you do with good intentions, or that which has good consequences. As we tried to point out to you, this does pose a problem. Here's the issue. What is right and what is wrong? That's called ethics. It is determined by love. How is love determined? Well, love is determined by two things: your intentions on the one hand; and, the consequences on the other hand. If the act that you did was with good intentions, then it is an act of love. If the act that you perform resulted in good consequences, then it was an act of love. But as we have pointed out, these two actually come into conflict with one another. Sometimes your good intentions result in catastrophic results. There is no way that what is right and wrong can be determined simply on what situation ethics calls love. Goodness of intentions and consequences are in this system determined by the old sin nature. That's the problem. It is the sin nature that is determining what is good and what is wrong. These two tests really contradict each other in practice.

So the situation to guide our conduct is said to be what is to the greatest good for the greatest number of people. But who can determine a thing like that? How can you know that what you do is going to be for the greatest good for the greatest number of people?

So what's the old morality? That's what the fight is over. That's what our society is trying to dispose of--that which we call the old morality, the divine view of moral judgments. Christianity says that only the Bible can tell us what is moral and what is not. This is because the Bible is a direct revelation from God on the subject of morality. The Lord Jesus confirmed this fact that the Bible is the final authority concerning matters of morality. We have this in John 7:16-17, John 10:35, John 17:8, Matthew 5:19, and Matthew 24:35. Jesus said that the Bible was the basis of determining what is right and what is wrong.

Jesus is God

You notice the inconsistency of what they're doing. On the one hand, they're saying that Jesus Christ is wrong. He is not God. He cannot claim to have absolute authority. He was wrong in saying that the Bible was absolutely true. But suddenly, in some respects, they can quote Him as an authority. Either the Lord Jesus was deluded; He was a deliberate liar; or, He was everything He claims to be as the Son of God. You cannot have both. They are inconsistent in first disposing of the Lord as an authority, and then turning around and using Him on the other hand as an authority to prove their point. If He is not truthful about what He claimed, then He cannot be an authority on any matter. The teachings of the Lord must all be accepted, or none of it has binding authority. It is not part true and part false. If the Lord Jesus was even wrong once, He's out.

You and I can be wrong many times and still be authorities in certain areas. We can have a great knowledge on a certain subject. Sometimes we can be wrong, but we can still be authorities because we know the subject so well, and we know what we're talking about. However, you might stand up and say, "I am never wrong. When I tell you something, it is always that way. It is absolutely the truth. You will never hear me say something that is not absolutely right. You will never be able to prove me wrong. Don't even waste your time." Then, if you catch me in one thing where I'm mistaken, that's it. That's the end of my absolutism.

However, that's exactly what Jesus Christ did. Jesus Christ stood up and said, "I'm never wrong. I never sin. I always do what pleases My Father in heaven. I never had a single thought that can be classified as a mental attitude sin. Everything I say is absolutely true. What I say is going to come to pass is going to come to pass. What I tell you about yourself, that's true about you. You can never prove me wrong."

When somebody says that, as Christ did, all they had to do was establish that He was mistaken once, that he was in error once, and that finishes Him as an authority. Well, of course, they never were able to do that. The liberals claim that, and thus by their own claims, they have destroyed using Christ as an authority. The fact of the matter is that they don't want to use the Lord as an authority because He proves them to be wrong. He proves that the things they are trying to promote in matters of morals are things of error.

Joseph Fletcher makes an interesting statement I want to read to you when he says, "Jesus was a simple Jewish peasant. He had no more philosophical sophistication than a guinea pig. I don't turn to Jesus for philosophical sophistication." That is the view concerning the God man. That is absolutely how gross is the mind of man. But why should it be different? Don't forget that it was the finest people in Jerusalem that put Him on the cross. It was not the criminals. It was not the bums on Jerusalem's skid row that put Him on the cross. It was the finest; the most cultured; and, the elite crowd of Jerusalem that put Him on that cross. It is the finest; most cultured; most educated; and most refined preachers of our day that share Dr. Fletcher's view that Jesus Christ was just a guinea pig experimenting with life, and He got some things right, and He missed a lot of things, but He was just trying to do the best He could. The Lord Jesus Christ is either reliable as per His claim, or He is not reliable on any account.

So the new morality proponents say that Jesus Christ was wrong about the idea of a personal God existing. He was deceived as to His own identity. He was mistaken about the absolute authority of Scripture. But He was right, they say, because he said that love was the guide to morality, and He said that love was the fulfilling of the law.

The new morality likes to suggest that Jesus Christ was actually the prime advocate of love in place of moral rules--people rather than precepts. Yet we find that the Lord Jesus taught obedience to the Old Testament commandments at all times. You have this in Mark 7:7-15. He came to fulfill the commandments, and He urged people to obey the commandments. Jesus Christ rejected the legalisms that stemmed from what the Pharisees had added to the moral regulations. That's what the Lord spoke out against, but the situationists don't make that distinction. It was the Pharisees who added their traditions that placed such a burden upon people. Jesus said, "That's a legalism. You're trying to get God's approval by these things that you do or don't do. These are not from God. These are your traditions."

It was the traditions of the Pharisees that He condemned, not the observance of the precepts of the Mosaic Law. You have this in Mark 7:9. What the Lord actually called for was obedience to the specific commandments of the Old Testament (Matthew 5:19, John 5:45-47). Furthermore, the Lord Jesus made it clear that the law was not only a series of moral requirements concerning overt action, but also of a mental attitude. Morality is a matter of what you think. The Lord made a great deal of it. That's why it's so amazing to us that preachers today make so little about what people think. Every now and then somebody will say something, incidentally, about what you think, but not very much. When the lives of people begin coming apart at the seams, and when they begin to enter a great era of moral breakdown, it is because something is wrong up here in the head. The mentality has not been geared to God's divine viewpoint through doctrine. That's where the breakdown comes.

Most ministers are very, very much interested in what people do on the outside. They don't realize that they're falling into the same error that the Pharisees did. The Pharisees were beautiful people when you looked at them outwardly, in most cases. But inwardly, the Lord Jesus said, "You're a bunch of rotting putrefied dead bodies. You're just sepulchres. You're an offense to God. That's to the people who were standing up teaching others the Word of God. This is what the Lord was saying about them. Why? They were outwardly beautiful. He called them whitened sepulchres, but inwardly, they had minds that were steeped in mental sins. The Lord said, "Morality is a matter first of what you think. Then it expresses itself in what you do." He pointed this out very specifically (Mark 7:6, Mark 5:21-22, 28).

The Lord Jesus did not act on the situation and the so-called view of love on any occasion. One of the favorite accusations against the Lord as to not being a situationist was on the occasion when Mary came and anointed Him for His burial with that valuable ointment, and then wiped the ointment off His feet with her hair. That was a very, very loving act on her part. The Lord recognized it as being an anointing. It was a setting apart on her part for what was coming on His part, namely His death for our sins. Along comes Judas, and the other disciples too, and they said, "Lord, You shouldn't let her do that. You let her waste that ointment. We could have sold it. It would have been very valuable, and we could have given it to the poor." The Lord said, "The poor you will always have with you."

What Dr. Fletcher says about this incident is that Jesus demonstrated here how wrong He could be. He said this was a situation where Jesus did not act in love. The loving thing for Jesus would have been to say, "Mary, please don't waste the ointment. Let's sell it and give the money to the poor." He says, "Here is an occasion where the disciples were right and the Master was wrong." That's how far the liberal theologian is willing to go. Don't forget that even those will not stand up that boldly and say that to a congregation. Please remember that you here are the infinitesimal bottom of a thimble full of believers who are oriented to the Word of God. The vast majority of people sitting in churches today are getting exactly that viewpoint in some subtle way--that there were times when the Master was wrong and His disciples were right. This is because, Fletcher says, Jesus at Bethany misinterpreted the situation. In that situation, He did not act in love.

Situation morality may be summed up in this way: There was a man driving down a country road, and he suddenly came to a farm. The farmer there had a beautiful barn. He noticed that along the wall of the barn, as he drove by the road, there were a group of arrows which had been shot into the wall of the barn. Around the arrows there were targets, and the arrow was always in the bullseye. He became so fascinated by that that he turned around and he drove up to the farmer's house. The farmer was standing there, and he said to the farmer, "Somebody must really be a fantastic archer around here." The farmer said, "Why do you say that?" He said, "I just drove by your barn, and I see where you have these targets painted. Every time they hit the bull's eye." The farmer says, "Oh, that's done by the village idiot. Every now and then, he comes out here with his bow and arrow. He puts an arrow in the bow and shoots at the barn. Then he goes up; takes a can of paint; and, draws a bullseye and a target around the arrow. That way, he always hits it right on the bullseye, and he never misses.

That's situation ethics. How can you miss with a system like that? You just take an arrow out of your old sin nature; you put it in the bow; shoot it out there into life; you run up there with your can of paint; and, wherever you hit, you paint your bullseye and you paint your target around the arrow. You're right on the heart of morality. How can you miss? It's a beautiful system. And you know that down inside in the depths of your soul, you say, "I like that. It makes things so much simpler. It's just like the song says, "Doing what comes naturally."

Love

It was the idea of situation ethics, as a matter of fact, that caused the first sin in the Garden of Eden. You remember that it was the situation at the moment that suggested to them that this fruit was good to eat. It was the situation at the moment that said, "We'll be much wiser if we eat this fruit. We will have knowledge such as God has. So in this situation, it does seem that we should do this. It seems that the consequences would be great." Adam and Eve (certainly Eve) thought through the consequences. Eve said, "The consequences of this act would be tremendous. Therefore, it is a good thing for me to violate what God has told me to do." Actually, they had situation ethics right there in the Garden of Eden, and that's what led to the fall of man.

Biblical Morality

God always controls the consequences of our obedience to His moral laws. Please remember that. Sometimes you might say, "Well, in this case, I should lie because the consequences are going to be bad if I tell the truth." The consequences are up to God. The obedience of the absolute is up to you. God controls the consequences. But we are forever interjecting ourselves and saying, "I'm going to determine whether the consequences are good and bad." In a way, we are situationists without realizing it. Man plays the game of life, but only God can make the rules.

The Lord Jesus Christ, therefore, was neither a legalist, though He obeyed the moral commandments of God, nor was he a situationist, though He acted in love. His love was genuine love because it acted upon the framework of absolute morality. Love, He knew, was obedience to the Word of God--obedience to doctrine (2 John 6). Legalism is keeping a moral rule for self-glory or to merit reward. There is the false idea that you can be saved or that you can be sanctified through legalism. The Bible does hold good intentions to be important in morality. But the Bible defines good intentions as mental attitudes in keeping with God's moral rules--the mental attitude of positive relation to doctrine. That's what God considers a good intention--that you are ready to obey His rules.

You may do a wrong while acting in harmony with biblical morality. That's true. You may be acting in accordance to biblical morality, and yet you may do a wrong in the process. But you are doing it with good intentions because you want to be obedient to biblical morality. So you're not guilty of performing a sin. You may actually do something that is wrong without realizing that you are doing something that's wrong. It's a sin, but you are not aware that you are doing something that is wrong. You may actually say something that you think is true, and later find out that what you said was a lie. Your intention was what? Your intention was to tell the truth. Therefore, what you did was not a sin. That's an important thing to realize. Therefore, what you did was not a sin because your intention was good, but you had to have good intentions as per the biblical standard, which is to do what God says to do in His moral code.

We may ask a man to do what he is incapable of performing--to do the morally right thing. The Bible says it is a morally right thing for a man to support his family. The Bible says any man who does not provide the financial care for his family is worse than an infidel. Yet the man may have experienced an accident. He is permanently crippled and permanently incapacitated of earning a living. Now, is he performing that which is sinful by the fact that he does not obey the moral principle of providing for his family? No. There is a situation where the intention of obedience to the Word is the things that counts, though he is not able to perform what he would perform if it wasn't for his incapacity.

Sometimes people like to point to unusual cases and say, "Here is the exception." The situation ethics people do this all the time. For example, you remember the harlot Rahab. Joshua sent out two men in preparation for the campaign against Jericho. Joshua sent out two spies on a reconnaissance mission to gather information for him to get the picture of what they were going to face when they attacked Jericho. In the process of the survey on the part of the two spies, they were observed. They went into the house of this woman who was a prostitute who lived on the wall of the city. When the officials came and said, "It has been reported to us that two Jewish spies have come into your home," she said, "Well, they did, but they have left." She had hidden them in the house. They said, "Which way did they go?" She told them, "They went that way," and she pointed in a particular direction. She said, "If you hurry, you'll catch them."

Then when they were gone, she brought the men out of hiding and said, "Head in this direction; get there into the hills; wait three days; they'll quit looking for you; and, then go back to your lines and find Joshua." Then she said, "When you do attack the city, remember me and my family. That was why she was doing this. You know the story. They gave her a scarlet cord. They said, "Hang this in your window. When we do attack, you see to it that everybody of your family is in this house. Anybody outside--their blood will not be on our hands. We're going to slaughter everybody we find outside of your house. Your house will be marked by this scarlet cord, and you will be preserved, and all in the house with you."

Well, that's what they did. They actually did that. When we get to the New Testament, we find that Rahab is commended (James 6:7, James 2:11, Hebrews 11:31, James 2:25). But if you read those Scriptures, you will notice one very important thing. Rehab is commended, indeed, as a woman of faith. In fact, she was such a woman of great faith that she became one of the ancestors of Jesus Christ. She was one of the women through whom the Christ line came. The reason that she was commended was not because she had lied. Her lying is never said to be acceptable. What is commended in Rahab is her faith. That's why she's included in the heroes of faith in Hebrews 11. Hers was indeed an unusual situation, but you can never establish a moral principle by an unusual case. Rehab was commended. Whatever you may think about whether she should have lied or not lied, she was commended for her faith, and not for her lying. So it's no case part for the situation ethics people.

Another concept is that there are some rules of morality that are higher than other rules. There are high rules of morality, and there are low rules. There are some situations where you have two absolutes, and you have to take the higher one and break the lower one. This is not true. Rahab still lied, and it was sin. How would you determine which is a higher absolute and a lower absolute? In this way, nothing is really ever universally wrong. You're back to situations again. You have a hierarchy of higher wrongs and lower wrongs. But such a system, again, is doing right according to what is right in your own eyes. All absolutes are equal.

It is true that you sometimes find yourself in a position where you have two absolutes and you're going to have to break one of them. For example, suppose you finally get fed up with your neighbor. You're just sick and tired of his leaves blowing on your lawn. You're sick and tired of water rushing off of his lot onto your lot. You're sick and tired of all those wild drunken parties he runs to keep you awake. So you take your Bible and you say, "God before you on this book, I swear I'm going to kill that neighbor." Now you have taken an oath to do your neighbor in. Now you are really confronted with a really itchy problem. On the one hand, if you kill him, you'll break the moral absolute against murder. On the other hand, if you don't keep your oath before God, you are guilty of breaking the moral absolute against perjury.

Now, what are you going to do? The situation ethics person comes along and says, "Do you see what we mean? Here are two absolutes? One is higher and one is lower. You must take the higher absolute, which in this case would be not to murder your neighbor, and break the lower one of having committed perjury, and don't do what you swore to do." But where the problem really lay in this example is the fact that you broke a previous absolute to begin with. You broke a previous moral rule in the first place by taking such an oath. It was wrong to take an oath to murder somebody. Therein lay the problem. If you had not broken a moral absolute in the first place, you would not have been in this dilemma. Usually when people are in the dilemma of two moral absolutes, it is because they previously sinned in some other respect. They broke some other absolute. Now they are up against finding two conflicting absolutes that they have to try to resolve.

Sin is Sin

The responsibility for an act depends upon whether you know it's wrong. Your guilt does not. You may look out the window and notice some little pelting on the roof of your house, and you may turn to your wife and say, "It's raining." She looks out the window and says, "No, it's not. It's hailing." You lied to her. You told her it was raining, and it was not. You were responsible for the act, but you are not guilty of sin.

On the other hand, you may say something that you think is a lie. You may come up and say, "John Smith just came into a $1,000 present from home. You think that a lot of people will go up and try to hit him up and borrow a lot of money from him, and you just want to make things miserable for him. But you didn't know that he got a letter from home with $1,000 in it. You planned to tell a lie to give him misery, but it was the truth. Are you guilty? Yes, you are.

Knowledge of what is right and wrong determines your responsibility. But whether you are guilty is determined by your intention of breaking or not breaking that moral absolute. You have told the truth inadvertently, but you are still guilty of sin. Any intention contrary to biblical morals then is what we're saying is immoral, even if it has a good purpose in mind. What if I were living in Russia? The secret police knock on my door and say, "We've come to get your wife." What would you say? You may save your wife from the secret police by lying. But the issue is that you have broken a moral code. As to whether you would lie or not is something else. These absolutes are absolutes. People struggle against some kind of a situation and say, "Well, suppose, suppose, suppose," as if the "suppose" can someplace along the line change these things that God has laid out for us.

Well, an exception to any moral code has to be made strictly on the basis of Scripture. That's why we know that war is not murder; and, that's why we know that capital punishment is not murder, even though they are both taking the lives of people.

Some expressions of sin are worse than others. Sins of the mind do not affect others unless you carry them out. But it is still as bad a sin as when you do carry it out. They are both sins, but the consequences are not as bad. It is one thing to be contemplating rape. It is another thing to be executed. It is one thing to be hating a person. It is another thing to overtly murder him. So we have this difference between mental attitude sins and the overt expression. The consequences are worse, but both are sin.

One is not guilty of sin if you don't fulfill an obligation of Scripture if you're incapable of doing it. The consequences of your obedience to moral precepts has to be left with God. Sometimes the result may be martyrdom. This is what caused the early Christians to be martyrs. Many a person in the early church said, "I will not deny Jesus Christ. I will not recant. I will not turn against Him. I will not blaspheme Him." The Roman Empire executed them. Others we have seen in Scripture such as Daniel and his three friends. The consequences of their refusal to violate the moral code was to be saved by God right through the experience of being thrown into a den of lions. Consequences of your doing what is right has to be left with God. It is not something that you decide whether you will do it or not dependent upon these consequences. The Christians duty is obedience to the moral absolutes while leaving the consequences with God.

The example of it all, of course, is the Lord Jesus Christ, who obeyed the moral absolutes all the time. He is our guide. He is our example (1 Peter 2:21-24, 1 John 3:3).

The Doctrine of Morality

1. Morality is the study, first of all, of the rightness and wrongness of individual acts of human conduct, and their tendency to good or evil. It's a matter of what is right and what is wrong. That's what the study of morality is all about. Another word for this is "ethics," and a word that the Bible uses in translation sometimes is "manners"--"good manners."
   
   
2. The Bible presents a code of moral absolutes bearing upon human conduct at all times. When the Bible says a thing is wrong, it is always is wrong. When it says a thing is right, it is always right.
   
   
3. Biblical morality is opposed by Satan with systems of relative morality. So Satan comes up with situation ethics, or as it is called, the new morality. This is Satan's way of countering biblical absolute morality.
   
   
4. The moral absolutes of Scripture are the expression of the character and the essence of God. God says that the reason certain things are wrong is because this is the reflection of His character, and from His character, these things are wrong. All of the universe has been put together according to the character of God.
   
   
5. That which constitutes true morality must be revealed to man from outside himself. So in Romans 7:7, Paul tells us that he didn't know what it was to covet (and other sins) until the law told him that that was wrong. The old sin nature perverts the identification of what is good and evil (Romans 8:8). So God alone can tell man what constitutes right and wrong in human conduct.
   
   
6. Morality includes not only the overt acts, but also the mental attitudes of a person (Proverbs 4:23, Proverbs 23:7, Mark 7:20-23).
   
   
7. The circumstances of a particular situation do not change what is right or wrong before God. We do not determine it on circumstance.
   
   
8. Morality is not determined by one's intentions, nor by the consequences of an act.
   
   
9. The knowledge that an act is immoral determines one's responsibility for the wrong, but it does not determine one's guilt. You may not have a choice in the matter, and thus you are not guilty of sinning though you know that something is wrong.
   
   
10. Morality is never a matter of choosing the lesser of two evils. Two moral absolutes may come into conflict because another absolute has previously been broken. One moral absolute does not transcend another in priority for your obedience.
    
    
11. One is not immoral for failing to obey a rule he is incapable of fulfilling. This would be like a man not being able to provide for his family because of physical incapacity.
    
    
12. Since God is sovereign, He controls the consequences of our obedience to His moral absolutes. We do not determine the consequences. We have to leave that with God.
    
    
13. Morality is not to be equated with salvation or spirituality. Salvation is a relationship to Jesus Christ, 2 Corinthians 5:17 tells us. Spirituality is a relationship to God the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:18). Morality is a normal expression of the Christian way of life. It is the result of the filling of the Holy Spirit and of Bible doctrine. A Christian will be a moral person, but I want to stress that a person does not get to heaven by being moral. A lot of moral people have gotten themselves straight into hell. A person does not get to heaven by being moral, nor does he arrive at spiritual maturity because of his morality.
    
    
14. Morality is designed for both believers and unbelievers. The basic purpose of morality is the preservation of the human race during the angelic warfare. That's why God gave us these rules, so that humanity would not destroy itself during the time when Satan is running this world. Morality preserves personal freedom in a world where Satan is seeking to destroy it. The Christian has the power of the Holy Spirit to achieve personal morality, but the unbeliever does not. An unbeliever is functioning on Biblical morality on the basis of religion, not Christianity. But an unbeliever is capable of having very high morals. Matthew 19:18-20 is a prime example of the rich young ruler who had outstandingly high morals, but was not saved.
    
    
15. Morality enables human society to function in an orderly manner under the divine institutions of volition, marriage, family, and nation. It is morality that preserves these institutions and their functioning.
    
    
16. Biblical morality is required of government leaders to give them the legitimate right to govern a society.
    
    
17. Morality without salvation and spirituality tends to produce self-righteousness, legalism, religion, and hypocrisy.
    
    
18. Finally, biblical morality has faith in God as its source; love for God as its motivation; the law of God as its content; and, the glory of God as its goal.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1973

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