The appeal of ethical relativism is rather plain to see. If there is no right and wrong then I can’t be convicted of any wrong. Ethical relativism allows me to write my own law, to edit on the fly, to finish “I may do this…” with an unassailable … “because I want to.” Desire becomes its own justification. My will becomes my law.
This appeal, however, soon enough begins to dissipate if we have any interest at all in being coherent, consistent in our thinking. We quickly turn, “I may do this, because I want to” into “You may not do that, because I want to do this.” Consider, just as an example, sexual perversion. The problem, morally speaking, with sexual perversion is that it is an abomination to God. Ethical relativism, of course, bars God from the conversation. Therefore there is no reason by which we might condemn the practice. There is, to these folks, no transcendent moral standard by which we are all bound. We can do what we want, no matter how perverse. Which means, doesn’t it, that I can call sexual perversion an abomination to God? What, after all, is to stop me? If all things are permissible, saying some things are impermissible, must be permissible.
My ethical relativist friends, of course, do not take my bigoted, narrow, hateful position lying down. In fact, they will insist that since there is no right or wrong, it is, oops, wrongfor me to say otherwise. They will chasten me, rebuke me, come down on me with all the grace and love of a Pharisee. And in so doing expose the lie of their own foundational premise. They don’t deny the existence of law, just any law that would stop them.
In like manner if instead of condemning sexual perversion I club baby seals, or question global warming (oops again, climate change), or argue that government schools ought to be forbidden to teach evolution, suddenly my friends embrace a transcendent moral standard- one I am guilty of violating. Sadly, it doesn’t do much good to be more thoughtful, or more radical. You still run into the same problem. Nietzsche, you’ll remember, castigated Christianity for its “herd morality.” He grumbled that we believers were all the time going about doing what we were told. If we wanted to be authentic, right thinking, if we wanted to be Super men, he reasoned, we ought to throw off all morality and each of us create our own. But, oops, there’s that pesky “ought” again. Did you miss it? It’s there. Why “ought” we to throw off the herd morality? Where did that moral imperative come from? We ought not to listen to other people, according to Nietzsche, unless, of course, the other person is Nietzsche. Even Nietzsche could not escape the unbearable oughtness of being.
Lawlessness does not fail because bad things will happen without law. Lawlessness fails because if it succeeds it becomes law. If moral law requires there be no moral law, then it’s a rather nasty pickle. Law is inescapable, and all those who insist that we not follow any law ultimately want us to submit to their law. Nietzsche and his heirs are not liberators, but slave traders, slave traitors. They do not throw off law but impose it. The only difference is their yoke is not easy, their burden not light.
Tonight we continue our look at the monumental, towering book of Romans. All are welcome to our home at 7 est, or you may join us for dinner at 6:15. We will also stream the study at Facebook, RC-Lisa Sproul. We hope you’ll join us.
We are born sinners. Before we’ve done anything we are one thing, sinful. Praise God, He gives life to us so that we repent and believe. Our sins- past, present and future- are forgiven. Why though are there future sins? When He declares us, in Christ, to be righteous, why does He not make us righteous fully and immediately?
It’s not a question we ask ourselves often enough. I suspect such is because we are comfortable with our sin. Believers, however, have not only been born again, not only been given a love for His Word, are not only indwelt by His Spirit but are also being washed by Jesus Himself (Ephesians 5). But we still sin.
At the horizontal level we still sin because while our old nature is dead in one sense, in another it is being put to death, and thus still lives. We are in a battle because sin, while its reign over us has ended, still has influence on us. We are, as Martin Luther put it, simul justis et peccatore, at the same time just and sinner. This battle will come to its conclusion either when He returns or when we go to Him. For now, we sin because we choose to sin. It is frustrating, maddening, humiliating. See Paul’s struggle at the end of Romans 7 for a powerful picture of the anguish that walks with us through our days.
At the vertical level, remembering that God is not guilty of any sin, especially our own, we must also acknowledge that God is sovereign even over our sins. If He ultimately wished them not to be, on the other hand, they would not be. What reason could He possibly have for allowing sin to continue in us? His glory and our good.
When teaching through Romans 7 recently it struck me that it might be that the thorn in Paul’s side that he prayed so fervently that it would be removed might not be a physical ailment. (I’ve long held, based on the description, “thorn in the side” and the fervency of the prayer that it had to be kidney stones) might be instead a besetting sin that he struggled with. If it were, it would fit snugly with God’s answer as to why He didn’t remove it. He wanted Paul to remember his dependence on God’s grace. Let us here heed the warning of Paul. We don’t excuse our sin this way, suggesting that we sin all the more that grace might abound (Romans 6:1). Nevertheless, our ongoing sins provide ongoing reason for the believer to run to the Father, to repent, and to rejoice in the forgiveness we have in Christ, glorifying God.
We are commanded to mortify our flesh, to fight the good fight, to own our sin. Nothing above should serve as an excuse for sin, nor do anything to lighten the weight of our repentance. But we need not be puzzled over why He hasn’t determined to end our battles on this side of the veil. He is glorified in every victory, and, as we run to Him seeking His mercy, every defeat.
It’s a funny thing about slippery slopes—you can slide down them slowly. The principle behind the concept isn’t that you must move swiftly from here down to there if you have no moral brakes, but that you will move. A slippery slope with a gentle incline will have just as much slippage, though sliding to the bottom may take more time.
Consider the music our children listen to. My grandparents, I’m quite certain, were rather troubled by their children dancing to what we would now consider the positively clean music of Elvis. Between generations came the Beatles, who played in suits, and whose early mop-tops were more rascally than rebellious. By the time I turned on the radio, my parents objected to the suggestive lyrics of Aerosmith or the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Today there is no suggestive music anymore, because “suggestive” implies a measure of subtlety.
We got here not because we slept through the crossing of a Rubicon. Instead, we insisted that because our grandparents objected needlessly (compared to our parents), our parents must have objected needlessly (compared to us), and therefore we needed to refuse to object needlessly about our kids, knowing that their kids will be much worse. We have come to expect and accept rebellion—musically and morally—as a normal part of growing up. Some parents even begin to worry when their children don’t rebel.
All of this is evidence that even in the church we take our cues from the broader culture rather than from the Word of God. Take a moment and look in your concordance for teenager. Try adolescence. Try generation gap. See if you can find youth culture. Neither the words nor the concepts are there. These are not biblical categories. That they are common destructive elements in our homes ought to clue us in that we’re doing something wrong.
It is not enough, however, to clamp down. That is, it is not mere permissiveness that has gotten us into this mess. The problem runs deeper. It isn’t that we aren’t rightly handling the youth, but that we even concede the existence of the youth. The Bible recognizes happily the reality of children. It affirms the existence of adults. What it doesn’t do is embrace something in between.
The Bible nowhere affirms the existence of a youth culture because it everywhere encourages us to embrace a different culture—that of the kingdom of God. When Paul enjoins us to raise our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord (Eph. 6:1), the root Greek word that is translated nurture in our English Bibles is paideia. It communicates the notion of a culture. It includes shared convictions, shared language, and shared habits of the heart.
Nathan Hatch once exposed the infiltration of peculiar American ideals into the church in his great book The Democratization of American Christianity. In our day, we are witnessing the demographicization of American Christianity. At best, we establish programs based on age, sex, and life situation. At worst, we have a church tailored to fans of country music and Mountain Dew at one site, and a church tailored to fans of jazz and Starbucks elsewhere. We are dividing what Christ has brought together; we are the Corinthians, except that we divide the body by taste rather than by income or favorite theologian.
Jesus, however, makes of the many one. We are one family, one loaf, one body, one culture, one love. Would that the broader culture would be able to say of our culture, “Oh, how they love each other.”
I’m in favor. In fact, I’m so in favor I’d like to nominate another category to fill in the +. But first let’s look at the blessings of LGBTQ.
L is for love. Who could be opposed to love? Of course it is always helpful to define our terms. Love is, according to some, summed up in permissiveness. True love, however, does no harm. Perversion does harm. Long before it does any harm to the broader culture, it does grievous harm to those who are caught up in it. Love for these dear people means calling them to repentance, letting them know about the grace and power of the living God. So yes, most assuredly, I’m in favor of love.
G is for girls. Who could be opposed to girls? Of course it is always helpful to define our terms. Girl is, to some, anyone who thinks he or she is a girl, or who wants to present him or herself as a girl. True girl, however, is one who is born a female. Out of love for girls we don’t want to turn girlhood into a costume anyone can wear, nor do we want males put into their safe spaces, or their athletic competitions. In fact, central to human history, however clouded it might be by sin, is this, that boys protect girls. That’s why we send men off to war and women and children onto lifeboats.
B is, not surprisingly, for boys. Who could be opposed to boys? Of course, it is always helpful to define our terms. Well, you get the picture. Boys are those who are born male. Out of our love for boys we don’t want them to be looked down upon as the root of the world’s problems. We don’t want them deluding themselves into thinking they are girls. We want to see them encouraged in their callings as providers, husbands and fathers.
TQ is for top quality. Who could be opposed to top quality relationships between husbands and wives? Of course, it’s always helpful to define our terms. Top quality relationships between husbands and wives is defined by husbands loving their wives as Christ loves the church and wives submitting to husbands as the church is to submit to Christ. There is surely more to it, but when Paul wrote to the church at Ephesus, this is what he emphasized.
Which brings us to the +. I’d like to fill in that vague and amorphous, almost-all-things-are -acceptable with something clear, distinct and utterly unacceptable- h. H is for homophobic. Who could be against people objecting to sexual perversion? Just about the whole world, that’s who. Of course it is helpful to define our terms. By homophobic we do not mean what the roots in the word actually mean, an irrational fear of homosexuality. What those who oppose it mean by it is any form of disapproval of homosexuality. What we mean by it is embracing a biblical view of sexuality.
The reason I believe we should include homophobia in our list of people who need support is that there is no demographic in the west more hated and despised. We homophobes, who simply wish to live our lives in peace, who were in fact born this way, who ask nothing more of the homo-phil world that we be respected for what we are, are the constant target of cultural derision, legal prejudice and even violence. I know many homophobes who are in the closet for just this kind of hatred. Why shouldn’t they march proudly in an anti-gay parade, just like those marching proudly in a pro-gay parade? It’s a complete double standard. Even publishing this brief piece could, as others have, spark various threats of violence from the privileged of this world, the rainbow coalition and their fellow-travelers. It could likewise bring down the shadow ban.
That’s okay. By His grace I live under the cover of His rainbow.
That said, let me encourage my fellow H’s to come out of the closet. It is dangerous, but it is freeing. You just may be surprised how many of your family and friends are secret members of this oppressed tribe. They can hate you, mock you, threaten you, sue you, arrest you and kill you. But they can’t change who you are. Live free. Live proud.
God’s promises are shocking. Our sin, in turn, is shocking. These two intersect when we in our sin refuse to believe the promises of God. He, because He is abounding in grace, makes some kind of stunning promise. We, because we are cynics, skeptics, sophisticates, refuse to believe Him. We may try to masquerade our unbelief as something praise worthy, arguing perhaps that contextual understanding of the Bible diminishes what at first blush looks like an extravagant promise. Truth be told, our faith is just too anemic.
Consider this straightforward promise from God, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him” (James 1:5). Now if we take a too light look at this text it seems to be saying that if anyone will ask God for wisdom that God will give it to him. If, however, we take a more deep look at the text, if we consider the vagueries of the original Greek, if we consider the context of James’ original audience, we find that the text actually says that if anyone will ask God for wisdom that God will give it to him. The scholars who gave us our English Bibles are not stupid men. They did well here. And James himself was no fool. He spoke not just wisdom here, but God’s own wisdom. This is God’s promise.
Our calling isn’t to seek to mitigate its extravagance. Were we to try, we would find only this. “But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind” (verse 6). It’s true enough that James says that doubt will undo this promise. Which ought not to cause us to doubt the promise, but to believe it. This caveat is designed to encourage us to believe the promise. Indeed, failure to believe the promise makes one like a wave that is driven and tossed by the wind.
So how do we get this wisdom? The answer is still right there in the text- we ask for it. We don’t do anything else. We just ask. And He will give it to us. He will give us wisdom if we will but ask Him for it. Wisdom, you’ll remember, He said, is more to be valued than silver and gold, yes than much fine gold (Psalm 19). How often do we ask Him for a better (higher paying) job, or a raise? How many ways do we find to ask God for silver and gold? But we are told that if we will ask for that which is better than silver and gold, He will give it to us.
Wisdom begins with fearing God. It moves on to fearing God. It ends with fearing God. If we fear Him, we will heed Him. As we heed Him we will value what He values, and we will believe His promises. Ask Him first for the wisdom to ask Him for wisdom. And then do not stop until Wisdom welcomes you into His eternal kingdom.
Tonight we continue our look at the monumental, towering book of Romans. All are welcome to our home at 7 est, or you may join us for dinner at 6:15. We will also stream the study at Facebook, RC-Lisa Sproul. We hope you’ll join us.
