Courtesy Christianbook.com

As a committed evangelical Christian, there are ethical dilemmas that I face.

• One of these is, “Is it ever correct to save the life of the mother if aborting her unborn child will prevent the mother’s death?”
• Was Corrie ten Boom being a faithful follower of Jesus Christ when she hid the Jews who were threatened with death by the Nazis? (You can read her story in The Hiding Place).
• What about the Hebrew midwives in Exodus 1:15f who refused to kill sons who were born? Were they following a godly law that all Christians need to implement?
• How do we defend what Rahab did in Joshua 2 by hiding the spies?

The following is biblical teaching on ethical decisions that I have gleaned over the years and have used my Christian mind to assess the details.

1. There are higher & lower moral laws.

Not all moral laws are of equal weight.

•  Jesus spoke of the “weightier” matters of the law (Matt. 23:23) – and of the “least” (Matt. 5:19),
• and the “greatest” commandment (Matt. 22:36).
• He told Pilate that Judas had committed the “greater sin” (John 19:11).
• The Bible also speaks of the “greatest” virtue (I Cor. 13:13), -and even the “greater” acts of a given virtue–love (John 15:13).
• Jesus said there are at least three levels of sins with corresponding judgments (Matt. 5:22).
• The whole concept of degrees of punishment in hell (Matt. 5:22; Rom. 2:6; Rev. 20:12) and graded levels of regard in heaven (I Cor. 3:11-12) indicates that sins come in degrees.
• The fact that some sins call for excommunication (I Cor. 5) and others for death (I Cor. 11:30) also supports the general biblical pattern that all sins are not equal in weight.
• In fact, there is one sin so great as to be unforgivable (Mark. 3:29).
• Perhaps the clearest indication of higher and lower moral laws comes in Jesus’ answer to the lawyer’s question about the “greatest commandment” (Matt. 22:34-35). Jesus clearly stated that the “first” and “greatest” is over the “second”–that loving God is of supreme importance, and then beneath it comes loving one’s neighbour. This same point is affirmed in Matt. 10:37.
• See also Prov. 6:16; I Tim. 1:15; I John 5:16.

2. There are unavoidable moral conflicts in the Bible.

(a) The story of Abraham & Isaac (Gen. 22) contains a real moral conflict. “You shall not murder (kill)” is a divine moral command (Ex. 20:13), and yet God commanded Abraham to kill his son, Isaac. That Abraham intended to kill Isaac is clear from the context (and from Heb. 11:19).

(b) The story of Samson contains a conflict of two divine commands. Samson committed a divinely approved suicide (Judg. 16:30) despite the moral prohibition against killing a human being, including oneself. Both commands were divine and moral–“Do not kill” and “Take your life”–yet when there was a real conflict between them, God apparently approved of Samson disregarding one in order to obey the other.

(c) The passage detailing Jephthah’s sacrifice of his daughter (Judges 11) shows a real moral conflict between a vow to God and the command not to kill an innocent life. Here the Scripture appears to approve of Jephthah keeping the oath to kill.

(d) Other biblical illustrations in which individuals had to choose between lying and not helping to save a life. e.g. Hebrew midwives (Ex. 1) and Rahab (Josh. 2).

(e) There is a possible real moral conflict in the cross, one so great that many liberal theologians have considered the doctrine of the substitutionary atonement to be essentially immoral. The two moral principles are that the innocent should not be punished for sins he never committed, but that Christ was punished for our sins (Isa. 53; I Peter 2:24; 3:15; 2 Cor. 5:21).

(f) There are numerous cases in Scripture in which there is a real conflict between obeying God’s command to submit to civil government and keeping one’s duty to some other higher moral law. e.g. Hebrew midwives (Ex. 1); Jewish captives disregarded Nebuchadnezzar’s command to worship the golden image of himself (Dan. 3). Daniel disregarded Darius’s command (Dan. 6).

3. The most common “higher” moral laws.

(a) Love for God over love for human beings (Matt. 22:36-38; Luke 14:26).

(b) Obey God over obeying government (Rom. 13:1-2; Titus 3:1; Dan. 3 & 6; Acts 4-5).

(c) Mercy over truthfulness (Ex. 20:16; Eph. 4:25 compared with Hebrew midwives & Rahab). Corrie Ten Boom followed this ethical standard.

Sometimes when I leave my house I leave the lights on to save my property. This is intentional deception to save material things. Why not do the same to save a life? Is not life worth more than my material goods? Aren’t people more valuable than property? The above Scriptures confirm this view of higher and lower moral laws in ethical decision making.

4. Highly recommended

Even though his book has come under considerable criticism by some heavies in the evangelical community, I still consider Norman Geisler’s description of “graded absolutism,” to be the most satisfactory biblical response to very pertinent ethical questions. See his book, Christian ethics: Contemporary issues & options (2nd edn) (Baker Academic 2009).

Courtesy Christianbook.com

 

Copyright (c)  2010 Spencer D. Gear.  This document is free content.  You can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the OpenContent License (OPL) version 1.0, or (at your option) any later version.  This document last updated at Date: 19 December 2013.