A New Sense of Ethics
Over the 15 years that I was in student ministry, I would use a silly illustration to help connect the dots on the ethical transformation that happens for believers as they are under the Lordship of Jesus. I would ask students, “If I told you that I was a cheeseburger, how would you expect me to act?” This always led to some interesting and off-the-wall discussion that would come back to the main point: what I claim to be must match up with my actions. In other words, behavior corresponds to belief. So, if I claim to be a Christian, my actions must align with that claim.
When we talk about the way we are to live, or specifically, the moral actions that are to be present in our lives, we are talking about ethics. Yes, ethics is the discipline of determining right and wrong, but it is also much more intimate than that. Here is how one scholar puts it, “If morality involves the actual practice of living out of one’s beliefs, then ethics is the study of why these practices are moral or immoral. Christian ethics, in turn, is the study of how humans ought to live as informed by the Bible and Christian convictions.”[1] Did you catch that? Ethics aren’t just about the facts of right and wrong. They also are interested in the why of our behavior. And for us as Christians, we could answer that why in a number of ways. “The Bible tells me so.” “I want to honor God.” “Evil is bad, and I don’t want to be evil.” All of these are true, yet the Bible gives us a deeper why. It tells us that we have a new sense of ethics as Christians because we have been given a completely new identity and, with that new identity, a new nature. Consider these verses:
2 Cor. 5:17 – 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
1 Jn. 2:6 – By this we may know that we are in him: 6 whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.
1 Pet. 2:9-12 – 9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. 11 Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. 12 Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.
Rom. 6:4 – 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
Rom. 8:9-11 – 9 You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 10 But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.
The simple truth is that as Christians we have a new sense of ethics because we have a new identity in Christ. And, the way we live matters because it reflects that identity. Here is another way of communicating that idea. “[God] has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace” (2 Tim. 1:9). The same grace of God that takes away our sin also gives us new life—a life that reflects a new desire to love God and love our neighbor, to enter into the spiritual battle and to obey Christ’s Great Commission. God’s gospel, by its very nature, compels us to Christ-like living and witness to the world.[2]
[1] Stanley J. Grenz and Jay T. Smith, Pocket Dictionary of Ethics, The IVP Pocket Reference Series (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 35.
[2] EFCA. Evangelical Convictions, 2nd Edition (p. 262). Free Church Publications. Kindle Edition.