Book One
Living Under God’s Law: Christian Ethics
Part One: Introductory Considerations
Chapter 1: Introduction
The Christian life is a rich journey, and it is not easy to describe. Without
any pretense of comprehensiveness, I try to describe it in this volume as living
under God’s law, in God’s world, in the presence of God himself. Those of you
who have read other books of mine will recognize that triad as indicating
normative, situational, and existential perspectives respectively. Those of you
who haven’t read other books of mine can learn about that triad in the present
volume.
These three perspectives will provide the main structure of the book. The
first part will be the longest—a treatise on Christian ethics. The second will deal
with “Living in the World: Christ and Culture,” and the third will be “Living by
God’s Grace: Spiritual Maturity.”
We begin now with Part One, the treatise on ethics. After some
introductory material defining terms and relating ethics to God’s lordship, I shall
discuss ethics itself under three perspectives: situational (the history of ethical
thought), existential (a Christian ethical method), and normative (Biblical ethical
principles, following the pattern of the Ten Commandments). But first a couple of
important introductory questions:
Why Study Ethics?
For the following reasons, at least:
1. Servants of Jesus are people who have his commandments and keep them
(John 14:21).
Over and over again, Jesus tells us, “If you love me, you will keep my
commandments “(John 14:15; compare verses 21, 23, 15:10, 1 John 2:3-5, 3:2124,
5:3).1 Jesus’ “new commandment… that you love one another: just as I have
loved you, you also are to love one another” (John 13:34) is to be the mark of the
church, distinguishing it from the world: “By this all people will know that you are
my disciples, if you have love for one another” (verse 35). This is not to say that
we are saved by works, obedience, or keeping commandments. It is simply to
say that if we want to be disciples of Jesus we must be devoted to good works
(Tit. 3:8; compare Matt. 5:16, Eph. 2:10, 1 Tim. 2:10, 5:10, 6:18, 2 Tim. 3:17, Tit.
2:7, 14, Tit. 3:14Heb. 10:24, 1 Pet. 2:12.) If we are to be devoted to good works,
we must know what works are good and what ones bad. So we need to study
ethics.
2. The purpose of Scripture itself is ethical.
1 Scripture quotations in this volume are taken from the English Standard Version.
