Ethics in Modernity: Dr. Saxon’s Look at the “Why” Behind the “What”
“We do not do right because it makes sense or because it works or because everybody else thinks we should. We do right because we have been made right.”
The Problem With Modern Ethics
Some fifty years ago, the celebrated ethicist, Joseph Fletcher, published his 1966 book Situation Ethics: The New Morality. Fletcher’s morality focused almost entirely on the horizontal, human dimension of love—loving others as oneself. Horizontal love as a basis for ethics would appear to stand firmly as a foundation, and indeed, is one of the motives often used to justify any number of behaviors. Fletcher argued in his celebrated work that premarital sex might be the most loving thing to do in a given existential situation (in which a parent was selfishly forbidding marriage). At the horizontal level, this conclusion is conceivable. But could one ever act in a way that clearly violates God’s revealed will and thereby express love for God?
The world—with guidance from Immanuel Kant—finds a certain amount of ethical conduct rational. It makes sense not to murder or steal from my neighbor. If everyone murdered and robbed his neighbor, who would be safe? Other worldly people have discovered that generally ethical conduct produces the best consequences, which is not surprising in a world designed by a moral Being. Ayn Rand argued that pursuing one’s own best interest would, in the end, help everyone else (this “capitalistic” ethics is no longer widely popular). Many today believe they simply receive their ethics from their community and that they should never criticize another community’s ethics, since morals are relative. This works fairly well until terrorists from another community harm someone you know. The common denominator of all of these ethical systems is that they begin and end with man.
Fletcher’s work failed to account for the foundation of all ethics—love for God. Both the Shema (the declaration of this great principle in Deuteronomy 6:4-5) and Christ’s restatement of it presuppose that the ones who love God know God and what God is like. God is holy, and God is love. God’s perfection means that His love is perfectly holy, and His holiness is perfectly loving. There can be no contradiction, or even conflict, between genuine holiness and biblical love.
The Foundation for Biblical Ethics
The first and primary consideration in all ethical conduct—all moral decision-making—must relate to such a holy God. I, by means of any particular decision, must worship God and reflect His character in such a way that He is glorified. If loving God involves knowing God and obeying God, what comes first, love or obedience? What comes first is relationship. Indeed, in some of his final instruction to the disciples, Jesus combined the concepts of love and obedience in a remarkable way:
If ye love me, keep my commandments (John 14:15).
He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me (John 14:21).
If a man love me, he will keep my words (John 14:23).
If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love (John 15:10).
This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you (John 15:12).
These things I command you, that ye love one another (John 15:17).
Christian ethics, then, has a fundamentally different orientation from the world’s ethics. Faced with an ethical dilemma—do I endorse same-sex marriage, for instance—men and women tend to employ reason (“Does it make sense?”), consequentialism (“How will it turn out?”), ethical egoism (“Does it benefit me?”), relativism (“Is it acceptable in my community?”), or some other humanistic solution. To be truly ethical, however, Jesus says we must ask different questions: “Does this thing show love for God; does it reflect His character and enable Him to receive glory?” and “Does this thing show love for my neighbor; does it help him to love and glorify God?”
This ethical approach obviously affects everything in a person’s life. Every decision he or she makes, large or small, will have some motivation. Jesus says that motivation must be love for God and others. Should I use recreational narcotics? Can I view that movie? Should I mow my lawn consistently? What about paying my taxes? Should I buy lottery tickets? What kind of books should I read? How do I decide? I run each decision through a rubric of love for God and others.
In order to know God and to know what pleases God, I must read, study, meditate on, and memorize His Word. God’s holiness and love can be known only dimly through nature and conscience. He has revealed His character most fully in the Scriptures, in which the Living Word, Jesus Christ, reveals the Father (John 1:18). While we will look in vain for direct references to marijuana, presidential elections, and traffic laws in Scripture, God has revealed enough truth about Himself that we should be able to glorify Him in every decision (1 Corinthians 10:31). One cannot love and glorify God until one has been loved by God through salvation and brought into relationship with Him. Only believers in Jesus Christ can love God wholeheartedly and love their neighbors unselfishly.
Biblical Ethics and Secular Lives
Christ, in His great Sermon on the Mount, an ethical manifesto, explains the key difference between Christian ethics and all humanistic ethical systems: Christian ethics flows from the heart. We do not do right because it makes sense or because it works or because everybody else thinks we should. We do right because we have been made right. When God saves a person, He makes the person a new creation, sends His Holy Spirit to dwell in the person, and enables him to have a righteousness that exceeds even that of the most religious people in the Judaism of Christ’s day (cf. Matthew 5:17-20).
All humanistic ethical systems are about behavior and conduct and, sometimes, results. Christian ethics goes much deeper. Why we do what we do is much more important ultimately than what we do. People who do not have a relationship with Christ can act morally at times relative to their outward behavior. But these individuals cannot act ethically by the standards set by God Himself. They never act out of wholehearted love for God and completely unselfish love for others. They are not able to do so. God is love, and He must give Himself to us before we can share Him with others.
Why, then, do unbelievers often seem to act morally? The image of God that God implants in all people includes reason, a functioning conscience, the ability to comprehend consequences, etc., all of which continue to operate in their fallen condition. That is, sinful man will not avoid murdering his neighbor because his love for God and his neighbor prevents it, but he may avoid murdering him for prudential reasons. This restraint on man’s natural depravity is a gift of God’s common grace. When Paul speaks of the apparently righteous man in Romans 2, he attributes man’s apparent goodness to God’s “goodness and forbearance and longsuffering.” Man deserves no credit for any apparent outward goodness. Only regeneration will change him inwardly and enable him to practice true righteousness (although, not perfect righteousness until he is glorified).
Fortunately, God has embedded the chief of His moral principles in nature. While natural law does not have the authority or clarity of Scripture, it is far more accessible to natural man. Even worldly people can learn in nature that only males and females can procreate and sustain the race, that homes with fathers and mothers produce the greatest stability for children, and that strong marriages have always lain at the foundation of strong societies. Christians can boldly appeal to nature, which is accessible to all rational people. Secularists are right, of course, that we are implicitly appealing to nature’s God, who programmed into it the morality we find there.
Love’s Place in Ethics
Late in Christ’s ministry, an expert in Jewish law approached Him with a very poignant and important question: “Which is the great[est] commandment in the law?” This is an ethical question. He was asking Christ to help him sort out his moral responsibilities in light of a complex judicial code and an environment with many ethical ambiguities. Jesus’ answer was emphatic: love God wholeheartedly and love your neighbor unselfishly. So when one is faced with apparently conflicting rules and deeply ambiguous and confusing circumstances—and we often are—he or she should seek to act in such a way that expresses most effectively love to both God and man.
Dr. David Saxon joined the College of Bible and Church Ministries faculty at Maranatha Baptist University in 1999. He also serves as an adult Sunday School teacher and choir director for his local church, New Testament Baptist Church in Columbus, Wisconsin. Dr. Saxon earned his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees from Bob Jones University.