Vol. XXXIX April 2, 2007 No 4
WHO AND WHAT IS RIGHT AND WRONG
AND WHO CAN SAY
by Tom McLemore
We live in an age of increasing relativism. One of the tenets of post-modernism is the rejection of authority and the denial of absolute truth. Many have contended for years that it doesn’t matter what you believe, as long as you believe something.
In the same vein, they would consider a Christian to be anyone who claims to be a Christian, regardless of whether they had fulfilled and are presently following the teaching of Christ or not. Likewise, they have urged that it does not matter with what church one is affiliated, as long as one is a member of some church. Similarly, they would declare that does not matter how one worships, just as long as one worships. Such folks will likely welcome the advent of post-modernism with its relativism.
Jesus and Paul Relativists?
Would Jesus support such an approach? There is much evidence in his teaching that he would not. In Luke 10, a lawyer asked what he should do in order to inherit eternal life. Jesus asked him what was written in the scriptures, i.e., what he was able to read in the holy writings on the subject. The lawyer replied, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus said to him, “You have given the right answer; do this, and you will live.” Notice that Jesus understands that there is a right answer.
Jesus was no relativist. For Jesus, the words of the holy oracles were absolutely authoritative. When a question was posed, and the answer was given from the Scripture, Jesus said it was the right answer. Nor was the Apostle Paul a relativist. In Ephesians 6:1, he wrote, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.” As one reads through all his epistles, one is impressed by the manner in which he appealed to the scriptures and declared unequivocally what is right and what is wrong.
On another occasion, Jesus said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain’; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat’; and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time? And why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?” (Luke 12:54-57). It is clear from this passage that Jesus was no relativist, and he gave no encouragement to relativism. One of the things Jesus discloses in this statement is the basic inconsistency of human beings who are in rebellion to God.
A Modern Inconsistency
This inconsistency continues today. The approaches that people apply to determining their course in religion they would not think of applying in other areas of their lives. We generally decide other matters on the basis of what is true rather than what our friends and relatives say, think, or do. Why it should be different in religion I cannot understand.
Often people resist Scripture truth because it would condemn the faith and practice of their friends and relatives. For example, the truth about baptism, the type of music that God has authorized in Christian worship, etc. In other cases, some would resist the moral teachings of God’s word because it would mean that some loved one is immoral.
For instance, we have seen numerous cases of folks who will deny the plain teaching of Jesus about the adultery that is committed when people divorce for some cause other than sexual immorality and remarry. In many instances, folks who previously have taught just what Jesus said on the matter will develop interpretations of Jesus’ plain teaching that will accommodate new marital developments among their friends and relatives.
What we all need to realize is refusing to acknowledge the truth will not make what is false true. All the wishing in the world won’t make it so. We do not do ourselves or our friends and relatives any service if we twist the scriptures so that they teach what we or our friends and relatives practice. It is essential to practice what we preach, but if we preach error it will not make our practice true. We must consider the sober facts about the final analysis and final judgment that Jesus makes plain. “The one who rejects me and does not receive my word has a judge; on the last day the word that I have spoken will serve as judge” (John 12:48). “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” (Please read all of Matthew 7:21-27).
Loving Our Friends and Relatives
To love means to do what is good, to fulfill the needs of the ones we love. It is good to love one’s friends and relatives, but truth is truth, and error is error. Our friends and relatives’ beliefs and practices will not be the standard of judgment. Jesus calls upon people to choose the truth and not to choose one’s friends and relatives if they are in conflict with the truth.
In Luke 14:26 Jesus said, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” When we choose Jesus’ way over our relatives, it may appear to them that we hate them. But we do not really hate them. If they would be Jesus’ disciples, too, our actions would look altogether different to them. If we choose the way of Jesus, which could mean dying for Jesus, from one viewpoint it might appear that we hate our lives. But then we must remember that when it comes to following Jesus, “... those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for [Jesus’] sake will save it” (Luke 9:24; cf. 17:33).
If we really love our friends and relatives, we will try to help them to come to the knowledge of the truth rather than to try to deny the truth in order to avoid seeing them as being in error. If we are willing and determined to allow our friends and relatives to remain in error rather than try to teach them the truth, do we really love them in the final analysis?
When Folks Get Angry
People sometimes get angry because they do not like what we say directly from the Scripture. How many times have we been castigated and ridiculed for simply teaching what Jesus said or what the apostles have written! Like Paul, we wonder, “Am I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth?”(Galatians 4:16).
We should find comfort in the fact that we stand with Paul and Jesus in enduring the animosity of the very ones we are trying to help. In John 8:45, Jesus sadly acknowledged the influence of the devil, the father of lies, upon people who will not listen to the truth: “But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me.”
Many hateful things have been said, and are being said, against the Lord’s church because of the truth for which she has stood. Some who claim to be followers of Christ Jesus in their self-righteousness have said some of the most unchristian things about the Lord’s people not because they could deny what we have declared from the scriptures, but because they were unwilling to accept it.
Again, we may take comfort in the fact that they did the same to Jesus. Stephen was stoned, not because he was not declaring truth, but because those who heard could not tolerate it. “But they could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he spoke” (Acts 6:10). In John 18:23, Jesus answered, “If I have spoken wrongly, testify to the wrong. But if I have spoken rightly, why do you strike me?” If, when we have spoken “the very words of God,” people get angry and hateful, let them show that the plain words of the New Testament are false. Let them bring evidence that will show that what Jesus said and the apostles wrote is in error.
Not the Same Thing as Appointing Ourselves Judges
We are not qualified to set up ourselves as the judge of men’s destinies. We cannot search people’s hearts, and we are incapable of knowing all that God knows. We can rely upon his justice and know that “the judge of all the earth will do right” (Genesis 18:25). As important as it is to emphasize these ideas, they do not forbid us from declaring what is right and wrong on the basis of the word of God. We must fulfill the imperative of 1 Peter 4:11: “Whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very words of God.”
This involves declaring what the scriptures declare. Our interpretations of the explicit statements in Scripture are not in the same class as what the holy writings explicitly state. We must be willing to admit that some of the interpretations of the explicit statements in Scripture at which some of us have arrived have been incorrect. Yet, a willingness to admit such misunderstandings does not mean that we must apologize for what the New Testament plainly says. Nor does it mean that we should cease to stand for, confess, and proclaim “thus saith the Lord.”
While we should not presume to speak our interpretations of Scripture as though they were “the very words of God,” if we declare “the very words of God,” there can be no question that what we declare is right and what does not accord with that is wrong. In Matthew 22:29 (Cf. Mark 12:24), Jesus told some people, “You are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God.” While we should not presume to sit in judgment of people’s eternal destinies, that does not mean that we must refrain from saying who or what is right or wrong on the basis of what the word of God states.
We must speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15), but we must never refrain from speaking the truth about what is right and wrong. If each of us is speaking only “as one speaking the very words of God” (i.e., speaking what the Scripture says), then we are speaking authoritatively about who and what is right and wrong, and we are saying it with divine authority.
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