According to the ancient Church Father Gregory, “obedience should be practiced, not out of servile fear, but from a sense of charity (charity in the sense of the Latin caritas, which is the highest form of love. Caritas is the sacrificial, active giving type of love), not through fear of punishment, but through love of justice.”
Fear versus love, this is what divides Christian ethics from the Law of Moses. The Law of Moses was based in fear. If you disobeyed the state would punish you. In Christ we still strive to avoid sin, but for different reasons.
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free (Galatians 5:1). Paul writes that all is lawful, yet we are not to live in sin (I Corinthians 6:12). We can do all and not lose our salvation—yet we won’t if we are truly saved. “Show me your faith without deeds and I’ll show you a faith that is dead.” (James 2:17)
We are under no condemnation in Christ (Romans 8:1). Just as no good act of ours earns our salvation, no bad act loses it. Yet we are still to obey God’s law. Christ said ‘if you love me, you will obey me.’ (John14:12) We need not obey in the sense that our salvation hinges upon our actions, yet obedience is an expected rejection.
Christ says we will be known by our fruit (Mathew 7:16). Our fruit (our works) do not save us, but one who is in Christ will produce good works while one outside of Christ will produce bad works. It is natural to produce fruit according to one’s nature. In Christ we have a new nature and new life and out of this new nature we will produce acts of life (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control, etc). While the ones outside of Christ will naturally produce works of death (hate, sorrow, anxiety, meanness, debauchery, jealousy, etc).
Those that slander, gossip, disobey, etc will not enter the Kingdom of God. It is not because of their sin that they are damned (for we are all guilty of sin, Romans 3:23), rather because they have refused God’s offer of salvation and in so doing have damned themselves that they engage in sin.
Again ones’ good works do not save one and ones bad works do not damn them. But one who is saved and in Christ will produce good works while one is without Christ will produce bad works. For how can a spring produce salt water (James 3:11) and how can a fig tree produce thorns (Mathew 7:16)?
So what of judgment? It is for God, yet we are not to allow open, unrepentant evil to exist in the midst of the church and we are to not call something lawful that is sin (I Corinthians 5). When we are told not judge, what does that mean? We don’t look down on others for their sin for we too have sinned and continue to sin and it is only by God’s grace that we have been freed from our sin.
Bonhoeffer said that a man in Christ is so focused on Christ that he does not consider the actions of his fellow man. He seeks to please God and does not even consider judging the acts of other men.
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2 comments:
it seems that now a days if you have a different view on anything having to do with the culture\society we live in (sex, family, marraige, work, finances, materialism) you're labelled as being judgemental. wanting to obey Christ and show your faith you're considered to be condemning people. people never want to check themselves as to why they feel that way (could it be guilt?) so they accuse someone trying to live rightly of being wrong and naive and "that's just not how the world is". why ar people so ok with that?
No doubt, great observation. The sad thing is when the church listens to them and refuses to comment on family or cultural morals and pretends like they have no understaning from the Bible of what is right or wrong.
We are not to look down on those who lack the truth, for it is by God's grace alone that we have truth. But that does not mean that we are to deny the Truth that we so surely have.
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