Ethics | Knowable Word

God’s Law and Application

April 19, 2024 By Peter Krol

A firm grasp on the proper use of God’s law will take your application skills to the next level.

crop asian judge working on laptop in office — Photo by Sora Shimazaki on Pexels.com

Use of the Law

In some Christian circles, the word “law”—or more specifically, the phrases “God’s law” or “law of Moses”—is a dirty word. Something to be avoided. We certainly don’t want to be guilty of enslaving people under law do we (Rom 6:14, Gal 3:23)?

However, if the law is nothing but a slave master to be thrown off in Christ, our friends the Gideons should stop including Psalms and Proverbs in their pocket New Testaments:

Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation al the day.
Psalm 119:97

The one who keeps the law is a son with understanding, but a companion of gluttons shames his father
Proverbs 28:7

The problem, you see, was never with God’s law but with the way people try to use it. If we use to attain righteousness before God, then Christ died for no purpose (Gal 2:21). Those who use the law to become righteous will, in the end, lose not only righteousness but also the very benefits of the law (Rom 9:30-32).

So what is the proper use of the law? The Bible gives a few of them, but I’ll highlight just two of them relevant to the skill of Bible application.

First, the law of God provides knowledge of sin (Rom 3:20, 7:7-12). The law of God reveals God’s standards of right and wrong, true and false, moral and immoral. If you get rid of God’s law, you must invent some other standard by which to define good and evil, right and wrong. And a cursory glance at contemporary western culture ought to be enough to show what a failure such an experiment has been. We need the law to define sin and righteousness for us so we might become aware of how far we fall short. In this way, the law is like a mentor to lead us to find grace and mercy in Christ Jesus (Gal 3:23-4:7).

Second, the law of God shows us how life works best (Rom 13:9-10, Eph 6:2-3, James 2:8-13). While the law of God cannot make a sinner righteous, it can make any society a far more pleasant place to live. God made the world to work, such that keeping his law would result in great blessings and breaking his law would result in miserable curses. God is pleased when his people honor his law in submission to his appointed king, Jesus, the Son of David. The New Testament regularly roots its ethical instruction in the revealed law of God. Paul goes as far as to call it a “debt” or “obligation” to obey God through the empowering of God’s adopting Spirit (Rom 8:12).

Help with Application

So how does this doctrine help us to improve at applying the Bible?

In nearly any text, you can ask “use of the law” questions with respect to the author’s main point:

What has God commanded in this text, and how do you and I measure up to that standard?
How does God define truth and falsehood, right and wrong? How does our society define these things (with respect to the topic of the text)? How do you tend to define these things?
How have others violated this command of God in the way they have treated you? How does that help you to distinguish between your responsibility and their responsibility in that situation?
If we got rid of the standard of God’s law as highlighted in this text, what other standard might we invent to deal with these sorts of issues? What are some pseudo-standards that have been invented by our society?
What would your life look like if you obeyed what this text commands? What would our church look like if it obeyed what this text commands? What would society look like if everyone obeyed what this text commands?
What would submission to King Jesus look like according to this passage? How can we make more progress in such submission?

I am intentionally sidestepping matters of creation, gifts, strengths, grace, and redemption when I ask these questions. That’s not because such matters are unimportant, but only because the focus of this post is on the proper use of God’s law.

Sometimes, robust reflection on the proper use of God’s law will give us ample material to speak into the issues of our age: ethical dilemmas, attention to the environment, abortion, marriage, transgenderism, care for the poor, euthanasia, sexuality and sexual identity, greed, taxation—to name just a few.

Deepen your grasp of the proper use of the law, and you’ll take your application skills to the next level.

Rescuing the One Anothers from our Presumptive Familiarity

August 23, 2023 By Peter Krol

The greatest enemy of observation is familiarity. When you think you know something, you stop trying to learn from or about it. Perhaps you understand that in theory, but what does it look like in the practice of our Bible study?

I recently published a piece on the Logos blog with “4 Tips for Reading the One Anothers in the Bible.” In this post, I evaluate the practice of mushing together the many “one-another” commands of the New Testament into an overarching framework for Christian ethics. Along the way, I attempt to show how our broad familiarity with these one-anothers as a whole has prevented us from properly understanding some of them.

What are the four tips?

Remember that you are reading someone else’s mail
Consider the historical context
Consider the train of thought
Focus on the main point

The article will explain these tips further, with examples along the way.

Check it out!

Context Matters: Abstain from All Appearance of Evil

January 3, 2020 By Peter Krol

Perhaps you’ve heard the injunction to avoid the appearance of evil. You won’t find the phrase in most modern English Bibles, as it’s a holdover from the King James translation of 1 Thessalonians 5:22. The ESV commands us to “abstain from every form of evil,” and the CSB simplifies it further to “stay away from every kind of evil” (1 Thess 5:22, CSB). This verse could be called upon to support just about any set of personal prohibitions, including interacting with someone of the opposite sex, dining at a tavern, choosing one’s friends, and forming political alliances, to name a few.

But is that what the Apostle Paul had in mind?

Context matters. If we learn to read the Bible for what it is—and not as a collection of independently assembled proverbial sayings—we’ll discover that some of our most familiar passages don’t actually mean what we’ve always assumed.

A Study in Contrasts

When we read the verse in context, we ought to observe that it makes up the second half of a contrast:

“Hold on to what is good. Stay away from every kind of evil.”
1 Thess 5:21b-22

So the staying away from every kind of evil is a companion to the holding on to what is good. The “evil” in view here is the opposite to the “good” that is likewise in view. We are to “hold on to” the one and “stay away from” the other.

What further clues can we find to help us understand precisely what sort of “good” and “evil” Paul has in mind?

A More Foundational Contrast

Moving back just slightly farther, we find another contrast. This one is more concrete.

“Don’t stifle the Spirit. Don’t despise prophecies, but test all things.”
1 Thess 5:19-21a

This one is a little more complex, but still poses no problem for the astute observer. Here we have two things not to do: Don’t stifle the Spirit or despise prophecies. And one thing to do: Test all things.

We ought to see how “stifling the Spirit” is parallel to “despising prophecies.” So the spiritual stifling Paul has in mind is the despising of prophecies. And because the entire paragraph is about church life (1 Thess 5:12-22), it doesn’t seem likely that Paul is describing enscripturated (written) prophecies, but the verbal prophecies being made in the course of ancient Thessalonian church life.

And how does Paul want people to express their dependence on the Spirit? How can they show their regard for those verbal prophecies? Is it by shutting off their minds and swallowing wholesale whatever is spoken in the name of the Spirit?

No: “Test all things,” he commands. The church will express its dependence on the Spirit of God, and its high regard for prophecies, by testing them all. By examining them in light of the enscripturated Word. By evaluating their consistency with the rest of God’s revelation. By making distinctions between true and false prophets, true and false prophecies, things to be heeded and things to be discarded.

The Punch Line

And upon such evaluation of the prophecies made in the church, the people are commanded to “hold on to what is good” and “stay away from every kind of evil.”

So the contrast between “good” and “evil” follows directly from the “testing” of the prophecy. Not every prophecy is legitimate. Not every claim to speak on behalf of God’s Spirit is to be taken seriously. Each of them must be tested.

And those that prove to be “good” are to be held on to. Those that show themselves to be any “kind of evil” are to be stayed away from.

Conclusion

Paul’s command here is similar to Jesus’ instruction to “be on your guard against false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravaging wolves. You’ll recognize them by their fruit” (Matt 7:15-16a).

We’ve been given an objective set of criteria by which to distinguish between true and false prophecy. We ought to cling to the first while staying away from the second. Jesus and Paul are in harmony on this matter.

And “abstain from all appearance of evil” has very little to do with how other people perceive your behavior in any given situation. It has more to do with whom we listen to and whose instruction we choose to heed. Stay away from those prophets and prophecies who are not in line with that which is good, right, and true.

Context matters.

Thanks to Daniel Tomlinson for the idea for this post. Click here for more examples showing why context matters.

Context Matters: Your Body is a Temple of the Holy Spirit

September 28, 2018 By Peter Krol

Perhaps you’ve been told that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:19). And perhaps this declaration came in the wake of an argument against drinking alcohol, smoking tobacco, piercing a part of your body, or getting a tattoo. This go-to verse has kept countless multitudes in reverent submission to a variety of cultural expectations. At least until many of those submissive masses come of age. When many inevitably rebel against the behavioral expectations set for them, are they rebelling against the word of God?

Heart2 (2011), Creative Commons

The Verse

It appears rather straightforward. I’ll even go as far as to quote two verses:

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. (1 Cor 6:19-20)

Easy, right? If you profess to follow the Lord Jesus Christ, your body has become a temple for his Spirit. Therefore, it is not appropriate for you to put harmful substances (alcohol, tobacco) into it, or to mutilate your body with excessive piercings. Glorifying God in your body requires you to abstain from such harmful behaviors.

Consistency

Let’s just make sure to follow that line of thinking all the way into the station. If this verse prohibits alcohol, tobacco, or piercings, then how much more does it also prohibit caffeine, chocolate cake, bacon grease, late nights, failure to bathe, steel factory employment, vasectomies, and drivers’ licenses? Each of these things either 1) introduces harmful substances to the body, 2) puts the body at significant risk of harm, or 3) makes permanent bodily changes for reasons other than preserving health.

Charles Spurgeon understood the absurdity of this logic. The story is told¹ of the time he met Dwight L. Moody. Upon being greeted by the Prince of Preachers chomping on a flaming stogie, Moody exclaims, “How could you, a man of God, smoke that cigar?” Spurgeon advances on Moody with pointing finger aimed at the latter’s seriously overweight gut: “The same way that you, a man of God, can be that fat.”

The Context

But we need not rely on witticisms or sophistry to make the point. The context is more than adequate to the task.

The main idea of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians is that the church of God, set apart in Christ Jesus, must live in harmony and not with factional infighting (1 Cor 1:2, 10-11). He first addresses how factional thinking betrays the world’s wisdom and is contrary to Christ’s wisdom (1 Cor 1-4). Then he turns to matters of sexual conduct.

In 1 Cor 5, Paul addresses a serious matter with serious words. The Corinthians must not tolerate sexual sin, especially not sin that even pagans would refuse to tolerate (1 Cor 5:1). This leads Paul to clarify what sort of people they ought to dissociate from: not all sinners, but those who walk proudly in sin while bearing the name of Christ (1 Cor 5:9-11). The church has a responsibility to judge those inside her community (1 Cor 5:12-13).

This topic of sitting in judgment on offenders leads Paul into a tangential discussion of lawsuits (1 Cor 6:1). His point is that we should be able to trust the church to be competent in rendering justice, as we will one day judge the world (1 Cor 6:2). The unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom (the authority to judge the world), but the righteous will (1 Cor 6:9-10). Some of you were in the former group, but now you are in the latter (1 Cor 6:11).

In 1 Cor 6:12, Paul is back on his main topic of sexual misconduct. He deals with what must have been a common saying among Corinthian Christians: “All things are lawful for me” (1 Cor 6:12). But he clarifies that things are lawful only insofar as they are helpful and not enslaving. He questions another saying they have about food (1 Cor 6:13) before homing in on his main point in this part of the argument: “The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body” (1 Cor 6:13).

At this point, he moves into his metaphor of the body as a “member” of Christ (a part of Christ’s own body). He applies this to the sin of prostitution (1 Cor 6:15). One who joins with a prostitute becomes one flesh with the prostitute (1 Cor 6:16), when that person ought to be one spirit with the Lord (1 Cor 6:17).

His application? “Flee from sexual immorality” (1 Cor 6:18). To support this application, he uses the metaphor of temple to describe the body. Your body is the Holy Spirit’s temple; therefore, do not offer that temple in union with an illicit sexual partner (something well-accepted in Corinthian culture at the local pagan temple, considered an act of worship).

After prohibiting ungodly sexual ethics in 1 Cor 5-6, Paul moves on in chapter 7 to promote a godly sexual ethic. This rounds out the discussion of sexual ethics, and connects it back to the main theme of living in harmony for the good of the community.

The Linchpin

Tucked right between the application (1 Cor 6:18a) and the temple metaphor (1 Cor 6:19) is a crucial clarifying statement: “Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body” (1 Cor 6:18b). Paul explicitly excludes every other sin from his temple metaphor. Therefore, we are not authorized by the Lord—in fact, we abuse his word—if we use it to address any other sin besides sexual immorality.

Conclusion

Please note: In this post, I am not arguing for drinking alcohol, smoking tobacco, getting a tattoo, or piercing your body. Those topics are complex and require more discussion than I’ve offered here. I am simply throwing 1 Cor 6:19 out of the discussion. When discussing anything besides sexual immorality, “your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit” is out of bounds. Part of your training for making wise ethical judgments is coming to understand this fact (1 Cor 6:2).

Context matters.

¹I say “the story is told” because I have not been able to track down an original source for this story, so it may be spurious.

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Thanks to Matthew Bair for the idea for this post. Click to see more examples of why context matters.