1 John 2, 3Law and Love
The Ten Commandments’ stock is low today. Why? Partly because they are law, naming particular things that should and should not be done. People dislike law (that is one sign of our sinfulness), and the idea is widespread that Christians should not be led by law, only by love.
Situation Ethics
This idea, for which “situation ethics” is the modern name, sees the Decalogue, with the rest of the Bible’s teaching on behavior, as merely a time-honored rule of thumb (not divine teaching, but human generalizing) about ways in which love is ordinarily expressed. But, say situationists, all rules have exceptions, and the Commandments may rightly be overridden if we think we can thereby do more people more good. So in every situation the question is whether law-keeping is really the best we can do. Thus moral life becomes a jam session in which at any time I may improvise for myself rather than play the notes in the score.
Attempts have been made to justify in situationist terms actions ranging from fornication to political subversion, on the grounds of their having been done in a good cause. Situationism says that the end will justify the means.
False Antithesis
But the love-or-law antithesis is false, just as the down-grading of law is perverse. Love and law are not opponents but allies, forming together the axis of true morality. Law needs love as its drive, else we get the Pharisaism that puts principles before people and says one can be perfectly good without actually loving one’s neighbor. The truest and kindest way to see situationism is as a reaction against real or imaginary Pharisaism. Even so it is a jump from the frying pan into the fire, inasmuch as correctness, however cold, does less damage than lawlessness, however well-meant. And love needs law as its eyes, for love (Christian agape as well as sexual eros) is blind. To want to love someone Christianly does not of itself tell you how to do it. Only as we observe the limits set by God’s law can we really do people good.
Keep two truths in view. First, God’s law expresses his character. It reflects his own behavior; it alerts us to what he will love and hate to see in us. It is a recipe for holiness, consecrated conformity to God, which is his true image in man. And as such (this is the second truth) God’s law fits human nature. As cars, being made as they are, only work well with gas in the tank, so we, being made as we are, only find fulfillment in a life of law-keeping. This is what we were both made and redeemed for.
Permissive?
Situationism is worldliness, not only because it opens the door so obviously to wayward self-indulgence, but also because it aims to squeeze Christian morality into the fashionable “permissive” mold of decadent Western secularism, which rejects the restrictions of all external authority and is sure that we are wise and good enough to see what is really best just by looking. But by biblical standards this is one of many delusions born of the satanic, God-defying pride with which we fallen creatures are all infected.
Jesus, God’s Son incarnate, was the perfect man, able truly to say, “I love the Father” and “I always do what is pleasing to him” (John 14:31; 8:29). If anyone was qualified to detect shortcomings in the Ten Commandments and lead us beyond them to something better, it was he. But what did he do? He affirmed them as having authority forever (Matthew 5:18-20) and as central to true religion (19:17-19). He expounded them, showing how they forbade wrong attitudes as well as wrong actions and nailing evasions (5:21-30, sixth and seventh commandments; 15:3-9, fifth commandment; cf. 23:16-22; 5:33-36, on the principle of the third commandment). And he made a point of insisting that he kept them (Luke 6:6-10, fourth commandment). When John says, “This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments” (1 John 5:3), his words describe Jesus’ own religion, as well as reminding us that Jesus defined love and discipleship to himself in terms of keeping his own commands (John 14:15, 21-24; cf. Matthew 28:19, 20). Commandment-keeping is the only true way to love the Father and the Son.
And it is the only true way to love one’s neighbor, too. When Paul says that “he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law” (Romans 13:8; cf. 10), he explains himself by showing that love to neighbor embraces the specific prohibitions of adultery, murder, stealing, and envy. He does not say that love to neighbor cancels them! When my neighbor, echoing the pop song, says “Come on, let’s sleep together,” or sin together some other way, I show love to him (or her) not by consenting, but by resisting and showing why the suggestion should be withdrawn, as Joseph did (Genesis 39:8).
Moral permissiveness, supposedly so liberating and fulfilling, is actually wounding and destructive: not only of society (which God’s law protects), but also of the lawless individual, who gets coarsened and reduced as a person every time. The first advocate of permissiveness was Satan at the Fall, but his promise of Godlikeness to the lawless was a lie. The Christian’s most loving service to his neighbor in our modern world, which so readily swallows this ancient lie, is to uphold the authority of God’s law as man’s one true guide to true life.
Further Bible Study
Love and commandments:
1 John 2, 3
Galatians 5:2-6:10
Questions for Thought and Discussion
How do situationists justify actions which others think wrong? Do you agree with their reasoning? Can you refute it?
“Love and law are not opponents but allies.” In what way?
What does God’s law reveal about human nature? What help is this to us?