NeoZine

What is important is faith expressing itself in love. – Galatians 5:6b

Younger Christians like the Galatians foolishly think they need to practice more religious exercises when they come to Christ through faith. After all, as faith grows it begins itching to do something with this new spiritual life.

One popular teaching called “The Spiritual Disciplines” reinforce this fruitless religious exercise, and it often involves rigorous exercises leading (supposedly) to maturity, but it strays far from biblical wisdom. Paul is clear: “What is important is faith expressing itself in love.”

It surprises too many Christians to learn that spiritual maturity is summed up in one word: “love.” The “Love Ethic” is spread across the entire New Testament; it’s in so many passages, it’s impossible to list them here. But one thing is certain: spiritual growth—or holiness, as we also call it—means becoming someone who learns and lives God’s principles of love.

Good Versus Evil

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. – Romans 12:21

The verse above is often-quoted as a rule of behavior for Christians, but that’s a misunderstanding. First, it isn’t a rule, and second, it’s not merely a behavior, as if through clenched teeth you’re determined to be good no matter what. Growing up in a Christian home, I understood this and many other similar passages to mean if you’re good, you’ll be kept safe from evil. Or, if you’re tempted to do evil, then try and “overcome evil with good” by doing good things instead, which drives the evil temptations away.

Christians have so many silly interpretations of “good”, and they all share a common fault: a naive and shallow understanding of the world we live in and the Bible itself.

I discovered in the seventh grade how my naive “good behavior” ethic is great recipe for failure. I was surprised and almost terrified to discover so many evil kids with cruel intentions filling the school halls. I was always “such a nice boy” and that worked great until this point, when I discovered my niceness only aggravated and energized the taunts and cruelty of all those evil kids.

There’s so many Bible verses with the same message as Romans 12:21. It’s hard to reconcile these with the real world:

Never pay back evil for evil to anyone. Respect what is right in the sight of all men. – Romans 12:17

“But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, – Matthew 5:44

“But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also. “If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also. Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you.” – Matthew 5:39–42

“Give to everyone who asks of you, and whoever takes away what is yours, do not demand it back.” – Luke 6:30

All these passages I knew well from Sunday School, and they were utterly useless in seventh grade for me. The nicer I was, the more they picked on me! My entire framework was shattered! I finally decided halfway through the year to join them, because I sure couldn’t beat ‘em, and then I become a world-expert in “evil kid” behavior. The change shocked everyone. Almost overnight I was transformed from a model Christian kid into a juvenile delinquent hoodlum.

I wish somebody had taught me what I know now, but of course that’s always the regret of old age, isn’t it? What I know today is not very complicated: my Christian “faith” was shallow and it couldn’t handle the big, bad world of high school.

A Good Weakling

Today I know that all my “niceness” was only polite behavior my parents taught me, and what I classified as “evil kids” were actually kids just like me, but from different backgrounds I didn’t understand and therefore classified as evil. Truthfully, I was just as evil, but I didn’t realize it.

The problem was simple: I confused politeness with goodness. Since I could easily be polite, “good” was a well-mannered kid like myself, and “evil” was easily seen in these ill-mannered kids making a scene in the school halls. The fact that all my goodness was no match for these evil kids meant there was something terribly defective with the Bible and God, I decided. Quite frankly, Christianity didn’t work in the real world. A “good Christian” was a weakling.

The problem wasn’t with the Bible or with God. It was my own immaturity, and this is what defines an immature Christian: someone with a defective, shallow understanding of the Bible and God. Too many adult Christians are confused the same way I was confused as a seventh-grader because the immaturity is similar. Like my seventh-grade faith, the immature Christian is confused about what “good” means, and typically defines the term in superficial, familiar terms—often reflecting some cultural behavior like the “good manners” I knew so well. But it’s all imaginary good without substance, and it quickly evaporates under the heat of an evil world. No matter how much willpower is exercised, it’s impossible to “overcome evil with good” with such a defective paradigm operative.

What is “Good”?

Christians everywhere are making the same mistake! They rely on a cultural or family’s definition of good, and it doesn’t transplant very well in the real world. Making things worse, this defective goodness is often propped with misunderstood or misquoted scriptures, like this one:

Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may because of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation. – 1 Peter 2:12

This passage is merely rephrasing what we read earlier in Romans 12, to “overcome evil with good.” At first glance it appears to define the term good more precisely in purely behavioral terms: “keep your behavior excellent,” it says. Ah! Now this definition, like my earlier “good manners” definition, allows us to frame an highly-attainable ethic. It means behavior modification, like “no cussing” or “no drinking.” For some churches excellent behavior means listening to a certain kind of music, avoiding R-rated movies or dressing more conservatively. This kid of good may be highly attainable, but it’s also highly superficial and highly inconsequential in an evil world.

As the Christian community grows increasingly irrelevant, its ethics cook in an isolated crucible and these low-priority, low-impact ethics take on grand dimensions and become arbitrary absolutes, as Francis Schaeffer calls them. The isolated community enforces their special ethics with a zeal and dogmatism that far-outweighs their silly little value.

As a result Christianity today is often a historical footnote or has some obscure relevance in communities across the nation, and the irrelevance is growing exponentially as the culture looks elsewhere for something with substance. It’s my nightmarish seventh-grade experience greatly amplified: Christians held prisoners in an island of wimpy goodness surrounded by the raging seas of an evil world. For all its zeal, such Christian faith will never never “overcome evil with good,” and the Gentiles will never “glorify God in the day of visitation.”

Good Substance

There’s no need to guess at what excellent behavior or good means. The Bible is unambiguous about it in so many passages, and here’s only a few.

Visible, tangible, substantial love relationships in the Body of Christ is the “excellent behavior” that causes the Gentiles to “glorify God on the day of visitation”…

“By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” – John 13:35

Without deep love relationships, it’s impossible to tell if someone is a Christian:

We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love abides in death. – 1 John 3:14

It’s a biblical fact that spiritual maturity is measured by the health of Christian relationships:

The one who says he is in the Light and yet hates his brother is in the darkness until now. The one who loves his brother abides in the Light and there is no cause for stumbling in him. – 1 John 2:9–10

This Love Ethic is not ambiguous; love means sacrificing the way Christ had to sacrifice and endure all the many cowardly, selfish and childish behaviors of his disciples—including their betrayal!

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. – John 13:34

Just in case we missed the point…

“This I command you, that you love one another. – John 15:17

“This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. – John 15:12

This is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us. – 1 John 3:23

All your ethical strength can be measured by your love relationships:

Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. For this, “you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet,” and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. – Romans 13:8–10

People who understand God’s grace love people:

All things are lawful, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful, but not all things edify. Let no one seek his own good, but that of his neighbor. – 1 Corinthians 10:23–24

These passages and so many others we could list are all telling us that to “overcome evil with good” is something far more powerful than superficial good deeds. Biblical ethics describe mature love, and apart from this understanding all the Bible’s morality take on a superficial, ineffective dimension.

An Astonishing Sight

On Sunday morning go to a church and write down what you see. Now take that description and compare it against the verses above. Would you see a Body of Christ where people were relationally engaged and visibly manifesting deep, relational ties? Or, more likely, would you see Christians who barely know each other’s names and stampede out the building as soon as the Benediction is finished?

It isn’t true for every church, and certainly it isn’t true for every Christian, but still it seems far too many Christians and churches are marked by programs and services, while the relationships are cool and distant. People won’t be rude like the evil kids I met in the seventh grade, that’s true. People may in fact be polite and cordial like the nice Christian kid I once was in Middle School, but I know they’re struggling with a sense of emptiness and spiritual defeat lurking beneath the surface, because this man-made definition of Christian ethics is inane and intrinsically weak.

The Christian church in America is growing increasingly irrelevant because nobody “will know that you are My disciples,” and the “love for one another” in a church isn’t much different than the polite cordiality in the modern office environment. There is simply no warmth to attract lost people in this cold, cold world.

My heart aches, because I see myself and I see people who want so very badly to be good Christians and please the Lord, but they don’t study the Bible enough to understand the primacy of this Love Ethic. What agony it is to live such a weak Christian faith!

Here’s a fascinating question: if biblical ethics are defined by love relationships, what does a Christian do in a church where relationships are shallow or formal or polite but distant? What do you do with your faith?

Related posts:

1. Spiritual Immaturity
2. Failed Spiritual Values