Grudem - Christian Ethics - An Introduction to Biblical Moral Reasoning

Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018. – 1328 p.

ISBN 1433590840

 

I have written this book for Christians who want to understand what the Bible teaches about how to obey God faithfully in their daily lives. I hope the book will be useful not only for college and seminary students who take classes in Christian ethics, but also for all other Christians who seek, before God, to be “filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding,” with the result that they will live “in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God” (Col. 1:9–10).

 

This book as a whole is an invitation to experience the great blessing of God that comes from walking daily in paths of obedience, knowing more of the joy of God’s presence, and experiencing his favor on our lives (see chap. 4). It is an invitation to delight in the goodness and beauty of God’s moral standards because we understand that delight in those standards is really delight in the infinitely good moral character of God himself (see chap. 2). To delight in God’s moral standards should lead us to exclaim with the psalmist, “Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day” (Ps. 119:97).

 

But this book also contains a challenge. I am concerned that teaching about ethics has been neglected in many evangelical churches today—partly because the issues seem complex, partly because pastors do not want to be accused of sounding “legalistic,” and partly because the surrounding non-Christian culture is hostile to Christian moral values, so anyone who teaches biblical ethics is likely to be criticized by unbelievers. Therefore, I hope this book will help to meet a need among Christians today for more biblical ethical understanding. The challenge in the book is for Christians today to live lives of personal holiness, lives that will often be distinctly different from those of others in the secular culture that surrounds us, not being “conformed to this world” but rather being “transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom. 12:2).

 

I cannot claim to live up to all of the ethical standards described in this book, nor can anyone else who reads it or teaches from it. Jesus said, “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48), and that includes not only moral perfection in our actions, but also unfailing perfection in our motives and heart attitudes—something that no one is capable of in this life. Who could ever claim to have perfectly obeyed even the two commandments that Jesus called the greatest: to love God and to love our neighbor?

 

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets. (Matt. 22:37–40)

 

But we press on. Knowing our weaknesses and failures, we can still say with the apostle Paul, “Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:13–14).

 

If we do this, we can hope that our lives will increasingly give glory to God as we seek to honor him and reflect his character in all that we do. “But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day” (Prov. 4:18).

 

* * *

 

Marriage

 

What are the essential elements for a marriage to occur?

Why does Scripture place a high value on sexual intimacy within marriage, but prohibit it outside of marriage?

Should the Bible’s definition of marriage apply to all cultures and all societies?

What safeguards can help protect a marriage against adultery?

Is it wrong for a couple to live together prior to marriage?

What does the Bible say about singleness?

 

The seventh commandment reads:

 

You shall not commit adultery. (Ex. 20:14)

 

The English word adultery means “voluntary sexual intercourse between a married person and a partner other than the lawful spouse.”1 That definition is suitable to the meaning of the Hebrew word nā’ap, which is used in this verse, as is clear from other passages that talk about adultery in terms of sexual intercourse with someone who is married to someone else.

 

One such passage is Leviticus 20:10: “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.”

 

Similarly, Proverbs 6:32 says, “He who commits adultery lacks sense; he who does it destroys himself,” and the context shows that it is talking about “He who goes in to his neighbor’s wife” (v. 29a). This verse warns, “None who touches her will go unpunished” (v. 29b).

 

The moral evil of adultery is also affirmed in some narrative passages. For example, when the wife of Potiphar, the captain of the guard in Egypt, enticed Joseph to have sex with her, he replied, “How . . . can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” (Gen. 39:9). But King David was not as righteous, for he sinned gravely by committing adultery with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite (2 Samuel 11).

 

The commandment against adultery is reaffirmed several times in the New Testament (see Matt. 19:18; Rom. 2:22; 13:9; James 2:11), and therefore is clearly morally binding in the new covenant age as well. Jesus teaches about its deeper application to the attitudes of our hearts, saying, “Everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt. 5:28). But God had already indicated the deeper application of this commandment when he said in the tenth commandment, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife” (Ex. 20:17).

 

The purpose of this commandment is to protect marriage, and therefore in this chapter we will consider the Bible’s teaching on marriage in some detail.2 Then in the subsequent chapters in this part of the book we will deal with other specific questions related to marriage: birth control (chap. 29), modern reproductive technology (chap. 30), pornography (chap. 31), divorce and remarriage (chap. 32), and homosexuality (chap. 33).

 

A. What Is Marriage?

1. Definition of Marriage. Marriage has been understood as “the legal union of a man and woman as husband and wife”3 in all cultures and societies throughout all of human history. No society in all of recorded history ever permitted same-sex marriage before the 21st century.4 But beginning with the Netherlands in 2001,5 a number of countries have recognized same-sex marriage, including the United States in the Supreme Court decision Obergefell v. Hodges on June 26, 2015.

 

As I will argue below, the historic definition of marriage as a union of a man and a woman is consistent with biblical teaching, and that is the understanding of marriage that I will use in the remainder of this chapter.6

 

2. Fuller Definition of Marriage from Scripture. In Scripture, marriage is seen as a lifelong relationship between a man and a woman that is established by a solemn covenant before God. The prophet Malachi speaks of marriage as a “covenant” to which God is a witness:

 

But you say, “Why does he not [accept your offerings]?” Because the Lord was witness between you and the wife of your youth, to whom you have been faithless, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant. (Mal. 2:14)

 

In this passage, a “covenant” is a solemn agreement establishing a marriage relationship between a man and a woman. In this agreement, the man and woman promise each other that they will be faithful to this marriage for a lifetime, and they call God to witness their promise and to hold them accountable for being faithful to it.

 

Traditional marriage ceremonies have regularly included the recognition of both (1) the public nature of the marriage (at least requiring legal registration of the marriage in a publicly accessible record), so that the society will know that this man and woman are husband and wife, and (2) God’s presence as a witness to the wedding vows.

 

Both of these elements are found, for example, in a recently published update of a “traditional” wedding ceremony by veteran pastor R. Kent Hughes. This wording draws on centuries of Christian tradition (and especially on the traditional service found in the Episcopalian Book of Common Prayer):

 

We have come together here in the sight of God and in the presence of this congregation to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony, which is an honorable state of life, instituted in the beginning by God himself, signifying to us the spiritual union that is between Christ and the church.7

 

3. Marriage Changes a Person’s Status before God and before Society. It does so not only because of the husband’s and wife’s solemn vows of mutual faithfulness in the presence of God and their asking God to hold them to account regarding these vows, but also because God himself acts during the wedding ceremony. In the context of discussing the nature of marriage, Jesus says, “What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matt. 19:6). In other words, when a marriage occurs, it is not merely a human ceremony. Rather, something deeply spiritual happens. God himself joins the couple together in a spiritual union as husband and wife—their union is something that “God has joined together.”