MBD-01 Ethics in Scripture

I think every Christian would agree that ethics is in crisis in our day, not only in the world out there, among unbelievers, but also in the church. Unbelievers go in a million directions trying to figure out the difference between right and wrong. Even well-meaning Christians are all over the map when it comes to ethical and moral living. I’ve met some Christians who seem to have very few moral convictions at all, and I've met other Christians who seem to have simple answers to every ethical question. I guess the older I get, the more I’m convinced that one of our greatest needs today is a way to understand how Scriptures apply to our lives, how we should think, act and feel, a way to make biblical decisions.

This series on Making Biblical Decisions, will focus on the process the Bible teaches us to follow as we make decisions about all sorts of things in our lives. We’ve called this first lesson “Ethics in Scripture.” We’ll introduce this series first by establishing a biblical definition of Christian ethics, then by examining the threefold criteria for good works found in the Bible, and finally by suggesting the biblical threefold process for making ethical decisions. Let’s begin by defining the concept of Christian ethics.

Nearly all people in all places have ethical systems. Different religions, cultures, societies and individuals vary in the ways they determine what is ethical. And they often come to radically different conclusions regarding which behaviors and ideas should be endorsed and which should be censured. The field of study that investigates these different systems and their conclusions is generally called “ethics.” In general terms, ethics is:

the study of moral right and wrong; the study of what is good and what is evil.

This definition will suffice as a basic orientation toward ethics. But in these lessons, we aren’t as interested in the broad study of ethics as we are in the particularly Christian or biblical view of ethics. So, we’ll work with a definition that is a bit narrower than the study of moral right and wrong. We’ll define Christian ethics as: