March 16, 2009

It a wonderful thing that, if you believe and teach the straightforward truths of the Bible, you will spare yourself and your children a hundred follies of each new generation. If you want to be useful for your generation, you don’t need to be an expert on the latest philosophical fad, or the latest progressive morality, or the latest psychological trend. A few Christians need to study these things and respond to them. But the great majority of Christians should simply be marching to the beat of another drummer.

What most ordinary Christians need to do is go deep with the Bible and believe and absorb and teach what it means and what it implies in its straightforward statements. If you do that--if you think your way down deep into the warp and woof of the Bible, and let it shape your mind and heart--you will be spared many trendy detours that sound so up-to-date, but end in the destruction of lives.

I think you will see this truth at work if we meditate for today on the second half of Romans 12:9. The whole verse says, “Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.” We looked last time at the words, “Let love be genuine [or without hypocrisy].” Today we focus on the words, “Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.” My point is: if you will think and pray and obey your way down into this straightforward exhortation, you (and your children) will be liberated from many of the follies of this age--and every age.

Let’s do this together. I see five things to point out. You may not even be conscious of these things, and yet they can have a powerfully good effect on you. In other words, you don’t have to be an expository preacher to be transformed by the Bible. But it helps to have them pointed out from time to time and may hasten and deepen the transforming power of the text.

1. There Is Such a Thing as Objective Good and Evil Outside Myself

When Paul says, “Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good,” he is rejecting the notion that evil is defined by what I abhor; and he is rejecting the notion that good is defined by what I hold fast to. This is so simple and so obvious. Would you ever think to say this to your children? Maybe. But if you teach them verses like this often enough and deeply enough, they will absorb a whole biblical worldview for their great good.

That is, they will absorb the view that there is such a thing as good and evil, and that good and evil are realities outside of them. The good and the evil don’t depend on us or our children to become good or evil. They are good or evil objectively. Good is not what you want to be good. And evil is not what you want to be evil. Liking something does not make it good and hating something does not make it evil. There is reality out there. And then there is you. That reality is good or evil. You don’t make it good or evil.

How do we see this? Because Paul says, “Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.” In other words, good and evil don’t change, we change. Our hearts can cling to things because we desire them, and our hearts can reject things intensely because we don’t desire them. Paul says, Here is good, and here is evil. Now bring your emotions and your will into conformity to what is objectively there. When you face the objective evil: hate it. And when you face the objective good, embrace it.

Now what makes good good? And what makes evil evil? In other words, how does it come about that there is such a thing as objective good and evil? Well, this verse doesn’t say. But we don’t have to look far for the answer. Verse 2: “Do not be conformed to this world,but be 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.” The reason there is such a thing as objective good is that there is such a thing as “the will of God.” Or most simply, and most profoundly, the reason there is such a thing as objective good outside ourselves is that there is God outside ourselves. And most concretely and specifically, God has made himself known objectively and historically in Jesus Christ in Scripture.