Living Out the Truth: Christian Ethics in Action

Truth must always be applied. Wherefore, he says, truth is not something to be regarded objectively and to be enjoyed intellectually. Truth is to be applied. I remember once an occasion when a man was preaching and preaching with great eloquence and said a very striking thing, and certain people in the congregation spontaneously broke out to applaud and clapped their hands. The good preacher, man of God as he was, pulled them up and said the truth is not to be applauded; it is to be applied. [00:05:24]

A real and a true understanding of the truth always does lead to application, so that if a man doesn't apply the truth, his real trouble is that he hasn't understood it. There's a defect at some point in his very understanding, for if a man just gets hold of this and sees what it means and what it says and implies, of necessity he will have to apply it. [00:07:19]

The Christian faith and the Christian teaching apply to and affect the whole of life and in every detail. You can't read from this 25th verse of this fourth chapter to the end without seeing that. You will find that he tells us not to lie but to speak the truth, not to steal, not to talk foolishly. He goes into details: parents and children, husbands and wives. Every conceivable thing is represented. [00:08:08]

Our Christian faith must be manifested and put into practice not only in our public or our professional conduct but in every part of our conduct. I'm saying that in order to emphasize this: that there is the type of man who is very scrupulous in his public conduct who doesn't apply the same cannons when he comes to his private behavior. [00:09:44]

The Apostle's method or his general plan of teaching his ethics and his morality works on a pattern, and he does the same thing each time. This is his pattern: he first of all puts a negative, tells us what we mustn't do. He then puts a positive in which he tells us what we should do, and thirdly, he gives us the reason for all this. [00:11:32]

Christianity has not a monopoly of ethical and moral teaching. There are pagan moralities, there are so-called humanistic moralities and ethical and cultural systems, and they're very evident in this modern world in which we find ourselves. So that it seems to me nothing is more important for us than this: to be able to draw a clear distinction between Christian morality, ethics, and culture and every other form of ethics, morality, and culture. [00:18:30]

Christianity presumes one thing only, and that is that we've been given new life, that we've been regenerated. Wherefore, says Paul, you mustn't walk any longer as the other Gentiles walk and as you once walked. Why not? You've been born again. You've got the new man in you. You've got an ability given by God. [00:32:23]

Christianity always keeps us humble, always makes us conscious of what we are not and what we are failing to do. And as we look at him, we feel we are but worms. And when we are addressed in these words, "Let this mind be in you also that was in Christ Jesus," we say, "Where are we? We are down in the dust." [00:34:38]

Christianity gives a new man. There's a new nature, there's a new creation, a new heart, a new outlook. Or to put it again in a principle which I've been using frequently recently in this series, it's all the difference about something being done on the outside and something being done within, and that is the essential difference at this point. [00:36:23]

Christianity goes down to the roots and down to the very depths. It produces a new creation. A new man comes into being. Or to follow that on in the fifth place, I can put it like this: these other systems simply hinder and put a break upon great outbreaks of vice and the manifestations of vice. They don't really deal with vice itself. [00:36:59]

Christianity, you notice, has both. You stop doing one thing, you do the other. It isn't merely negative. You don't only stop lying. No, no. But that other is always negative and purely repressive. It knows nothing about the glorious liberty of the children of God. [00:40:02]

When you come to the Christian, what a contrast. He is warm, he is human, he's sympathetic, he's approachable, he's encouraging. He isn't ever standing on his dignity. He can forget himself. He can infuse. He's governed by a principle of love, and it's there at the center of his life, and it radiates out of him. [00:43:00]