⁶ “Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces” (Matt 7:6).

 ⁷ No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. ⁸ None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory… ¹³ This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. ¹⁴ The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit (1 Cor 2:7-14).

A New Series

Today we begin a new series. I think I know the general direction and the destination, but I don’t know the exact route. I am guided by the conviction that much of what passes as Christian moral teaching today is really political ideology in religious disguise. That is to say, instead of helping individual believers understand how they ought to live as disciples of Jesus in an idolatrous culture, teachers focus on social/political issues and invoke the teaching of Jesus—and selectively the Old Testament and apostolic teaching—to support particular public policies. Instead of speaking of faith, hope and love, they instruct us about social justice. Instead of calling us to personal responsibility and repentance, they blame the social order for our sins and sufferings and call for political change. In short, they prefer to change the world than change themselves.

In this series I want to challenge this social/political distortion of the gospel and return Christian ethics to its proper subject: the individual person’s character and actions in relation to God and neighbor.

Ethical Principles

Below are some principles that will guide our discussion. I will have to unpack and defend them, but for now I was to assert them for your contemplation.

• 1. The only entity capable of moral dispositions and actions is the individual human person.
• 2. Jesus and the apostles address their moral teaching to individual persons; not a single line is addressed to an institution.
• 3. Christian moral teaching presumes the unity and inseparability of our highest religious duty (to love God) and our highest moral duty (to love neighbor); loving God takes priority.
• 4. Christian moral teaching demands that the dispositions of the soul and external actions dwell in harmony in the good and right.
• 5. The believing church—understood as a community of persons not as an institution—should endeavor to embody the perfect community of the Kingdom of God in this world.

The Journey

I hope you will walk along with me as we explore this subject. I am afraid I will have to kick a few sacred cows, step on a few toes, and deflate a few delusions along the way. But my goal is to discern and explain the way of life taught by Jesus and his apostles.