The Good, the Bad, and the Absolute Session 1 Right from Wrong BASIC INSIGHTS The following information is simply some basic information to help you get students thinking about the question, Is there a standard for right and wrong? and to drive home this one truth: An absolute standard for right and wrong does exist. Note: An expanded version of Insights begins on the next page. 1. There is a standard because it is written in our conscience. Romans 2:14-15 is part of a parenthetical thought. The Gentiles did not have the Mosaic Law as the Jews did. They did not have the written record of what God defines as right and wrong. They were still able to follow a standard for right and wrong by instinct. It was written on their hearts (v. 15). The conscience doesn t tell us what the specific standards for right and wrong are, but it does serve as an inner witness to the principle that there is a sense of right and wrong. Conscience alone is not a reliable guide to define the particulars of right and wrong, because a conscience can be flawed. 2. There is a standard because there is a God who defines right and wrong. The Ten Commandments succinctly capture all of God s commands for how to live rightly. Exodus 20:1-2. Then God spoke all these words (Ex. 20:1). There was to be no doubt in the people s minds about the origin of these commandments. God spoke. Throughout the Old Testament, God spoke to the people through a prophet. Even the law was given to the people through Moses. But God gave the Ten Commandments directly to the people (Ex. 20:18-19). The audio-visual display the people saw testified to the presence of God. I am the Lord your God (Ex. 20:2). Everything about God is wrapped up in His name. He is the sovereign Lord, Creator, Sustainer, and Provider of all there is. His name Lo r d reminds us that He is God. 3. God set the standard for right and wrong, and it hasn t changed. Hebrews 13:8. God s standard for right and wrong hasn t changed, because the One who gave the standard hasn t changed. There is a consistency, an absolutely unchangeable element to God s nature. Isaiah 40:6-8. If God doesn t change, then neither does the words He speaks. Things change, but the words of God do not change. Even though we are not bound to the Old Testament judicial and ceremonial law, the Ten Commandments are reinforced throughout the New Testament. God s rules have not been set aside, but through Jesus Christ, we have been given the power and ability to live obediently. If God is sovereign over all, then His commands His standard of right and wrong apply to all people in all places at all times.
EXPANDED INSIGHTS The following information is to help you get students thinking about the question, Is there a standard for right and wrong? and to drive home this one truth: An absolute standard for right and wrong does exist. INTRODUCE THE TOPIC A defining marker for this postmodern generation we live in is the belief that there are no absolutes. Some would say, The one absolute is that there are no absolutes. After all, who are you tell me what to believe? If you believe something to be true, then it is certainly true for you. But what gives you the right to tell me that what I believe is not true? It s one thing to debate over who is right, but it s quite another thing to say that we are both right! It s like playing basketball with two sets of rules. You move the ball forward by dribbling it, and I move it down the court by carrying it. You scream, Traveling, but I say it s OK because it s in the rules I play by. You can t call it unfair if you believe there can be two sets of rules. That sounds like a lousy way to play basketball, but that s how a lot of people view life. If you believe lying is wrong, and I believe lying is OK in certain situations, the world would say that s OK. We can both be right because the world says there is no one standard for right and wrong. If that is true there is no standard then murder is OK. Why? Because there is no standard to say it s wrong. If you bring up the argument that it s wrong because there is a law that says so, then would it be OK if we changed the law? If society or the majority decides what s right and wrong, then right and wrong can change if society changes its mind. If you don t think that can happen, consider what the Germans did in the 1930s and 1940s. The majority of people allowed for the killing of six million Jews. According to the logic of our current culture, that was OK, because society determined it was OK. Ethnic cleansing is taking place in western Sudan. According to the logic of some the government determines the laws and allows this, so ethnic cleansing is OK. If that sounds messed up to you, then you re admitting there is a standard that dictates right and wrong. You can t say there are several standards, because that would allow for a standard that says ethnic cleansing is OK for some people. There s either one standard one standard that applies to all of us or it s anything goes. Let s get to the main point: there is a standard an absolute standard for right and wrong. We re going to look at several passages that help us see there is a standard and that the standard is absolute, applying to all of us. POINTS TO FOCUS ON 1. There is a standard because it is written in our conscience. If you were to press someone on why they believe murder is wrong, what would they say? Even an atheist who believes in no standard might say, It just is. I don t know why, but deep down, I know it s wrong. There s a reason why even people who believe anything goes believes there are some things that are just right and some that are just wrong. It s woven into their conscience. Paul affirmed this. So, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, instinctively do what the law demands, they are a law to themselves even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law
is written on their hearts. Their consciences testify in support of this, and their competing thoughts either accuse or excuse them (Rom. 2:14-15). Eugene Peterson paraphrased Paul s words this way: When outsiders who have never heard of God s law follow it more or less by instinct, they confirm its truth by their obedience. They show that God s law is not something alien, imposed on us from without, but woven into the very fabric of our creation. There is something deep within them that echoes God s yes and no, right and wrong. (The Message) In the opening chapters of the Book of Romans, Paul showed how all people are sinners in need of salvation. Simply stated, he contrasted bad people (Rom. 1:18-32), good people (Rom. 2:1-16), and religious people (the Jews) (Rom. 2:17 3:8). Some people consider the middle section to be about the Jews also, and others look at it more broadly, seeing it a reference to the Gentiles (the non-jews) who also strive to be good. In the middle of this discourse, Paul threw in a parenthetical thought. The Gentiles did not have the Mosaic Law as the Jews did. They did not have the written record of what God defines as right and wrong. If they hadn t seen the Mosaic Law, how were they still able to follow a standard for right and wrong? They did it, as verse 14 says, by instinct. It was written on their hearts (v. 15). They may not have had the specifics of the Old Testament law, but they instinctively knew the type of things the law required: taking care of the sick, practicing justice, and so forth. This does not mean that our conscience is the same as, or equal to, God s commands. The conscience doesn t tell us what the specific standards for right and wrong are, but it does serve as an inner witness to the principle that there is a sense of right and wrong. Conscience alone is not a reliable guide to define the particulars of right and wrong, because a conscience can be flawed. Someone s conscience can be weak (1 Cor. 8:7), become seared by wrong influences (1 Tim. 4:2), or become evil (Heb. 10:22). The conscience is tied to our inner thoughts, those competing thoughts that either accuse or defend. There is an inner debate that takes place on the issue of moral conduct. That is a debate that wouldn t take place if we didn t have a conscience pointing us in the direction of right and wrong. So where did that sense of right and wrong come from? 2. There is a standard because there is a God who defines right and wrong. Let s acknowledge, first of all, that God made us in His image. So God created man in His own image; He created him in the image of God; He created them male and female (Gen. 1:27). God created us with a spirit, a part of us that is designed to commune with God. God created us to be like Him in righteousness and holiness. Of course, we blew that when we sinned, but the point is that His intention was for us to live with Him in a right relationship. To live right. Part of being made in God s image is that sense of rightness that He has woven into our being. We have a sense of what is right because that is what God is all about. He is a righteous God who has defined what s right and, therefore, what s wrong. The Bible is full of God s commands commands to do certain things and commands not to do certain things that give clarity to what is right and wrong. The most explicit and most well known example is The Ten Commandments (Ex. 20:1-17). The Ten Commandments provide the foundation for all the Mosaic Law. These ten commands succinctly capture all of God s commands for how to live rightly. Consider, for example, Commandment Eight: Do not steal (Ex. 20:15). It doesn t take an advanced degree or a detailed explanation to understand what that means. It means don t steal. Period. Commandment Nine, do not give false testimony against your neighbor (Ex. 20:16), means don t lie. Period. These commands are explicit about what is right and what is wrong. God
does not want to play a guessing game with us. He wants to make it clear regarding what s right and what s wrong so that we can live life with the greatest joy and fulfillment. At the time God gave these Ten Commandments, the Israelites had just come out of 400 years of slavery in Egypt. God was preparing His people to move into the land He had promised to their forefather, Abraham. God had made a covenant with Abraham (Gen. 12:1-3), and now He made a covenant with Abraham s descendants. This covenant is called the Mosaic covenant and is found in Exodus 19 23. A unique feature of the covenant is the law summarized in the Ten Commandments. These commandments showed the people how to live as a nation and as a people in a covenant relationship with God. For the purpose of our study, we re not going to focus on the details in the Ten Commandments. Instead, we will focus on how we know it was God who defined this standard of right and wrong. Then God spoke all these words (Ex. 20:1). There was to be no doubt in the people s minds about the origin of these commandments. God spoke. Throughout the Old Testament, God spoke to the people through a prophet. Even the law was given to the people through Moses. But God gave the Ten Commandments directly to the people. All the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain [surrounded by] smoke. When the people saw [it] they trembled and stood at a distance. You speak to us, and we will listen, they said to Moses, but don t let God speak to us, or we will die (Ex. 20:18-19). The audio-visual display the people saw testified to the presence of God, and there was no question that the standard for right and wrong was given by God Himself. I am the Lo r d your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the place of slavery (Ex. 20:2). Before giving His standard, God reminded the people who was giving these commandments to them. He used His covenant name, Yahweh, with them. The name Yahweh is depicted in most English translations with the name Lord written in small caps. Lo r d instead of Lord. Out of reverence for God, the Jews developed the practice of not saying Yahweh s name. When they came across His name in Scripture, they substituted the name Lo r d. Their reverence stemmed from the fact that the name Yahweh expresses the nature and a character of God. Everything about God is wrapped up in His name. He is the sovereign Lord, Creator, Sustainer, and Provider of all there is. His name Lo r d reminds us that He is God. Next week s study will look more deeply into the character of God and why He is the One who is able to define the standard of right and wrong. This week, simply introduce the topic that God reminded the people that the One who was giving them these rules was the One who created them and set them free. That was fine for the Israelites, but what does all this have to do with us today? 3. God set the standard for right and wrong, and it hasn t changed. God s standard for right and wrong hasn t changed, because the One who gave the standard hasn t changed. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb. 13:8). God s standards for right and wrong are grounded in His character, and if God s standard has changed with time, then the conclusion would be that God s character has changed. To say that adultery is no longer absolutely forbidden if all parties agree and no one is hurt is to say that God s purity has changed. To say that lying is now OK in certain situations is to say that God s value of truthfulness has changed. The truth is that there is a consistency, an absolutely unchangeable element to God s nature. If God doesn t change, then neither does the words He speaks. All humanity is grass, and all its goodness is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flowers fade when the breath of the Lo r d blows on them; indeed, the people are grass. The grass withers, the flowers fade, but the word of our God remains forever (Isa. 40:6b-8). This passage reminds us the transitory nature of all things. Things
change. Things are temporary. But the words of God do not change. Jesus is the Truth (John 14:6); therefore, all that He speaks is truth. Someone might say: But we no longer follow the Old Testament; we follow the New Testament. It is certainly true that Christians are no longer bound to the old covenant, for we have been given a new covenant through Jesus Christ. Keep in mind, however, that the Ten Commandments are still reinforced through the New Testament. God s rules have not been set aside, but through Jesus Christ, we have been given the power and ability to live obediently. If God is sovereign over all, then His commands His standard of right and wrong apply to all people. If God is sovereign over every corner of the universe, then His standard applies in places. If God is eternal, then His standard applies at all times. For God s standard to be that thorough and absolute leaves no room for any other standard. An absolute standard for right and wrong does exist. Since it exists, then it applies to us. We would be wise to learn God s standard for right and wrong and make it our standard. 2007 LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention. KNOWN. Published in the United States of America. Permission is granted to the original purchaser to download, print, store, and distribute this document for personal or church-related purposes. The removal of any copyright or other proprietary notices in prohibited by law. You may not sell, resell, or display on a web page this document or content without permission.