If you were giving an exhortation to an obedient people, what temptations would you urge them to guard against? Most of us would likely highlight the danger of pride and self-righteousness. And we’d be right to do so.

In his letter to the Philippians, Paul is addressing an obedient people. Unlike the Galatians or Corinthians, Paul does not write to them in order to rebuke and correct substantial failures and errors. Outside exhorting a few quarreling women, there isn’t a hint of “You foolish Galatians!” (Galatians 3:1) or “Are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?” (1 Corinthians 3:3). Instead, to the Philippians, Paul says, “As you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence” (Philippians 2:12). The Philippians are an obedient people.

So how does Paul exhort them? What does he see as a key danger for this obedient people?

Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain. (Philippians 2:14–16)

Grumbling and Disputing

A major temptation for the obedient is to murmur and grumble in our obedience. That’s why Paul says to do everything without grumbling or disputing, without murmuring or complaining, without sulking or arguing, without whining or backtalk. A temptation for an obedient people is to offer frustrated, grumbling obedience.

“A major temptation for the obedient is to murmur and grumble in our obedience.”

In other words, Paul is clear that how we obey matters. The spirit beneath our actions matters. God’s standard and expectation for us isn’t merely to obey. It’s to obey all the way, right away, cheerfully. All the way, right away, with a happy heart.

This means that partial obedience is disobedience. Delayed obedience is disobedience. And grumbling obedience, irritated obedience, frustrated obedience is disobedience. And it’s crucial for us to press this truth into the corners of our lives.

Confronting Reluctance

We each have various sources of hardship and frustration in our lives. It might be a boss or a co-worker. It might be a tone of voice or an annoying habit from your spouse or child or parent or sibling or friend. It might be a deep unmet desire, like the desire to be married.

Whatever the frustration, how often do you find yourself attempting to obey God while muttering and murmuring about the hardship? How often is there a hitch in your obedience, or an edge to your obedience, or self-pity in your obedience? It’s like we say to ourselves, I will do the right thing, but there will be enough reluctance and grumbling accompanying my obedience that everyone will know what it’s costing me.

Now some of us grumble directly about God. “Why is he doing this to me?” Or we grumble about our circumstances, conveniently “forgetting” the truth that nothing comes into our lives except by his hand. Others of us grumble about people. We disguise our complaints against God by focusing them on the people around us. And we have all sorts of rationalizations for this. “I’m not grumbling about God; I’m just being honest about the failures and sins of other people.”

This is precisely where we must press. It is important to distinguish faithful groaning from ungodly grumbling, lamenting from sulking. Groaning and lamenting can be good and right. They can be faithful responses to real pain. So what distinguishes them from grumbling and sinful complaining? Often, it’s honesty. Do we take the pain to God directly, or does it come out sideways, as complaints about God’s wisdom disguised as observations about other people?

The key question here is: where does the pain go? Do you bring it to God, as part of offering yourself totally to him? Or does it simmer on a low-boil in your soul, and come out in a frustrated service and sulky obedience?

Murmuring in Marriage

We can press this truth into our marriages. Simply put, grumbling obedience is a marriage killer. Mumbling exposes that you’re in the comparison trap and that you’re keeping score. Which of us has the tougher job? Who has sacrificed more? Grumbling and complaining is an outworking of self-pity, that subtle and sneaky form of selfishness.

And we sometimes wield such self-pity as a tool of manipulation. We wield our sacrifices as a weapon to get our way. We try to steer others by our complaining. We recognize this when we’re the target of the manipulation. We know that someone is seeking to steer us by throwing a pity party. And we should ask ourselves hard questions about it. Has such manipulation ever brought us deeper into joyful fellowship with the grumbler? Did it ever call forth the gratitude and joy that it supposedly sought? Of course not.

But seeing such manipulative grumbling in our spouse is the easy part. The hard part is recognizing it in ourselves, removing the log from our own eye, and treating others the way that we want to be treated.

So ask yourself, “How am I doing with my marital obedience? How am I doing with those marital vows? Having and holding, in sickness and in health?” Husbands, how is your leading and loving? Wives, how is your honoring and obeying? What’s the spirit beneath your obedience? Grumbling and disputing? Or glad-hearted and grateful?

Is there a hitch in your efforts to love and give yourself to your spouse? Do you find yourself muttering under your breath while doing the dishes or complaining to friends about your husband or your wife? Are you keeping score? Or are you keeping short accounts? Will the record of wrongs from last week follow you and your spouse into next week?

Frustrated in Families

We can widen and press this into family and parenting. If you’re a father, try this scenario. You’re in one room working on something. Could be your job, could be the honey-do list. From the other room, you hear the quarreling break out. Or you hear your kids talk back to your wife. And you listen for a minute to see if it will resolve itself. And it doesn’t.

And so now you must interrupt your work to go deal with it. You’re the head of the home, and it’s your responsibility to reprove, correct, and discipline. You’ve resolved to obey God. But will your obedience shine? Are you going to walk into a big mess of sin and bring more sin? Because grumbling obedience, frustrated obedience, exasperated obedience is disobedience.

As parents, we’re called to bring up our children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord, in the teaching and admonition of Christ. Do we pursue that task with joyfulness and gladness of heart? Do we do it heartily, as unto our Lord? Or are we regularly asking irritably, “How many times do I have to remind you to pick up your room or take out the trash?” Well, how many times does God have to remind us to shepherd our children with joy, to be his smile to them?

The same standard applies to our children. Children, do you honor and obey your parents all the way, right away, with a happy heart? Or do you wait to obey until your parents have answered all your questions first? Does your obedience come with a side of back-talk?

Gladness in All Things

We could go on. Do we show hospitality without grumbling (1 Peter 4:9)? Most of us have enough social tact to avoid grumbling at guests, but do you harbor resentment and bitterness toward your husband (or wife) or your kids because of all of your labor? Do you have an edge about you? Do you find yourself thinking, Nobody appreciates all that I do. Nobody appreciates how many details I manage, how much time I spend trying to make everything special?

“We must remember a simple truth: God loves a cheerful giver, not a grumbling one.”

Of course, this isn’t to excuse ingratitude and selfishness in others. But we may not use the failures of others to justify our own disobedience. A difference exists between addressing sin and grumbling about unaddressed sin. And a difference exists between addressing sin directly and passive-aggressively murmuring about sin. Do we do all things without grumbling and complaining?

In the end, we remember a simple truth: God loves a cheerful giver, not a grumbler. He loves cheerful obedience, not murmuring and complaining obedience. Such obedience, especially when things are hard, signals God’s grace to us, a sign that he is at work within us to produce an obedience that shines, an obedience that makes apostles proud and God happy. So as you obey, do so all the way, right away, with a happy heart.

In the church’s mission against the gates of hell, one of our main weapons is the familiar, often unremarkable, easily underestimated act of teaching.

Jesus taught (Matthew 4:23; 9:35), and he called his apostles to teach (Matthew 28:19–20). The apostles taught (Acts 5:28; 28:31), and they equipped local pastors to teach (1 Timothy 3:2; 4:13). Now, pastors teach (2 Timothy 4:2), and they raise up faithful men (2 Timothy 2:2), as well as all the saints (Colossians 3:16), to continue the teaching task. Through teaching, God lights up the darkness and lifts up his Christ, he frees Satan’s captives and makes them his sons, he hammers hell’s gates and wins back the world.

But not just through any teaching. Thoroughly Christian teaching is a bigger, broader task than many assume, especially in an age of abundant online content. Throughout the New Testament, the teaching of Jesus and the apostles, and then the church, assumes a certain context, flows from a certain character, comes with a certain content, and aims toward a certain completion.

And perhaps nowhere do we see these features more clearly than in Paul’s farewell address to the Ephesian elders (Acts 20:18–35). How did Paul teach the Ephesians so as to “open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God” (Acts 26:18)? And how might pastors, missionaries, and other teachers model him today?

Context: All of Life

The word teaching, for us, likely evokes images of academia: classrooms and desks, lectures and note-taking. Paul certainly had a category for formal public teaching, as when he taught in the Ephesian synagogue or reasoned in the hall of Tyrannus (Acts 19:8–10). But for the apostle, teaching was also woven into all of life.

Paul “lived among” the Ephesians for three years; his “students” were those “among whom I have gone about” (Acts 20:18, 25). Paul knew the Ephesians deeply, and the Ephesians likewise knew Paul. He had taught not only in public but “from house to house” (Acts 20:20); they had seen not only his talk but his tears (Acts 20:31). In his teaching, Paul clothed abstract principles with his own lived example. He had not only told them the words of the Lord Jesus, that “it is more blessed to give than to receive,” but he had “shown” them (Acts 20:35).

Andrew Clarke, in a review of Claire Smith’s study Pauline Communities as ‘Scholastic Communities’, describes Paul’s teaching method this way: “Close, authoritative relationships invited the imitation of modeled lives, and not merely attendance at formal discourse.” Discipleship, Paul knew, is less like learning physics and more like learning carpentry, and disciples are less like students and more like apprentices. And so, Paul spoke to all of the church’s life with all of his life, joining doctrine and devotion, precept and pattern.

“Paul spoke to all of the church’s life with all of his life, joining doctrine and devotion, precept and pattern.”

Understandably, then, Paul was not content with distant, disembodied teaching — at least, not as his primary mode of teaching. Even when Paul wrote letters, he longed to turn pen and ink into flesh and blood (Galatians 4:20; 1 Thessalonians 2:17–18; 2 Timothy 1:4), and he often sent his written teaching with those who could model “my ways in Christ” (1 Corinthians 4:17).

Today, we rightly leverage our digital technologies for teaching (as I am now). But as we turn away from the Internet and toward our real-life churches (ideally our primary teaching context), can we say with Paul, “You yourselves know how I lived among you” (Acts 20:25) — because, indeed, we have enfleshed our teaching in everyday life?

Character: All of Christ

Given this all-of-life context, Paul’s teaching required a certain character. If teaching included imitation and not just information, the teacher needed more than true ideas; he needed a holy life. So, as Paul reminds the Ephesian elders of his ministry among them, he says as much about his manner as he does about his message.

Paul had served with humility, taught with tears, suffered with patience (Acts 20:19). He preached Christ as altogether worthy and then showed his willingness to die for his name (Acts 20:24). He taught the whole counsel of God with courage (Acts 20:27). And he displayed a manifest freedom from greed and laziness as he commended the Servant Savior (Acts 20:33–35). As he taught in all of life, he modeled — as much as an imperfect saint can — all of Christ.

Words and works could not be separated in the apostle’s mind. Faithful teaching called for faithful living — not only because a faithful life would illustrate and embody the teaching, but also because it would guard the truth in a teacher’s heart. “Pay careful attention to yourselves,” Paul told the church’s elders. And why? Because “from your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them” (Acts 20:28, 30). Before a teacher speaks “twisted things,” the desire to draw others after himself captures his heart. Twisted teaching comes from a twisted soul, a twisted life.

The church father Gregory Nazianzen once said of his friend Basil that “his speech was like thunder because his life was like lightning” (Pia Desideria, 104). Likewise with Paul. So, when the apostle instructs Timothy to raise up more teachers, he tells him to look not merely for “able” men — men who can and want to teach — but for “faithful men” (2 Timothy 2:2), men whose words thunder because their lives blaze.

Content: All of Scripture

If the context of Paul’s teaching was all of life, and the character was all of Christ, then the content was all of Scripture, with a special focus on Jesus’s person and work. He taught the whole Christ from the whole counsel of God.

Twice, Paul mentions his refusal to pick and choose from God’s word:

“I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable” (Acts 20:20).
“I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27).

How tempting to “shrink” before some uncomfortable word from God rather than, like Paul, “declaring” it. How tempting to minimize, sidestep, muffle, ignore, or twist the toughest texts. Yet Paul knew that all God’s words were “profitable,” no matter how painful they landed at first, and that he as God’s steward would be judged by how faithfully he taught his Master’s message (Acts 20:26–27). And so, he didn’t shrink from proclaiming every promise, telling every story, witnessing to every warning, and declaring every command.

At the same time, he spoke especially “of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ” (Acts 20:21), or what he calls “the gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24) — or most succinctly, “the word of his grace” (Acts 20:32). Of all that was profitable, the gospel was most profitable; among the whole counsel of God, Christ was the climax. Every promise pointed to his person and work, and every command flowed from his cross.

Completion: All He Commanded

Finally, as Paul taught, he aimed toward the grand ambition of the Great Commission: “. . . teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:20). The end of Christian teaching is not understanding but obedience — what Paul elsewhere calls “the obedience of faith” (Romans 1:5).

“Oh, how good it would be if our own teaching were washed in the tears of holy love.”

Paul yearned to see the word of God’s grace “build . . . up” believers into Christ-loving, word-obeying, devil-shaming disciples (Acts 20:32). So, he not only explained and applied God’s word, but even “admonish[ed] everyone with tears” (Acts 20:31). Oh, how good it would be if our own teaching were washed in the tears of holy love. With Paul, such leaders live and weep and teach to kill anger and birth gentleness, to clothe the proud with humility and the sorrowful with praise, to take people curved toward themselves and open them up to a broad new world, to heal fractured relationships and create communities so satisfied in Christ they confound the devil’s kingdom.

Such a mission, of course, is impossible apart from God. Who can open the eyes of the blind, or break the iron chains wrapped around the will, or deliver those enslaved to the ancient lie? Only the Spirit of the living God. Paul knew it, and so we read, “When he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all” (Acts 20:36).

Teaching may be the church’s sword, but it cuts only when wielded by the Spirit. Without him, our best words are a dull and broken blade. So, before we teach, and after we teach, and perhaps even as we teach, we pray, “Father, take these feeble words, this little teaching, and win back more of your world.”

Audio Transcript

Are there morally neutral areas of life? That’s the first question on the table as we begin this new week together. Welcome back to the podcast, and thank you for making us a part of your weekly routine.

The question is from Mary Beth, who lives in Arkansas. She writes, “Hello, Pastor John, and thank you for the Ask Pastor John podcast. A question has been troubling me for a while. It’s this one. I’m wondering if everything in life is either a good thing or a sin. Or are there some ‘okay’ things that aren’t sin, but aren’t exactly good? Sometimes I do things that don’t seem beneficial. I can’t tell if I need forgiveness for them. I usually ask for forgiveness anyways. I guess basically my question boils down to that. Pastor John, yes or no, are there morally neutral areas of life?”

I can’t give a yes or a no answer until I clarify some terms. So what is sin? What is the moral good? What does morally neutral mean? This is one of those great illustrations of how simply defining our terms virtually answers the question. It’s a great lesson to learn. I recommend it to everybody. I find that most arguments people are having go round and round because the terms are not defined with any biblical precision. And the reason I say biblical precision is because if you don’t have an authority that you can both agree on, then you probably won’t even be able to define your terms in a way that you both can agree on, and you’ll just be stuck.

Our culture right now is stuck because we don’t share much common ground under our disputes. And a stuck culture is a dangerous thing, because if there’s no agreed-upon arbiter of truth claims, then what comes in to fill that void is usually raw power. If some common ground doesn’t decide what’s right, then might makes right. Or more to the point here, if a shared authority, like the Bible, does not decide the definition of our terms, then the one with the most power will decide how words are going to be used. And that’s how the Holocaust happened. That’s how race-based slavery happened. That’s how abortion happens. The powerful decide how the word person is going to be used and who fits with it and who doesn’t. And without an agreed-upon authority to arbitrate, the powerful define the terms to suit their preference.

Well, that’s way more than Mary Beth asked for. In fact, she didn’t ask for that at all, but now and then I like to explain on this podcast why I make such a big deal out of defining our terms.

What Is Sin?

So here’s my effort to clarify the terms of Mary Beth’s question. “Is everything in life,” she says, “a good thing or a sin? Are there morally neutral areas?” That’s her question.

So what is sin? There are at least two passages in Paul that I think get at the heart of what sin is. One is Romans 1–3. Romans 3:23 says, “All have sinned and fall short of [or literally, lack] the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). And I connect that statement with Romans 1:23, where humans exchange the glory of God for the glory of created things, including the human self, my glory (Romans 1:23). That’s my favorite idol, right? So I think what Romans 3:23 means is that all human beings sin in that we prefer created glory over God’s glory. We exchange God’s glory for something we prefer. We lack or fall short of the glory of God.

So sin is first — this is my definition drawn from Romans — the disposition of the human heart to prefer human glory, especially self-glory, over God’s glory. And then secondarily, sins (plural) would be the attitudes and words and actions that stem from that disposition. That’s my definition of sin from Romans 1–3.

The other passage that defines the heart of sin is Romans 14:21–23, where Paul is talking about eating meat and drinking wine. And he says, “Whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith. For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin” (Romans 14:23). Wow. That’s pretty sweeping. Paul is willing to define sin as whatever is not from faith, which I think — when you analyze it carefully, down to the bottom — is really the same as the definition in Romans 1–3.

“If the disposition of our heart is not to receive Christ, then what comes from that heart is sin.”

If the disposition of our heart is not to receive Christ — I’m thinking of what faith is right now, namely, to own Christ as our supreme Savior and guide and treasure — then what comes from that heart is sin. That heart is the same as the heart that prefers created glory over God’s glory.

Acting from Faith

Now, with that definition of sin, the definition of what is morally good follows as the flip side of sin or evil. Moral good is the disposition of the heart to prefer God over all, or to treasure God in Christ over all, so that the attitudes and words and actions that stem from that heart are good, morally good.

Now, there are two other ways to describe this moral good, because they result from acting in faith or a preference for the superior worth of God in Christ. One is to say that the moral good is those attitudes and words and actions that God has commanded (1 John 5:2). The other is to say that the moral good is attitudes and words and actions that aim to glorify God (1 Corinthians 10:31). So we’re actually on safest ground, I think, to say that what is morally good has all three of these traits:

It comes from faith.
It accords with God’s commands.
It aims to glorify God.

That’s the moral good.

For His Glory

So here’s the implication about whether there are neutral areas of life, because that’s what she’s asking about. If we mean, “Are there actions considered without any reference to humans doing those actions, just actions in the abstract?” the answer is yes. There are thousands of such morally neutral (in that sense) actions, like walking down the street, drinking a glass of water, or putting on your shoes.

“If you do something from faith that’s not forbidden in the Scriptures, it has moral goodness, no matter what it is.”

It’s not so much that they are morally neutral, though — I’m a little skittish about that phrase — but that they have no moral standing at all until a human being is doing them. As soon as someone does them, no matter how simple, no matter how supposedly neutral, they cease to be neutral. They become moral because, Paul said, “Whatever you do, do all” — put on your shoes, walk down the street — “to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). And either we do that or we don’t. And that criterion makes them either sin or not sin. And in the same way, we could ask, “Did we do them from faith?” Whatever is not from faith is sin. Did I put on my shoes from a disposition of faith? If not, Paul says, it is a sin. You can put on your shoes rebelliously. You really can.

I think what this means for Mary Beth’s concern is this: if an action or attitude is not forbidden or commanded in the Bible, then the question for her (and for all of us) is, Am I moved to do this action by faith and by a desire to glorify God? If so, then she invests that seemingly neutral act with moral goodness. If you do something from faith that’s not forbidden in the Scriptures, it has moral goodness, no matter what it is. And if not, then no matter how neutral the act may seem, she makes it a sin because it’s not done in reliance upon Christ or for his glory.