Natural Law: An Introduction, Part 3
Written by Nicholas K. Meriwether |
Tuesday, May 16, 2023
According to Scripture, God designs us in such a way that moral knowledge is natural. In Romans 2:14-16, Paul says the moral law is “written on our hearts,” that is, through the conscience, described by Calvin as “a certain knowledge of the law by nature,”[2] so that all are without excuse.
Natural law is that apprehension of the conscience which distinguishes sufficiently between just and unjust, and which deprives men of the excuse of ignorance, while it proves them guilty by their own testimony.
—John Calvin, Institutes, Bk. II, Chap. 2, xxii.
In Part 2 of this series, we looked at the content of natural law, which is the Ten Commandments (aka the Decalogue) and the basic design of human nature. One might think that we learn the Ten Commandments by reading the Bible. But if the Bible were the only source of moral knowledge, only a very small percentage of the human race would know right from wrong. And as we will see, the Bible itself doesn’t claim that people know right from wrong only by reading it. But how do we explain how we know the Decalogue? In Part 3, we turn to how we know right from wrong.
To add to the difficulty, doing the right thing often occurs in a bewildering context in which justice doesn’t seem to prevail (Jer. 12:1; Hab. 1:13). Many suffer and die for doing the right things. So we can’t base moral knowledge upon who lives a long and contented life, or a short, difficult one.
Not only do we often fail to see justice prevail, we may find ourselves in circumstances in which being moral is dangerous. Austrian author Stefan Zweig describes a harrowing situation in post-WWI Salzburg during a period of rampant inflation, where in order to survive, one had to be immoral.
A man who respected the food rationing system starved; only one who disregarded it brazenly could eat his fill. A man schooled in bribery got ahead; he who speculated, profited. If a man sold appropriately to the buying price, he was robbed, and if he calculated carefully, he was cheated. Standards and values disappeared during this melting and evaporation of money; there was but one virtue: to be clever, shrewd, unscrupulous, and to mount the racing horse rather than be trampled by it.[1]
The situation Zweig describes challenges those who believe moral knowledge derives from our environment. Saying we obtain moral knowledge from the society or culture we live in has disturbing implications—not just in periods of civilizational collapse as in post-war Austria, but also in contexts in which being immoral is ingrained in the culture we inhabit, such as a street gang, the Mafia, or a corrupt society (Gen. 19). Moral knowledge must have a more stable basis than what we experience most of the time.
Moral Knowledge
So we can’t simply assume people know, we must at least explain how they know, and especially, why they so often violate what they know, which complicates the question even more.
Yet it is here that natural law by itself is inadequate. We see this most clearly in Aristotle’s wrestling with moral responsibility in the Nichomachean Ethics. He does in fact claim that every human being is responsible for any wrong he commits, unless his action is forced by something outside himself (a blast of wind), or he’s ignorant of the circumstances (1110b25). Yet his explanation of how it is that people can be held responsible is through an indirect argument: If we say that vice isn’t our fault, then neither is virtue, yet this seems preposterous. He concludes:
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Six Steps to Offering Specific and Practical Help to a Family Living with Disability
Each church will have a unique approach to gathering a care team to support a family in need. In some cases, life groups or community groups will “adopt” a family. Other churches may already have an existing care ministry that can assemble a team. If your church already has teams in place to deliver meals or provide rides, consider coordinating support with them. The information gathered from the point person will help determine the size of the support team and if members need specific skills.
Sometimes, the best “disability ministry” isn’t done on Sunday at church, but in the home of a family living with disability.
When a baby is born, an unexpected illness strikes, or a death in the family occurs, churches are good about providing meals, helping with household chores, and providing emotional support. But caring for a person with a disability is not a single moment in time! There is not always a crisis point that clearly calls for a response. The support needs of a family affected by disability are usually invisible to those looking from the outside, causing families to feel isolated and overwhelmed.
It can be very difficult for families to ask for help when there is nothing in particular, but everything in general, that is causing stress or stretching margins. Asking a family to figure out one or two things that would be helpful adds even more stress. “Let me know if there’s anything we can do” is therefore unlikely to get a response. For more insight into these needs read, How to Support a Family Living with Disability as a Church.
So how do we proactively offer specific, practical help? By following these six steps.
Step 1: Appoint a Point Person
Choose someone the family trusts to be the primary point of communication with the family. Sharing needs and asking for help is an intimate thing for many people. Having a single trusted person the family can talk to streamlines communication and avoids confusion.
A point person can often recognize needs that the family may not see, express, or believe are worth mentioning.
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Four Ways of Serving God During Christmas
Let your soul lose itself in wonder, for wonder, dear friends, is in this way a very practical emotion. Holy wonder will lead you to grateful worship; being astonished at what God has done, you will pour out your soul with astonishment at the foot of the golden throne with the song, “Blessing, and honor, and glory, and majesty, and power, and dominion, and might be unto Him who sitteth on the throne and doeth these great things to me.”
The Christmas season is a time of rest and celebration. But it is also a time of great opportunity. The workplace is filled with Christmas carols and decorations. Family gatherings bring Christians together with their unsaved loved ones. Neighbors exchange gifts and host neighborhood parties. Opportunities to serve the poor and needy abound. In all of this, what better way for Christians to celebrate Christmas than by imitating the example of their Lord and serving those around them, and by dwelling on the love of the Savior? Spurgeon writes,
We citizens of the New Jerusalem, having the Lord Jesus in our midst, may well excuse ourselves from the ordinary ways of celebrating this season; and considering ourselves to be “holy work-folk,” we may keep it after a different sort from other men, in holy contemplation and in blessed service of that gracious God whose unspeakable gift the new-born King is to us.
In his sermon, “Holy Work of Christmas,” Spurgeon unpacks Luke 2:17-20 and gives “four ways of serving God, four methods of executing holy work and exercising Christian thought.” What are four ways we can serve God during Christmas?
By Publishing Abroad What We Have Seen and Heard of the Savior
They had seen God incarnate—such a sight that he who gazeth on it must feel his tongue unloosed, unless indeed an unspeakable astonishment should make him dumb. Be silent when their eyes had seen such a vision! Impossible! To the first person they met outside that lowly stable door they began to tell their matchless tale, and they wearied not till nightfall, crying, “Come and worship! Come and worship Christ, the newborn King!” As for us, beloved, have we also not something to relate which demands utterance? If we talk of Jesus, who can blame us? This, indeed, might make the tongue of him that sleeps to move—the mystery of God incarnate for our sake, bleeding and dying that we might neither bleed nor die, descending that we might ascend, and wrapped in swaddling bands that we might be unwrapped of the grave-clothes of corruption. Here is such a story, so profitable to all hearers that he who repeats it the most often does best, and he who speaks the least hath most reason to accuse himself for sinful silence.
By Holy Wonder, Admiration, and Adoration
Let me suggest to you that holy wonder at what God has done should be very natural to you. That God should consider his fallen creature, man, and instead of sweeping him away with the besom of destruction, should devise a wonderful scheme for his redemption, and that he should himself undertake to be man’s Redeemer, and to pay his ransom price, is, indeed, marvellous! Probably it is most marvellous to you in its relation to yourself, that you should be redeemed by blood; that God should forsake the thrones and royalties above to suffer ignominiously below for you.
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The Inevitability of the Resurrection
Written by M. R. Conrad |
Saturday, April 6, 2024
Because Jesus rose, those who believe on Him will also rise. Believers today experience the hope of Job and the joy of David because of the promise of God repeated throughout both the Old and New Testaments. Jesus Himself guaranteed: “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live” (John 11:25). The believer’s future resurrection is inevitable.Jesus’ tomb was empty. But why? How? Who? So many questions filled the mind of Cleopas and his friend as they slowly walked the seven miles from Jerusalem to Emmaus. In the aftermath of their Savior’s crucifixion, they could not fathom the inevitability of the resurrection.
Encounter with a Stranger
Just that morning, a normally reliable group women—dedicated followers of Jesus—had reported seeing a vision of angels at the empty tomb (Luke 24:23). They said that the angels asked them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen! Remember how He spoke to you when He was still in Galilee, saying, ‘The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.’” (Luke 24:5–7).
Neither Cleopas nor his friend knew what to make of the women’s report until they met a stranger on the road to Emmaus. That stranger—Jesus Himself—gently chided them for their unbelief: “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?” (Luke 24:25–26). Jesus answered their questions by taking them through the Old Testament Scriptures. Then, He revealed that He was their risen Savior.
Revelation in the Upper Room
Later that evening, after Cleopas and his friend had raced back to Jerusalem, Jesus appeared in the upper room where His followers had gathered. Once again, Jesus emphasized what He had already told them and what the Old Testament had previously revealed: “These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me” (Luke 24:44–45).
The Necessity of the Resurrection
Then Jesus spoke these amazing words: “Thus it is written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead” (Luke 24:46–48). Not only did Jesus say He would rise from the dead, but He also echoed the unbreakable words of the Old Testament Scriptures. “Thus it is written.” and so, He must rise. “It was necessary for the Christ . . . to rise,” and so, His resurrection was inevitable.
But what Old Testament passages did Jesus quote foretelling His resurrection? Luke 24 does not reveal those details, but here are four passages Jesus may have referenced as He convinced His disciples of the inevitability of the resurrection.
~2000 B.C.: Job’s Hope
In arguably the first book of the Bible ever written, the prophet Job finds hope in a future resurrection. He writes, “I know that my Redeemer lives, And He shall stand at last on the earth; And after my skin is destroyed, this I know, That in my flesh I shall see God” (Job 19:25–26). The foundation for Job’s hope of resurrection lies in his Redeemer’s resurrection.
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