May we never make excuses for our actions based upon good motives and pure intentions. May we examine the morality of our actions, or lack thereof, and may we sincerely care about the impact our behaviors have on others. And may we never discount and disregard another’s perceptions because we are right in our own eyes. Instead, let us humble ourselves before the holy law of the Lord, and let us never say “there is no sin in us” (1 John 1:8,10).The evangelical world was shaken this week. A massive independent investigation into abuse was released about the largest evangelical denomination in the West. Our Southern Baptist brothers and sisters in Christ are reeling from the revelations, and those of us on the outside are left standing by; waiting, praying.
But one of the rejoinders we will hear, and have already begun to hear, in the face of egregious sin is downplaying one’s culpability. There are many ways the accused try and lessen the impact of what has taken place. And if we’re willing to be self-reflective, we make the same kind of arguments all the time. That is, we try and focus on aspects surrounding our sin instead of the sin itself. We speak of our motives or our intentions, and we attempt to discard the impact our actions have on others.
The Scriptures do not allow us to be so dismissive. Sin is sin. Its heinousness is only made more severe by our underlying motivations or intentions—not less so because “we meant well” or some other such reasons offered.
No, biblically speaking, we may analyze every action on the basis of at least 5 ethical considerations. They are: motive, intention, the action itself, the impact it has on others, and people’s perception of the given action.
1. Motive
We always do what we want to do, and we have a motivation behind why we do what we do. It can be a sinful motive or a selfless/holy motive. A sinful action is made more sinful by sinful motives. Take for instance the internal motive of: “I lied to protect my own neck, and I don’t care about the harm it may cause.” Very seldom would we admit something so baldly, and yet, we can easily see how such sinful motives (self-preservation) make the sin itself (lying) more odious. Motivation is only ever an aggravator of sin, never a mitigator, but we often attempt to use it as the latter. “My motives were pure, therefore my actions must be pure, too”—sadly, this is not so. Pure motives cannot rehabilitate violations of God’s law.
2. Intention
We can be motivated by sin while intending a good outcome. I can bring my wife flowers (a good act), aimed at genuinely blessing her (a good intention toward her) but with the self-serving purpose of getting her off of my back for something I refuse to repent of (wicked motive)—or any combination thereof. I can have a good motive to do a sinful act because I believe the ends justify the means. For example, I can tell a “little white lie” to prevent someone’s harm when asked “does this outfit look good?” And yet we can never use sinful means to accomplish good ends. In other words, good intentions do not baptize bad behavior.
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Written by Ben C. Dunson |
Monday, December 4, 2023
Laws banning abortion would make it crystal-clear to everyone that abortion is wrong. It would certainly be the case that most people would avoid secret abortions simply out of fear of punishment, but the behavioral impact of laws is more significant than that. They send unmistakable signs to everyone under their jurisdiction that certain things must not be done. We have lived in a nation where our laws themselves have been teaching us the exact opposite of the truth for 50 years. 

In a recent lecture I gave on what Christians can do to fight against the evil we see in our nation I brought up the point (by no means original to me) that a nation’s laws have a vital role in shaping the morality of the people of that nation.
This is a point famously made by Aristotle and repeated and refined by many throughout Christian history. Many Christians will argue that a nation’s morality shapes its laws (which is true), but it is absolutely essential that we understand that it works the other way as well. I think a strong argument can be made that the function of laws in shaping morality is even more important than the fact that culture shapes laws. Laws are bright red lines indicating exactly what should and should not be done. They remove ambiguity about what is required of a citizen. Admittedly, in a nation with corrupt laws, what is clearly required is often the opposite of what is good. But it can at least be said that laws are much more definite in their transformation of behavior than culture.
Many examples could be provided for how this could work in a just political order. No one disputes the fact that laws banning certain drugs, alcohol (during prohibition), bump stocks on guns, and speeding significantly lower the instances of such things. An example I used was abortion. I insisted that, if abortion were outlawed, we would see a radical diminishment in the number of abortions, which is exactly what we should desire. In fact, if proponents of abortion are correct we’d only see abortions happening among those who were willing to do so clandestinely in back alleys with coat hangers. Presumably, contrary to such proponents, that number would be vanishingly small.
The claim that many (even many pro-life advocates) make is that women who get abortions do not know that they are killing an innocent life. It is incontrovertible that this claim is false in many instances. I suspect it is false in most instances, but for the sake of argument, one could assume that there are some women (and men pressuring them) who do not in fact clearly understand that what they are doing is wrong.
Clear laws against abortion in the states, and hopefully at the national level, would serve to teach anyone contemplating an abortion that to do so is morally wrong. That is what all laws do, and that is what they should do, assuming of course that the laws are just.
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Natural law, then, remains as indispensable for Christians today as it was for the many centuries in which it held a central role in Christian ethics. As Protestants, however, we cannot retrieve natural law without allowing Scripture to remain the final authoritative norm of our teaching. 

How should we then live? So Francis Schaeffer famously asked in his 1973 book and subsequent video series. The question has certainly had renewed urgency over the past two years, as Christians around the world have confronted the for-us-unprecedented (although not so much for our ancestors) moral and political challenges of navigating a global pandemic, and accompanying public health measures. How should we love our neighbors? By mask-wearing and vaccinating? By moving worship services and schools online or carrying on as normal? And by what standard should we evaluate the many answers proffered by TV personalities and public authorities?
For many Christians, the answer is quick and easy: “By Scripture, of course.” But a few minutes’ reflection will be enough to leave us scratching our heads in puzzlement. For Scripture, clearly, has very little to say on the subject of public health emergencies, and only the most general principles about how we should conduct ourselves in the face of such complex moral and legal demands. The same, we may soon realize, goes for hundreds of moral and political—and indeed ecclesiastical—decisions that we are called upon to make in the course of carrying out our vocations. If we assume that Scripture has all the answers, we are quickly bound to be disappointed. And if we say, sensibly enough, that we need to “apply Scriptural principles” to particular cases, this simply raises the question of how we identify and apply such principles? How do we engage in moral reasoning?
The answer, for generation after generation of Christian theologians and ethicists, was “natural law.” But the idea of natural law fell on hard times among twentieth-century Protestants, under pressure from Barth, fundamentalism, and modernism. It’s high time we recover it if we’re to navigate the profound moral challenges of our day with integrity.
From one standpoint, the idea that there is such a thing as natural law should be pretty uncontroversial. Everything in nature was created by God, who determined what it was and how it was meant to act. Just as a human inventor can tell you how a tool is meant to work, how to keep it in good working order, and how it’s liable to break if you don’t, so God, being a God of order rather than chaos, impressed upon all of his creatures the way they were meant to work. This is what we still often call “the law of nature” or “the laws of nature.” But man too is a creature, and as such is also subject to the law of his nature, which determines how we are meant to act and how we shouldn’t, what kinds of behaviors will achieve good results and which ones will end in brokenness. At the intersection of human nature and the natures of the rest of the world, we find natural law, the moral principles that distinguish wise and successful living from foolish and disastrous actions: sow and reap in preparation for winter, eat and drink in moderation, marry and remain faithful, honor the aged.
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