by Jon Osborne

We are faced with ethical and moral dilemmas everyday, such as capital punishment, abortion, and sexual immorality. How are we to approach these issues? Who has the authority to say what is right or wrong? What kind of laws are we to follow? By what standard are we to judge immoral and unethical behavior? These are some questions that I will attempt to answer in this presentation. The reason why the decline of morals in our culture is because the church has not clearly defined what our morals are and what standard we are to follow. I will maintain that Biblical law has abiding validity and we are under obligation to submit to its authority in order to keep God's commands.

The law of God is a reflection of God's own unchanging character. God told His people in Malachi 3:6, "I the Lord do not change" God is reliable and His character is fixed; creation changes, but God does not. God is the very standard of permanence, and only God speaks a permanent word. For God, there is no external standard because He is the standard. Thus God determines the unchanging standard for what is good and evil, and because that standard is the revelation of an unchanging character, it is also permanent, universal, and perfectly just.

Man's rebellion against God in the Garden of Eden, had devastating effects on all his activities and relationships. David Chilton writes, "The essence of the sin in the Garden -- and ever since -- was man's attempt to be his own god, to set up his own standard in place of God's command." Because of the fall, we need specific guidance, pointing us to live a righteous life.

Old Testament law is fully expressed in the first five books of the Bible, commonly called the Pentateuch, and especially in the Decalogue. God's law is the foundation of wisdom and we are to submit to Him and His law. The book of Proverbs consists of practical applications of biblical law to precise situations in life. In fact, the longest chapter in the Bible, Psalm 119, discusses the relationship between God and man, and its focus is the law of God.

Old Testament law points to the coming of Christ, but the New Testament in no way abrogates the moral standards and general principles of the Old Testament law. In fact, we are to obey all the laws of the Old Testament unless the New Testament instructs us otherwise. Christ is the fulfillment of the ceremonial laws; however the moral law is still binding. Christ says in Matthew 5: 17-18 says, "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished." The New Testament presupposes and reinforces the binding of biblical law as the one and only absolute, unchanging, and universal standard of right and wrong.

There are three uses of the law. First of all, the law restrains outward evil in society. This is the law the civil magistrates should enforce. But whose law should be enforced in society? Consensus of opinion? No, the only moral law that is perfectly just is the moral law of the Bible; it is continually binding. The second use of the law is: it drives sinners to trust in Christ alone. By looking at the law of God, man sees how sinful he is. Romans 7:7 says, "What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! I would not have known what sin was except through the law." The apostle Paul is saying that without God's law, we don't even know what sin is, because sin is transgressing the law of God (or lawlessness; I John 3:4). If we don't know what sin is, we can't repent. Since man cannot perfectly keep the law, it urges God's people to trust in Jesus Christ, who did keep the law perfectly. The third use of the law is this: it shows the Christian the standard he should strive for in his obedience. We are not sanctified by the law, but it guides us in our behavior (John 14: 21).

In conclusion, you can choose between God's law or man's law. If we choose to neglect the standards of morality that God has revealed to us in His Word, then we assume ourselves to be autonomous and authoritative. Greg Bahnsen says, "When revealed theology is reduced to an autonomous study of man, when biblical authority is replaced by an unstable human wisdom, when behavior is directed by the descriptions of social science instead of the prescriptions of God's Word, then we have returned to the situation prevailing at the time of the book of Judges: every man did what was right in his own eyes." Many people like to take the authority out of Scripture and reduce morality to "consensus of opinion" or "human experience." This claim is not at all philosophically acceptable, because relativism leads to chaos. When laws become conventional, then they are no longer absolute, unchanging, and universal; and most importantly, do not reflect the character of God. A wise man once said "the source of laws of a society shows the god of that society." Who will you serve? We need to evangelize and bring all governing authorities under the authority of God's Word so that someday "the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations" (Isaiah 61:11).