1 John: In Reply to Guy

FearLongtime reader Guy has this habit of asking questions that force me to dig deeper. He did it again. Regarding my views on Rom 13:8-10, Guy wrote,

(1) Various laws being “summed up” by “love your neighbor” means that the individual laws are expositional of “love your neighbor,” that is, loving your neighbor means (at least) behaving in the ways specified by the various laws.  Thus, to break any of the specific laws amounts to a failure to love one’s neighbor.

(2) Various laws being “summed up” by “love your neighbor” means that “love your neighbor” can at times require behavior contrary to the specific laws, but the specific laws are mere generalities that often cache out what loving your neighbor means but not always.  Thus whether a person is or isn’t keeping the more specific laws is simply unimportant in comparison with whether or not they are conforming to the more primary command to “love your neighbor.” (This is closer to Fletcher’s position [in Situation Ethics].)

Here you seem to be saying something like (1).  i think people get itchy because they take you to be saying something like (2).

Guy,

I have to start with something of a rant. Beginning of rant:

For many decades, many in the Churches of Christ have routinely argued for their case by arguing against certain ideas: the social gospel, liberalism, premillenialism, Pentecostalism, Situation Ethics, ecumenism, Ketcherside-ism, Shelly-ism, secular humanism, the emerging church, Postmodernism, the new hermeneutic, etc. I think of these as “bogeyman teachings.” Disfavored teachings were refuted by showing their similarity to the supposedly known evil of one of the bogeyman teaching. (And we’ve often demonstrated incredible ignorance of what is really taught by the various -isms.)

Now, of course, there’s quite a bit of error in that list (and it’s not all error), but not all teaching by a social gospel advocate is error — and nothing is error solely because it’s taught by a secular humanist.

You see, the danger of this kind of thought is that you build your theology on opposition to what someone has told you is error rather than the truth of the scriptures. I care not a whit if what I teach is like or unlike Situation Ethics. I only care whether it’s built firmly on the scriptures.

I’ve not read the book and will not be reading the book. I think the book would be entirely forgotten by society but for the constant preaching against the book found in Church of Christ pulpits. I imagine our preachers are responsible for 50% of its sales!

End of rant.

Sorry for the rant.

I’m not sure that I buy either your (1) or your (2). Rather, my thinking is better shown by example. Jesus says,

(Mat 5:33-37 ESV)  33 “Again you have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’  34 But I say to you, Do not take an oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God,  35 or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King.  36 And do not take an oath by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black.  37 Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.”

Now, this seems a peculiar corollary to draw from “love your neighbor.” It’s certainly true that love compels us to tell the truth and, more to the point, keep our promises. But it’s not obvious why love would mean we shouldn’t take an oath under any circumstance whatsoever.

Indeed, D. A. Carson (a favorite of mine and a very conservative commentator) points out in the Expositor’s Bible Commentary that God swears! Indeed, God’s oath Ps 95:11 is a major theme of Hebrews. And he says that Paul swore — Rom 1:9; 2 Cor 1:23; 1 Thess 2:5, 10. And Jesus swore in Matt 26:63-64.

Does that mean the Bible contradicts itself? No, it means we’re not reading Jesus correctly. In fact, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus often says things that are exaggerated, for example —

(Mat 5:29-30 ESV) 29 If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.  30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.

Jesus uses not only irony but hyperbole. These figures of speech would be very poor choices for a legislator, but excellent for a master teacher.

We would be very upset if someone took this passage literally (especially if someone insisted that we do so!), but we readily apply other hyperbolic passages with great literalness (assuming Jesus to be a legislator) to equally bad results. Our decision making is very subjective, but quite unconscious to ourselves. And so we tend to mimic what our parents and Sunday school teachers or early Bible instructors told us or what our culture tells us, thinking we’re reading very objectively.

Take a few minutes to re-read the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is a master of hyperbole. Public prayer is not forbidden, Matthew  6:6 notwithstanding. (It helps to imagine Jesus preaching with a smile and an occasional wink.) It’s really okay to pray somewhere other than our own room, and we let can let our right hand know what our left hand is doing — and yet we consider any oath a deadly sin.

There are principles the Bible gives us for sorting these things out, and one of them is to know who it is that is teaching us and what his purposes are. Another is to remember Jesus’ attitudes toward Pharisaism and Paul’s attitude toward seeking justification by obedience to law. Jesus doesn’t make up laws just to burden us!

One key is understanding what it means to love your neighbor. And if you are truly someone who loves your neighbor, you’ll never need to take an oath because it won’t be needed to be believed — unless you’re talking to someone who doesn’t know you. Then you might have to swear to be believed. Or a judge might require you to take an oath. (And this explains Paul’s and Jesus’ swearing.)

Love, therefore, is (among many other things) a way to dig more deeply into the text and better understand what we’re being told and how to truly obey.

Of course, we must obey. But we obey better if we better understand what we’re being taught.

About Jay F Guin

My name is Jay Guin, and I’m a retired elder. I wrote The Holy Spirit and Revolutionary Grace about 18 years ago. I’ve spoken at the Pepperdine, Lipscomb, ACU, Harding, and Tulsa lectureships and at ElderLink. My wife’s name is Denise, and I have four sons, Chris, Jonathan, Tyler, and Philip. I have two grandchildren. And I practice law.
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7 Responses to 1 John: In Reply to Guy

  1. guy says:

    Jay,

    i have almost no idea what you're advocating.

    i think the Sermon on the Mount passage is a terrible example. The SOM is highly contextualized–Jesus is clearly participating in a social dialectic with which His audience was quite familiar and we just probably aren't. Based on even a slightly-more-than-cursory reading of Matthew, i think it's highly questionable *whether* Jesus intended to say we shouldn't take an oath "under any circumstances whatsoever." (Matthew gives us more to the debate in chapter 23, and Jesus Himself speaks under oath.)

    But notice, this is a matter of trying to discover particularly what is being commanded. It is not about what it means for specific commands to be subsumed under "love your neighbor." In other words, someone could agree with you that Jesus did not give a condemnation of public prayer, and yet still hold either the (1) or (2) i described.

    i still don't see a clear "(3)" being defined here.

    –guy

  2. Anonymous says:

    How do we know, in any given situation, what action would most closely model loving as Jesus loved?

    The fact is we don't.

    Sometimes the most loving act may be more obvious that at other times.

    The difficulty of knowing how to love as Jesus loved, drives some to desire "black and white" guidelines, so they don't have to struggle with the judgement. While others are more willing to struggle with finding the most loving course of action.

    And I should note here that the most loving course of actions does not always mean doing what someone wants you to do. It may mean doing exactly the opposite — it will vary depending upon circumstances.

    "Loving the way Jesus loved" demands a situational analysis and a judgement of what the best course of action or counsel is.

    Loving as Jesus loved (John 13 and John 15) is the only thing Jesus described as a command. And while it is very clear and simple, it is impossible to knowingly follow every time.

    I know of times when I was personally very confident I was doing the right thing for someone — only to find out later, I was disastrously wrong.

    Did I sin by doing the wrong thing? My heart was right, but my action was wrong. [sounds a little like Paul in Romans 7].

    Yes, Guy, everything God wants of us flows from the single command of loving the way Jesus loved — a clear, but not black and white command.

  3. Anonymous says:

    How do we know, in any given situation, what action would most closely model loving as Jesus loved?

    The fact is we don’t.

    Sometimes the most loving act may be more obvious that at other times.

    The difficulty of knowing how to love as Jesus loved, drives some to desire “black and white” guidelines, so they don’t have to struggle with the judgement. While others are more willing to struggle with finding the most loving course of action.

    And I should note here that the most loving course of actions does not always mean doing what someone wants you to do. It may mean doing exactly the opposite — it will vary depending upon circumstances.

    “Loving the way Jesus loved” demands a situational analysis and a judgement of what the best course of action or counsel is.

    Loving as Jesus loved (John 13 and John 15) is the only thing Jesus described as a command. And while it is very clear and simple, it is impossible to knowingly follow every time.

    I know of times when I was personally very confident I was doing the right thing for someone — only to find out later, I was disastrously wrong.

    Did I sin by doing the wrong thing? My heart was right, but my action was wrong. [sounds a little like Paul in Romans 7].

    Yes, Guy, everything God wants of us flows from the single command of loving the way Jesus loved — a clear, but not black and white command.

  4. Price says:

    Loving like Jesus loved might just depend on Him living in you…Maybe he'll prod you in the right direction…Maybe love will answer a question that there is no specific rule for… The rules may provide an EXAMPLE of what is being taught, but isn't the PRINCIPLE or the TRUTH behind the example the most important thing ?? I don't find that hard to grasp. Thanks Jay.

  5. guy says:

    Jay,

    How bout a simplifying revision:

    (1*) One cannot break a specific command without also breaking the command under which it is subsumed.

    (2*) One can break a specific command without necessarily breaking the command under which it is subsumed.

    Defined that way, i don't see how there's a possible 3rd position. Your understanding of the relationship between "love your neighbor" and the rest of the commands will have to fall under either (1*) or (2*)

    i'm guessing you're advocating (2*).

    –guy

  6. Jay Guin says:

    Guy,

    We're really not communicating. I'm not talking about breaking any commands. I'm talking about understanding what the commands really mean so they can be obeyed.

    Therefore, Jesus' teaching on oaths is not a new rule, separate rule, etc. but simply "love your neighbor" as applied in the context of oath taking.

    It's just one rule.

  7. guy says:

    Then i guess i don't know what your post is after. But my original (1) and (2) were about breaking commands and how that relates to the greatest commands under which they are subsumed. That was my original point.

    –guy

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