Is It a Sin to Back Out of a Commitment?
00:00:00.000 | Is it a sin to back out of a commitment?
00:00:07.360 | Too often we write off a question like this for being too trivial for discussion.
00:00:11.840 | It's not.
00:00:13.220 | It's not because the topic is addressed in Scripture.
00:00:15.880 | Leading to an email from one female listener to the podcast, Morgan, a college student.
00:00:20.440 | "Hello Pastor John, I'm grateful to God for your ministry and have been blessed in many
00:00:24.000 | ways by this podcast.
00:00:25.800 | I'm writing to you because there's a wedding soon for a friend.
00:00:28.800 | I previously RSVP'd to say I would be there.
00:00:32.280 | Now I don't think I can attend after being told about a school obligation I didn't know
00:00:36.320 | about until recently.
00:00:38.120 | The RSVP was formal and has caused me internal conflict about a broader ethical question.
00:00:44.280 | James says, 'Let your yes be yes and your no be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation.'
00:00:50.880 | That's James 5.12.
00:00:52.880 | And Jesus said, 'Don't make an oath, simply say yes or no and stick with it.'
00:00:58.640 | As in Matthew 5.34-37.
00:01:01.920 | This is for me, part of a bigger question I have about backing out of commitments.
00:01:06.880 | Is it sinful to do so?
00:01:09.040 | And in this case, since I already RSVP'd, should I honor my first commitment to the
00:01:13.720 | wedding at the expense of my college course?
00:01:16.400 | Pastor John, how inflexible are our commitments?"
00:01:21.120 | I am deeply thankful that Morgan has a sensitive conscience.
00:01:27.120 | A sensitive conscience specifically about speaking the truth and keeping her word.
00:01:34.040 | She won't regret this.
00:01:36.320 | This is biblical.
00:01:37.560 | This is the way it should be.
00:01:39.380 | We are not supposed to lie to each other or mislead each other or deceive each other or
00:01:45.720 | prove to be unreliable for each other.
00:01:49.720 | Christians are people of truth.
00:01:51.660 | We love the truth.
00:01:52.920 | We want to be trusted as people of the truth because our God is a God of truth.
00:01:59.080 | He keeps his promises and so Morgan's concern is really, really good.
00:02:04.560 | So what I would like to do is suggest that whether she should back out of this commitment
00:02:10.640 | or commitments in general depends on at least three factors.
00:02:15.960 | One, how firm or perhaps better how qualified or unqualified was the commitment, implicit
00:02:25.520 | or explicit?
00:02:26.520 | In other words, the qualifiedness or the unqualifiedness of it might have been explicit or implicit.
00:02:33.400 | So those are the kind of questions to ask.
00:02:34.920 | For example, when people ask me if I'm coming to something, I often say I plan to and I
00:02:41.600 | intend for them to hear a qualified intention to come.
00:02:47.720 | I really am aiming to come, but I recognize that circumstances that come up might make
00:02:54.480 | it impossible or unwise to go.
00:02:58.760 | So the question I'm raising is, is the nature of this commitment such that it communicated
00:03:07.980 | an unqualified pledge, promise, vow to be there, or does it communicate only a hearty,
00:03:18.240 | honest intention to be there, barring other relatively important things?
00:03:25.480 | Now I want to take seriously Morgan's desire to get in line with Jesus and James' words
00:03:33.280 | about letting your yes be yes and your no be no without having to back up everything
00:03:40.840 | with an oath.
00:03:42.200 | When Jesus said, "Let what you say be simply yes or no.
00:03:47.120 | Anything more than this comes from evil," he meant something like this.
00:03:51.320 | Don't be so unreliable or fickle that you have to use an oath for people to count on
00:03:59.400 | what you say.
00:04:01.080 | Let your yes be yes and your no be no.
00:04:04.440 | Let it mean something.
00:04:07.000 | Now what I'm suggesting in this first factor is that Morgan's integrity and reliability
00:04:14.300 | and honesty need not be called into question for backing out if there was a mutual understanding
00:04:24.960 | that the context of a given commitment didn't have the standing of a pledge or an oath,
00:04:32.920 | but a good faith intention which might be interrupted.
00:04:38.240 | Now which leads to the second factor she should take into consideration.
00:04:43.440 | Is the new competing engagement of such a kind that keeping it and backing out of the
00:04:50.800 | first one would be seen as more loving or more honorable?
00:04:56.440 | So the point here is that we can all imagine new competing minor engagements.
00:05:04.560 | Say like she really wants to watch her favorite TV program and so she's not going to go.
00:05:10.520 | Or we can imagine major engagements like my father passed away and his funeral is on the
00:05:16.560 | same day as the wedding and all kinds of differences in between that have a bearing on whether
00:05:23.380 | our decision to go or not go is perceived as honorable and loving.
00:05:29.120 | When the Good Samaritan interrupted his travel plans to help the man on the side of the road
00:05:35.800 | in Luke 10, he may well have missed some important appointments.
00:05:41.160 | I would say this happens fairly regularly in the pastoral ministry and elsewhere.
00:05:47.720 | A pastor makes an appointment for 4 p.m. at the office.
00:05:51.840 | The person has planned on it.
00:05:53.440 | It's been on the books for four weeks.
00:05:56.240 | And the pastor gets a call at 3.30 about an attempted suicide in his church.
00:06:02.600 | Would he please hurry and come?
00:06:05.760 | We see an illustration of this kind of thing in 2 Corinthians 1.15.
00:06:10.480 | Paul had evidently communicated to the church in Corinth that he was coming and then he
00:06:17.440 | had to change his plans.
00:06:19.200 | We're not told why.
00:06:20.760 | This got him into big trouble, being accused of fickle and duplicitousness.
00:06:25.760 | And here's what he says.
00:06:27.800 | This is 2 Corinthians 1.15 to 24.
00:06:31.840 | Was I vacillating when I wanted to do this?
00:06:36.640 | Do I make my plans according to the flesh, ready to say yes, yes, and no, no at the same
00:06:43.040 | time?
00:06:44.040 | Isn't that interesting that he would even use the same issue?
00:06:47.200 | Amazing.
00:06:48.200 | Verse 18, "As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been yes and no."
00:06:55.520 | Verse 23, "But I call God to witness against me.
00:06:59.440 | It was to spare you that I refrained from coming again to Corinth.
00:07:06.760 | Not that we lorded over your faith, but we work with you for your joy, for you stand
00:07:10.360 | firm in your faith."
00:07:11.360 | So Paul's defense for not following through on his initial plan was that he was motivated
00:07:20.560 | not by fear or selfishness or anything self-aggrandizing, but by love.
00:07:27.040 | It was to spare you that I refrained from coming again.
00:07:32.400 | So I think a crucial question is, is the new competing engagement of such a nature that
00:07:40.120 | backing out on the first one will be seen as more loving, more honorable, and for that
00:07:49.640 | reason will not be such a serious damage to our reputation as truth-loving, promise-keeping,
00:07:58.240 | reliable people?
00:07:59.240 | Now here's the last factor I think Morgan should take into consideration.
00:08:05.800 | Is there a gracious way to honestly explain the situation, express support for the event
00:08:12.840 | that you committed to go to, and then ask for release from the commitment?
00:08:18.600 | I don't think there are very many commitments that we make.
00:08:22.320 | Of course, marriage vows would be a huge exception to this, but I don't think there are very
00:08:27.160 | many commitments that we make in which it wouldn't be fitting to honor the person we
00:08:34.360 | made the commitment to by explaining a new situation that has come up and asking kindly,
00:08:41.440 | humbly, if they would release us for that commitment.
00:08:45.640 | I think that would be my first approach in Morgan's case.
00:08:51.920 | Call them up, explain the situation, offer sincere support for what you're missing, and
00:08:59.160 | ask for a discharge, so to speak.
00:09:01.940 | My guess is that most people would feel very honored that you would go to the trouble to
00:09:07.320 | do that.
00:09:09.000 | But let me end by saying again how encouraging it is to me to see Morgan's vigilance over
00:09:17.980 | her word and her desire to be a person whose yes is yes and whose no is no.
00:09:24.840 | That is the way it should be.
00:09:26.880 | Thank you, Pastor John, for the clarification here, even from Paul's own ministry.
00:09:31.000 | That was very interesting.
00:09:32.000 | Thank you for that.
00:09:33.000 | And thank you for listening.
00:09:34.120 | If you haven't done so, you can get the latest episodes by subscribing to Ask Pastor John
00:09:38.200 | in your favorite podcast app or by subscribing to DG's YouTube channel.
00:09:42.640 | To find other episodes in our archive or to submit a question to us like Morgan did, go
00:09:46.460 | online to DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:09:48.560 | Well, how do I know if the Holy Spirit is in me?
00:09:54.760 | It's a really important question all of us will face at some point, and it's a question
00:09:58.640 | asked even by pastors too, as we'll see next time on Monday.
00:10:03.360 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:10:04.760 | Have a great weekend, and we'll see you then.
00:10:06.200 | Bye.
00:10:07.200 | Bye.
00:10:07.200 | Bye.
00:10:08.200 | Bye.
00:10:08.200 | Bye.
00:10:09.200 | Bye.
00:10:09.200 | Bye.
00:10:14.200 | [Code Red Defense]