Is it a sin to back out of a commitment? Too often we write off a question like this for being too trivial for discussion. It's not. It's not because the topic is addressed in Scripture. Leading to an email from one female listener to the podcast, Morgan, a college student.

"Hello Pastor John, I'm grateful to God for your ministry and have been blessed in many ways by this podcast. I'm writing to you because there's a wedding soon for a friend. I previously RSVP'd to say I would be there. Now I don't think I can attend after being told about a school obligation I didn't know about until recently.

The RSVP was formal and has caused me internal conflict about a broader ethical question. James says, 'Let your yes be yes and your no be no, so that you may not fall under condemnation.' That's James 5.12. And Jesus said, 'Don't make an oath, simply say yes or no and stick with it.' As in Matthew 5.34-37.

This is for me, part of a bigger question I have about backing out of commitments. Is it sinful to do so? And in this case, since I already RSVP'd, should I honor my first commitment to the wedding at the expense of my college course? Pastor John, how inflexible are our commitments?" I am deeply thankful that Morgan has a sensitive conscience.

A sensitive conscience specifically about speaking the truth and keeping her word. She won't regret this. This is biblical. This is the way it should be. We are not supposed to lie to each other or mislead each other or deceive each other or prove to be unreliable for each other.

Christians are people of truth. We love the truth. We want to be trusted as people of the truth because our God is a God of truth. He keeps his promises and so Morgan's concern is really, really good. So what I would like to do is suggest that whether she should back out of this commitment or commitments in general depends on at least three factors.

One, how firm or perhaps better how qualified or unqualified was the commitment, implicit or explicit? In other words, the qualifiedness or the unqualifiedness of it might have been explicit or implicit. So those are the kind of questions to ask. For example, when people ask me if I'm coming to something, I often say I plan to and I intend for them to hear a qualified intention to come.

I really am aiming to come, but I recognize that circumstances that come up might make it impossible or unwise to go. So the question I'm raising is, is the nature of this commitment such that it communicated an unqualified pledge, promise, vow to be there, or does it communicate only a hearty, honest intention to be there, barring other relatively important things?

Now I want to take seriously Morgan's desire to get in line with Jesus and James' words about letting your yes be yes and your no be no without having to back up everything with an oath. When Jesus said, "Let what you say be simply yes or no. Anything more than this comes from evil," he meant something like this.

Don't be so unreliable or fickle that you have to use an oath for people to count on what you say. Let your yes be yes and your no be no. Let it mean something. Now what I'm suggesting in this first factor is that Morgan's integrity and reliability and honesty need not be called into question for backing out if there was a mutual understanding that the context of a given commitment didn't have the standing of a pledge or an oath, but a good faith intention which might be interrupted.

Now which leads to the second factor she should take into consideration. Is the new competing engagement of such a kind that keeping it and backing out of the first one would be seen as more loving or more honorable? So the point here is that we can all imagine new competing minor engagements.

Say like she really wants to watch her favorite TV program and so she's not going to go. Or we can imagine major engagements like my father passed away and his funeral is on the same day as the wedding and all kinds of differences in between that have a bearing on whether our decision to go or not go is perceived as honorable and loving.

When the Good Samaritan interrupted his travel plans to help the man on the side of the road in Luke 10, he may well have missed some important appointments. I would say this happens fairly regularly in the pastoral ministry and elsewhere. A pastor makes an appointment for 4 p.m. at the office.

The person has planned on it. It's been on the books for four weeks. And the pastor gets a call at 3.30 about an attempted suicide in his church. Would he please hurry and come? We see an illustration of this kind of thing in 2 Corinthians 1.15. Paul had evidently communicated to the church in Corinth that he was coming and then he had to change his plans.

We're not told why. This got him into big trouble, being accused of fickle and duplicitousness. And here's what he says. This is 2 Corinthians 1.15 to 24. Was I vacillating when I wanted to do this? Do I make my plans according to the flesh, ready to say yes, yes, and no, no at the same time?

Isn't that interesting that he would even use the same issue? Amazing. Verse 18, "As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been yes and no." Verse 23, "But I call God to witness against me. It was to spare you that I refrained from coming again to Corinth.

Not that we lorded over your faith, but we work with you for your joy, for you stand firm in your faith." So Paul's defense for not following through on his initial plan was that he was motivated not by fear or selfishness or anything self-aggrandizing, but by love. It was to spare you that I refrained from coming again.

So I think a crucial question is, is the new competing engagement of such a nature that backing out on the first one will be seen as more loving, more honorable, and for that reason will not be such a serious damage to our reputation as truth-loving, promise-keeping, reliable people? Now here's the last factor I think Morgan should take into consideration.

Is there a gracious way to honestly explain the situation, express support for the event that you committed to go to, and then ask for release from the commitment? I don't think there are very many commitments that we make. Of course, marriage vows would be a huge exception to this, but I don't think there are very many commitments that we make in which it wouldn't be fitting to honor the person we made the commitment to by explaining a new situation that has come up and asking kindly, humbly, if they would release us for that commitment.

I think that would be my first approach in Morgan's case. Call them up, explain the situation, offer sincere support for what you're missing, and ask for a discharge, so to speak. My guess is that most people would feel very honored that you would go to the trouble to do that.

But let me end by saying again how encouraging it is to me to see Morgan's vigilance over her word and her desire to be a person whose yes is yes and whose no is no. That is the way it should be. Thank you, Pastor John, for the clarification here, even from Paul's own ministry.

That was very interesting. Thank you for that. And thank you for listening. If you haven't done so, you can get the latest episodes by subscribing to Ask Pastor John in your favorite podcast app or by subscribing to DG's YouTube channel. To find other episodes in our archive or to submit a question to us like Morgan did, go online to DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

Well, how do I know if the Holy Spirit is in me? It's a really important question all of us will face at some point, and it's a question asked even by pastors too, as we'll see next time on Monday. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Have a great weekend, and we'll see you then.

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