Is Any Part of Life Morally Neutral?

00:00:00.000 | (music)

00:00:04.000 | Well, are there morally neutral areas of life?

00:00:08.000 | That's the first question on the table as we begin this new week together.

00:00:12.000 | Welcome back to the podcast, and thank you for making us part of your weekly routine.

00:00:16.000 | We appreciate it. The question is from Mary Beth,

00:00:20.000 | who lives in Arkansas. She writes us this. "Hello, Pastor John,

00:00:24.000 | and thank you for the Ask Pastor John podcast. A question has been troubling me for a

00:00:28.000 | while." It's this one. "I'm wondering if everything in life

00:00:32.000 | is either a good thing or a sin, or are there

00:00:36.000 | some okay things that are not sin but are not exactly

00:00:40.000 | good either? Sometimes I do things that don't seem beneficial.

00:00:44.000 | I can't tell if I need forgiveness for them. I usually

00:00:48.000 | ask for forgiveness anyways. I guess basically my question boils down to that.

00:00:52.000 | Pastor John, yes or no, are there morally neutral

00:00:56.000 | areas of life?" I can't give a yes

00:01:00.000 | or a no answer until I

00:01:04.000 | clarify some terms. So, what is sin?

00:01:08.000 | What is the moral good?

00:01:12.000 | What does morally neutral

00:01:16.000 | mean? This is one of those

00:01:20.000 | great illustrations, Tony, of how simply

00:01:24.000 | defining our terms virtually answers the question.

00:01:28.000 | It's a great lesson to learn. I recommend

00:01:32.000 | it to everybody. I find that most arguments

00:01:36.000 | people are having go round and round

00:01:40.000 | because the terms are undefined with any

00:01:44.000 | biblical precision. And the reason I say biblical

00:01:48.000 | precision is because if you don't have an authority

00:01:52.000 | that you can both agree on, then you

00:01:56.000 | probably won't even be able to define your terms

00:02:00.000 | in a way that you both can agree on and you'll just be stuck.

00:02:04.000 | And our culture right now is

00:02:08.000 | stuck because we don't share much

00:02:12.000 | common ground under our disputes. And a

00:02:16.000 | stuck culture is a dangerous thing because

00:02:20.000 | if there's no agreed on arbiter of

00:02:24.000 | truth claims, then what comes in to fill that void

00:02:28.000 | is usually raw power. If some common

00:02:32.000 | ground doesn't decide what's right,

00:02:36.000 | then might makes right. Or more to the point

00:02:40.000 | here, if a shared authority does not decide the definition of our terms,

00:02:44.000 | like the Bible, then the one with

00:02:48.000 | the most power will decide how words are going to be used.

00:02:52.000 | And that's how the Holocaust happened. That's how race-based

00:02:56.000 | slavery happened. That's how abortion happens. The powerful

00:03:00.000 | decide how the word "person" is going to be used

00:03:04.000 | and who fits in with it and who doesn't. And without an

00:03:08.000 | agreed on authority to arbitrate, then the powerful

00:03:12.000 | define the terms and suit their preference. Well,

00:03:16.000 | that's way more than Mary Beth asked for. In fact, she didn't ask for that

00:03:20.000 | at all. But now and then, I

00:03:24.000 | like to explain on this podcast why I make

00:03:28.000 | such a big deal out of defining our terms. So there you heard it.

00:03:32.000 | So here's my effort to clarify the terms

00:03:36.000 | of Mary Beth's question. "Is everything

00:03:40.000 | in life," she says, "a good thing or sin?

00:03:44.000 | Are there morally neutral areas?" That's her question. So here's

00:03:48.000 | what is sin? There are at least two passages in Paul that

00:03:52.000 | I think get at the heart of what sin is. One is chapters 1-3

00:03:56.000 | of Romans. Romans 3.23 says that we've all sinned

00:04:00.000 | and then it adds this. We fall short of, or literally

00:04:04.000 | we lack, the glory of God. And I connect that

00:04:08.000 | statement with Romans 1.23 where humans exchange

00:04:12.000 | the glory of God

00:04:16.000 | for the glory of created things, including the human self, my

00:04:20.000 | glory. That's my favorite idol, right? So I think

00:04:24.000 | what Romans 3.23 means is that all

00:04:28.000 | human beings sin in that we prefer

00:04:32.000 | created glory over God's

00:04:36.000 | glory. We exchange God's glory

00:04:40.000 | for something we prefer, so we lack

00:04:44.000 | or fall short of the glory

00:04:48.000 | of God. So sin is first, this is my definition

00:04:52.000 | now drawn from Romans, sin is first

00:04:56.000 | the disposition of the human heart to prefer human

00:05:00.000 | glory, especially self-glory, over God's glory.

00:05:04.000 | And then secondarily, sins, plural,

00:05:08.000 | would be the attitudes and words and actions that stem

00:05:12.000 | from that disposition. That's my definition of

00:05:16.000 | sin from Romans 3 and 1.

00:05:20.000 | The other passage that defines the heart of sin is Romans 14.23

00:05:24.000 | where Paul is talking about eating meat

00:05:28.000 | and drinking wine, verse 21

00:05:32.000 | in chapter 14, and then he says this in verse 23,

00:05:36.000 | "Whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because

00:05:40.000 | the eating is not from faith,

00:05:44.000 | for whatever does not proceed from

00:05:48.000 | faith is sin." Wow.

00:05:52.000 | That's pretty sweeping. So Paul is willing to

00:05:56.000 | define sin as whatever is not from faith,

00:06:00.000 | which I think, when you analyze it carefully down to the bottom,

00:06:04.000 | is really the same as the definition

00:06:08.000 | in Romans 1 and 3.

00:06:12.000 | If the disposition of our heart is not to

00:06:16.000 | receive Christ—I'm thinking what faith is right now—

00:06:20.000 | is not to receive Christ, to own Christ

00:06:24.000 | as our supreme Savior and guide and treasure,

00:06:28.000 | then what comes from that heart is sin.

00:06:32.000 | That heart is the same as the heart that prefers

00:06:36.000 | created glory over God's glory. Now, with that

00:06:40.000 | definition of sin, the

00:06:44.000 | definition of what is morally good

00:06:48.000 | follows as the flip side of sin or

00:06:52.000 | evil. Moral good is the disposition of the heart to

00:06:56.000 | prefer God over all or to treasure God

00:07:00.000 | in Christ over all, so that the attitudes and

00:07:04.000 | words and actions that stem from that heart are good.

00:07:08.000 | Morally good. Now, there are

00:07:12.000 | two other ways to describe this moral good, because

00:07:16.000 | they result from acting in faith or a preference

00:07:20.000 | for the superior worth of God in Christ. One is

00:07:24.000 | to say that the moral good are those

00:07:28.000 | attitudes and words and actions which God has commanded—

00:07:32.000 | 1 John 5:2—and the other is

00:07:36.000 | to say that the moral good is attitudes and

00:07:40.000 | words and actions that aim to glorify God—1 Corinthians

00:07:44.000 | 10:31. So, we're actually on safest ground,

00:07:48.000 | I think, to say that what is morally good

00:07:52.000 | has all three of these traits. One, it comes from

00:07:56.000 | faith; two, it accords with God's commands; three, it

00:08:00.000 | aims to glorify God. That's morally good. That's the morally

00:08:04.000 | good. So, here's the implication about whether there are

00:08:08.000 | neutral areas of life, because that's what she's asking

00:08:12.000 | about. If we mean, are there actions

00:08:16.000 | considered without any reference to humans doing

00:08:20.000 | those actions, just actions in the abstract, the

00:08:24.000 | answer is yes. Yes. There are thousands of such

00:08:28.000 | morally neutral—in that sense, morally neutral—actions, like

00:08:32.000 | walking down the street, drinking a glass of water, putting

00:08:36.000 | on your shoes. It's not so much that they

00:08:40.000 | are morally neutral, though—I'm a little skittish about that phrase—it's

00:08:44.000 | not so much that they're morally neutral, but that they have no moral

00:08:48.000 | standing at all until a human

00:08:52.000 | being is doing them. As soon as someone

00:08:56.000 | does them, no matter how simple,

00:09:00.000 | no matter how supposedly neutral,

00:09:04.000 | they cease to be neutral. They become moral

00:09:08.000 | because, Paul said, "Whatever you do,

00:09:12.000 | do all—put on your shoes, walk down the street, do all

00:09:16.000 | to the glory of God." And either we do that or we

00:09:20.000 | don't. And that criterion makes them either sin or not sin.

00:09:24.000 | And in the same way, we could ask, "Did we do them from faith? Whatever's not

00:09:28.000 | from faith is sin. Did I put on my shoes from a disposition

00:09:32.000 | of faith? If not," Paul says, "it's sin." You can put

00:09:36.000 | on your shoes rebelliously. You really can. So I think what

00:09:40.000 | this means for Mary Beth's concern is this.

00:09:44.000 | If an action or attitude

00:09:48.000 | is not forbidden or commanded

00:09:52.000 | in the Bible, then the question for her

00:09:56.000 | and for all of us is, "Am I moved

00:10:00.000 | to do this action by faith

00:10:04.000 | and by a desire to glorify God?"

00:10:08.000 | If so, then she invests

00:10:12.000 | that seemingly neutral act with moral

00:10:16.000 | goodness. You do something from faith that's not forbidden

00:10:20.000 | in the Scriptures, it has moral goodness, no matter what it is.

00:10:24.000 | And if not, then no matter how

00:10:28.000 | neutral the act may seem, she makes it a sin

00:10:32.000 | because it's not done in reliance upon Christ

00:10:36.000 | or for his glory.

00:10:39.000 | Yeah, thank you, Pastor John. Romans 3.23 is fascinating, that

00:10:43.000 | sin is first the disposition of the human heart to prefer

00:10:47.000 | human glory, especially self-glory, over

00:10:51.000 | God's glory. That's a profound definition of sin

00:10:55.000 | as replaced or misplaced glory.

00:10:59.000 | And speaking of Romans 3.23 and the following verse,

00:11:03.000 | verse 24, next time we're going to look at them more closely as we consider, "How can

00:11:07.000 | I become an unshakable person in this world?"

00:11:11.000 | That's what we want. We want to become unshakable people.

00:11:15.000 | And that's what this text holds the key to. Until then, thanks for joining us today.

00:11:19.000 | Ask a question of your own, search our growing archive, or subscribe to the podcast

00:11:23.000 | all at AskPastorJohn.com. I'm your host,

00:11:27.000 | Tony Reinke. We'll see you back here on Wednesday to return to Romans 3 as we seek

00:11:31.000 | to become unshakable believers. We'll see you then.

00:11:35.000 | [no audio]

00:11:39.000 | [no audio]

00:11:43.000 | you

Is Any Part of Life Morally Neutral?

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