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Results from: Answered Bible Questions, Answers, Unanswered Bible Questions, Notes Ordered by Verse | ||||||
Results | Verse | Author | ID# | |||
1 | Situational Ethics | Matt 22:37 | azurelaw | 207961 | ||
Matt 22:37 And He said to him, "'YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.' Matt 22:38 "This is the great and foremost commandment. Matt 22:39 "The second is like it, 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself.' ***** “love of God has priority over neighbour-love. Jesus categorizes love of God as the great commandment, which comes first (Mt. 22:37f.). Scripture is full of instruction on how to trust, fear, praise and serve the Lord, and for this we may be grateful—no utilitarian calculus could possibly take its place! It is odd that situationists regularly ‘write as if love of God is wholly a matter of loving one’s neighbour, but in Scripture it is certainly not so.” “neighbour-love is to be directed bylaw. So far from seeing an antithesis and possible clash between the claims of persons and of principles, Scripture assumes that we can only meet the claims of persons as we hold to the God-taught principles in dealing with them, and the principles take the form of directives as to what should and should not be done to them. The theology, in a nutshell, is that God our Maker and Redeemer has revealed the unchanging pattern of response that he requires, and that man needs if he is to be truly himself. The pattern is both an expression of God’s own moral character, an indication of what he approves and disapproves, and also a due to man about his own nature and that of his neighbour. By adhering to the pattern we express and further our own true humanness on the one hand, and true love for our neighbour on the other. Our fellow man is always something of an enigma to us, just as we are something of an enigma to ourselves, but our Maker who knows our true nature and needs has told us how we are to do ourselves and each other real good. So love and law-keeping are mutually entailed, as Paul shows in Romans 13:8-10. The sixth, seventh, eighth and tenth commandments prohibit particular actions and attitudes (murder, adultery, theft, covetous jealousy) and Paul quotes them to make the double point that when we keep these commandments we love our neighbour as ourselves, and when we love our neighbour as ourselves we keep these commandments. The point is confirmed by John’s striking reasoning in I John 5:2: ‘By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments.’ Neighbour-love fulfils the law. Biblically, then, there is no antithesis between the motive of love and the divine directives which tell us what kinds of action on man’s part God approves and disapproves. Situationism is, after all, gratuitous.” “The lesser evil But if God’s laws, and the actions which they prescribe and prohibit, have fixed intrinsic values, as expressing God’s unchanging will for mankind, what are we to think and do when we find ourselves in situations where we cannot move at all without transgressing a divine prohibition, so that the best we can do is evil from one standpoint? Briefly, love’s task then is to find how to do the most good, and the least evil; doing nothing is rarely the answer! Rightly, different principles come out on top in different situations: two Christians armed with ‘honour your parents’ and ‘do not steal’ might well act differently if one could only prevent his parents dying of hunger by stealing, while the other was being told to steal by his heavily gambling father. We may agree with the situationist that love for persons must arbitrate between the conflicting claims of moral principles, that doctrinaire decisions in such cases will not make the best of the bad job, and that unwillingness to face the situation’s full complexities, and insensitivity to the variety of rules and claims that apply, will lead straight into ironclad Pharisaic legalism. But we shall reject Fletcher’s grotesque idea that in such situations adultery, fornication, abortion, suicide and the rest, if thought the best course (which arguably in Fletcher’s cases they might be—we will not dispute that here), thereby become good: which valuation, as Fletcher himself emphasizes, leaves no room for regret at having had to do them. Instead, we shall insist that evil remains evil, even when, being the lesser evil, it appears the right thing to do; we shall do it with heavy heart, and seek God’s cleansing of our conscience for having done it.” J. I. Packer |
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Questions and/or Subjects for Matt 22:37 | Author | ||
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JOHNNYQ | ||
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1969chgo | ||
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brazos | ||
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btabuadua | ||
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azurelaw | ||
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begbie | ||
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stressedchristian | ||
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Milena | ||
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wkim | ||
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LovemyLord7 |