Sometime near the year 220 the church father Tertullian asked a provocative question: “What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the Academy and the Church? What between heretics and Christians?” 

That question touches a tension I felt in my career as a college and graduate school educator. I found myself asking a narrower form of his question: “What does Greek ethical theory have to do with Christian spirituality?” I also discovered Martin Luther to be a companion in asking that question.  His answer, as I paraphrase his sentiments here, was blunt: the relation is one of darkness to light; of unfaith to faith; of death to life. And I’m convinced Luther was biblically aligned and correct. 

An important caveat needs to be offered before we go on. This challenge does not dismiss careful thought in favor of nonsensical faith. Tertullian was a trained lawyer, philosophically engaged and well read. Luther, too, was an academic who knew his philosophy—as an educator his earliest duty was to teach Aristotelian philosophy. They were never anti-intellectuals. Rather they used their minds to challenge basic assumptions and values of the secular philosophers. They recognized that the human mind is not the problem. Instead the problem is in spiritually blinded hearts that underlie and direct the minds of unbelievers. 

The pagan philosophers assumed that human reason is able to discover and apply moral truth with the result of human righteousness and virtue.  Aristotle, for instance, wrote in his Nicomachean Ethics that, “men become builders by building houses, harpists by playing the harp. So, too, we become righteous people by practicing righteousness…” Christians, on the other hand look elsewhere in establishing righteousness.  Jesus, alone, is the living Truth and his word is truth that sets us free from enslaving sin. So that righteousness is found only through new life in Christ: “You must be born again.”

Luther identified this polarity when he posted 97 theses entitled the Disputation Against Scholastic Theology—a list of points he offered for debate nearly two months before his much more famous collection of 95 Theses. In the Disputation the source of real righteousness was stated in two adjoining theses: “40. We do not become righteous by doing righteous deeds but, having been made righteous, we do righteous deeds. This in opposition to the philosophers. 41. Virtually the entire Ethics of Aristotle is the worst enemy of grace. This in opposition to the scholastics.” [Lull, Martin Luther's Basic Theological Writings, p.16]. 

At this point let me be a bit autobiographical. For a number of years in my early career as a Bible College instructor I taught an overview course called “Doctrine and Ethics.” I prepared for the role by reading a load of books on ethics written by evangelical Christian scholars. I also adopted the text used by other faculty at our college who taught the same course. Along with that I read some secular works on Ethics. Yet after my second or third year with the course it dawned on me that I was spending more time in class debating the text I had assigned my students than agreeing with it. Finally I asked the really basic question: “Why this?!” 

The dissonance I felt was stirred by my Bible reading. What I read there was at odds with much of what I was covering in my Ethics course. So I finally asked, “What indeed has classical Greek ethics to do with the Bible?” In teaching the course I became convinced that what the Bible calls sanctification must be seen as the real basis for Christian morality; and not the more behaviorally-focused content in our Christian Ethics texts. In many respects the latter merely mimic the values and paradigms of Aristotle and others while ignoring Scriptural themes. It was with this cognitive discomfort that I traveled to London for three years of study and, in part, it was this question I wanted to answer through my research: just how did we get here? 

In London I discovered Martin Luther. A friend and fellow-student, Paul Blackham, alerted me to the Lutheran writings after I shared with him the split I saw among 17^th-18^th century English puritans over these issues. It was a “eureka” moment: Luther had gotten there ahead of me! I was pedestrian and Luther brilliant yet both of us reached the same conclusions by reading our Bibles! 

Enough of my personal story. The real question we need to consider is the “so what?” What difference is there between the two views and how does it make a difference in the real world of day-to-day life? 

It changes our moral focus. We turn away from self to Christ.  Rather than looking to our own moral progress in accord with the ethicists we now gaze at God as revealed in his Son, Jesus. We cease to put faith in our own moral capacities; instead we place our faith in Christ alone. The motivation of duty is replaced by desire.  We follow Jesus because he loves us and captures our hearts. This because we are “born again” and born “from above” as the Spirit of God pours God’s love into our hearts. We change morally as the character of Christ is formed in us by the Spirit’s work, from the inside-out, as Luther insisted. It is never achieved from the outside-in—by building virtues and adopting moral disciplines—as Aristotle taught. Instead we listen to Jesus and what he told the rich ruler: no one is good but God alone. So God is our sole moral resource and we live with goodness only through union with Christ—not through “keeping all the commandments from my youth” as the rich ruler presumed. 

When I returned from London I moved from teaching at the undergrad college to the graduate school. What, among other courses, was I asked to teach? Doctrine and Ethics once again! But this time was different. My course had a new focus: the ethics of faith in Christ. As Paul put it in Romans 14, “Whatever is not of faith is sin.” What, then, is the object of faith? Paul answered that succinctly in Romans 10:17—”So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” Christ and his word is the focus of faith, and the source of our moral transformation. 

I continued teaching the course without tossing away the Christian works that draw deeply from non-Christian reflections, but now with a purpose to show the differences of focus between those works and what the Bible offers. And with that I increasingly praised God for his Son whose love for us captures us, and whose truth sets us free from our former slavery to sin. Looking to Jesus as the author and finisher of faith is, after all, the real basis for moral transformation.

The speaker enthused, “It’s great to know that no matter what we do, we’ve been forgiven!” 

“Yes,” I thought, “but isn’t something missing here?” 

My thoughts turned to historical antecedents: first to a hot debate of a couple of decades ago over the difference between some Christians who promoted Christ’s “lordship” versus those who favored “free grace”. In a nutshell the former group held that salvation has to be accompanied by evident obedience to the Lord to be real; the other group held that grace is absolutely unconditional, so much so that our assurance of salvation is not linked to moral transformation. 

The debate is an old one. My second reflection was about the 17^th century English and American Puritans who battled among themselves over much the same question. The free grace crowd were called, pejoratively, antinomians—”opposed to the law”—and members of the lordship-like camp were called “Papists” for sounding too much like duty-defined Roman Catholics. Here’s the point: this is an unresolved debate that regularly divides Christian communities. 

But this was a current event, not a history class, so it forced me to think again about the issue. In listening to the speaker what bothered me was not his celebration of God’s free grace. Christ’s work on the cross was, indeed, free and “once and for all”. His death covered all my sins for all time as I came to be united with Christ by faith. 

Instead it was the way the speaker framed the claim. It sounded too much like a Monopoly player celebrating ownership of a spiritual “Get out of jail free!” card—”isn’t that great! I can continue in my sins and not have any consequences!” 

I may have misread him, of course, but even if I did I suspect my impression represents a widespread point of view. Here’s what he did communicate very clearly. Christ’s death on the cross provides us with freedom from punishment. The message was a pitch for free eternal fire insurance. The point was emphatically human-centered and self-concerned. God was addressed as a divine resource who offers salvation as a service. Smart people will want to take advantage. Sermon’s over. Amen and let’s go home. 

What troubled me is what was not said. That God loves us. That he made us for himself. He is the father of us prodigals, waiting for our hearts to grow weary of our sins. And, yes, we are the prodigals—anyone who is human-centered and self-concerned is a prodigal. We were made to be lovers of God and of others, reciprocating the love that first pours out of God’s heart into our hearts by the Spirit. But we have become lovers of self, of pleasure, of security, and who knows what else. 

So the talk was not about God’s expensive love, a love that cost the life of his Son on the cross. Instead it was a celebration of our freedom and independence. The key insight was that we can still sin and not worry about it! It was an ungodly point in every sense of the phrase. If this is what free grace represents, I refuse to accept it. But the lordship option is just as misguided. 

Here’s the problem I see on both sides of the free-grace and the lordship debate. The discussion was focused on the human will. But the Bible—and here I return to my mantra—elevates the heart and not the will. The will is treated in the Bible as a mere instrument of the heart: our choices always follow what our hearts love. Thus our conversion must be a heart transplant! 

With a new heart, a heart that now has the presence of the Spirit who is united with us in a marital—Spirit-to-spirit—bond (as affirmed in 1 Corinthians 6) our hearts are profoundly changed. Forgiveness frees us from our past bondage, and the presence of Christ’s love instills in us a new set of desires. 

So to the lordship people I say, “Yes, of course, salvation will change us!” But I still agree with the free grace folks that we are not required to change. Change happens because the fruit of the Spirit within us moves us to change, so that change is certain to come, but never required. 

Let me wrap up this entry by pointing to the obvious: If someone claims to have had a spiritual heart transplant, but he or she shows no sign of the Spirit’s presence, then we have every reason to disregard their claim. Love is always obvious. 

And, on the other hand, the lordship people are brewing hypocrisy by telling us what love should look like. How? By insisting that “love is a choice”—when real love is actually our heart responding to God’s prior love—and then they prescribe our duties-of-love in order for us to make the ‘right’ choices. That’s about as silly as telling a new bride and bridegroom that their love is a choice. Yes, it certainly makes choices, but it is based on mutual delight and devotion that has no need for “will-power”. 

So, finally, what is the point of God’s forgiveness? Does he want us to be free to use our new “once and for all” freedom to continue in our sins? No! No one with a changed heart finds sin to be a core ambition any longer. The prodigal son had already tried independence; he knew what it represented, and now his joy was in his father’s embrace. Forgiveness clears the way for our new ambition to prosper: to love God with every dimension of our being. We are prodigals forgiven and now restored to our Father. It changes everything.

I think it was Mark Twain who quipped, “I wrestled with my conscience and won.” We smile as Twain takes an element of truth and turns it with a wry reversal. The truth is that we all live with a sense of right and wrong—our conscience.  

And it’s also true that while we sometimes override rightness in favor of wrongness, our sense of self-approval comes in knowing that we most often lean to the rightness side. And that, for many, is the basis for faith: “God knows that I try to do what’s right!” So our faith is based on a vision of God—to the degree that God is even considered—as one who is fair enough to treat our self-approval as sound and sufficient.  

There are, of course, some problems with this approach. For one, we may not have a clear picture of God. So it may be that our sense of what is fair and right is not shared by our neighbors, friends, or even by our family, let alone by God as he truly exists. And then there is Twain’s point that we are all able to wrestle with the complaints of our conscience long enough and hard enough to win the fight. Call it the infinite capacity of rationalization. All we need is plenty of determination to be right. Our best clue to the vitality of this skill is the exasperated challenge of a sibling, spouse, or friend: “You’re always right, aren’t you!”  

Thankfully we have a solution at hand for the fog of self-justification, namely God himself. When he comes on the scene—the true God, that is, and not a manmade caricature—we have the sunshine needed to burn away that fog. The bright beauty of God is that he comes to us with an open heart: he invites us into his arms of compassion and care. He knows that we’ve messed up. He has a handle on all our false motives and self-protective instincts. He knows that our self-justifications are rooted, ultimately, in our insecurity and fear: a failed attempt to “be like God.” And he still offers us his love.  

Which leads us to the object of true faith: his Son. The Son is Jesus of Nazareth who before his birth in Bethlehem shared in eternal communion and mutual glory with the Father. He came to earth as both a man and as God’s Word for life and meaning. Apart from him there is no life other than the brief and ephemeral phase of physical life.  

So we need to look to the Son. But first let us turn to yet another problem that keeps us from true faith, namely the tradition of Morality. Morality, or Moralism—often linked to Legalism—is an informal belief that human conduct defines a given person’s moral standing: one who does good is a good person, and vice versa. So the focus is on the person’s behaviors, not unlike the Jewish leaders in the New Testament who were outwardly righteous but inwardly alienated from God.  

This challenge to Moralism and its support tool, the conscience, may surprise us. So read this with care: the Bible revises what our natural response to our conscience calls for. That is, while our conscience addresses what we’ve done—properly warning us against giving approval to a wrong activity—salvation is the fruit of who it is that loves us. Another way to say this is that our conscience can alert us to a problem but it lacks any power to transform us. Only Jesus, by his Spirit, can do that.  

Let me say more about this. When our conscience raises an alarm—assuming it has a good basis in fact—we instinctively try to solve the problem by doing some good as a counterweight to our wrong conduct. Picture a husband who has a case of conscience after he demeans his wife in a public setting. His solution: buy some roses or take her out to dinner. My best guess (I’m a bachelor, mind you) is that unless the flowers or dinner come with a sincere apology, the effort is wasted. A selfish action needs to be addressed by a changed heart—by returning to an unselfish relational commitment to the wife. Truly “good” behaviors are always heart-based.  

So the benefit of a conscience is that it offers us a warning system: it tells us that we’ve lost our focus on Christ and others. The biblical sequence is always and only from the inside-out. It is through a heart change that our behaviors are changed in a fundamental way. Without real love our moral actions are simply fig leafs meant to cover up our shameful self-absorption.  

God, then, searches our hearts. What he looks at is our response to the one he loves: the Son. In this biblical reality our standing with him is heart-based. Our behaviors—our morality—only signal the focus of our hearts. So the real function of the conscience is to cry out for our return to the source of life: to a love of Christ. And from that love comes the fountain of love, joy, peace, patience, and more—i.e. the spontaneous and growing behaviors of authentic faith.  

Jesus addressed this relational basis for faith—our belief in him—more than once. The great prayer of Jesus in John 17 is one of these: “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Even Psalm 2, as it confronts the nations that rage against God, offers the same bottom line: “kiss the Son.”  

It doesn’t get much clearer than this: faith is our heartfelt devotion to God, focused on the Son, as accomplished by the Spirit working in us. It is not a faith in ourselves as it would be if we trusted in a teeter-totter moral exchange of good actions to match our bad deeds, but the question of what we have as the gaze of our hearts. So let’s let our conscience be our guides, not as a way to be “better people” but as our early warning system that we have started to look away from Christ.  

Faith is then an active response to the God who first loved us, who sent his Son, and who delights in our delight in him. When that love is active in us our consciences fade to silence and our faith proves be true and reliable, hard at work through love (Galatians 5:6).

As I write this entry I’m sitting on a chair in my driveway watching nearby neighbors set off some pretty extravagant fireworks. The children next door just came out to watch and one of them started jumping up and down, arms waving in delight. They plan to start their own display in a short while.

Earlier in the evening I preached on the sufferings of Job. I noted the irony that the ultimate problems of pain and suffering came through Adam’s original declaration of independence. While I don’t mean to connect Adam’s fall to the American declaration of independence from King George in the 18^th century, it still allows us to think about what independence stands for as presented in the Bible.

It represents enslavement.

How’s that? Just this: God made us as dependent beings. Consider the analogy of our physical world: fish are made to live in water, and mammals are made to live in air. In the same fashion our spiritual being is made to live in God’s love. Or, better yet, in God’s Triune communion which consists as love. Apart from him we can do nothing. The imagery of John 15 affirms this with another metaphor: of Christ as the vine and his followers as branches that abide in him to receive his richness which, in turn, bears fruit that we offer back to him and also to others.

Here’s a crucial but often overlooked premise in what we just summarized: God made us to be responders—heart-based creatures—so that we love because of his love. We love him because he first loved us. We love him in a wonderful reciprocity in which he is the ongoing initiator and we the responders and counter-initiators. Picture a flowing waltz in which the partners move forward, then backward. The leader of the pair initiates the moves, and while he is not always moving forward, the beauty of the steps is in their shared movements. God made us as dancers for his Son—for us to be his collective bride. And in that dance we are actually partners in the greatest bond of mutual love that ever existed: God’s mutual love between the Father and the Son, a love facilitated by the Spirit’s work of communication (see 1 Corinthians 2 here). 

But what does this have to do with enslavement? It speaks of the truth that we are captivated by whatever it is that we love. The Bible treats this truth as a baseline reality, yet it’s something we often overlook. Jesus, for instance, warned that “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other…” [Matt. 6:24] And in John 8 he promised his followers that by abiding in his words they would be set free from slavery to sin. When some in that particular audience rejected his teaching—claiming that they were already free—Jesus then charged them with actually being devoted to the “desires” of the devil. They soon confirmed that status by trying to kill Jesus (by the end of the chapter). 

Paul, by the Spirit’s guidance, certainly caught the point. In Romans 6, for instance, he portrays our new state of faith as Christians to be a new form of slavery that replaces what had ruled our hearts before we met Christ: 

But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. … But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.

If we—as people saturated in a world that elevates “free will”—can listen to this with open hearts, we’re on our way to full sanctification. But we will not get there without taking this truth to heart. 

And I mean that literally: our hearts define us. Romantic literature gets it, even if we tend to dismiss such notions as emotional nonsense. Think, for instance, of a common description of a young couple who are moving towards marriage. We will say things like “He captured her heart” or “They’re really bonded to each other.” The fact is that our volition—the “will”—is simply an instrument of what we love most. That’s the way God made us, in his own image: he, as One who lives eternally in Triune love, also made us to be lovers. 

Satan, however, offered Adam the opportunity to love himself. So the image in the mirror became Adam’s new delight. Which, in turn, allowed him to be manipulated by the one who gave him the mirror by promising him, “You can be like God.” By looking, then, to his own glory Adam turned away from God. And, with that, he became self-aware and self-centered: “he knew that he was naked” as he now had a new focus in life. 

So the battle of slavery is not with some external enslavement, but with enslaving desires: of greed for wealth, status, wisdom, power, security, and so on. What deceives us is that because we “want” things we don’t see them as enslaving us. Think of drug addictions for a physical expression of what we all experienced spiritually until Christ set us free. They are blinded to their self-destruction by their appetite for what the drug offers. We, too, were once blinded by our desire to shape our own lives to selfish ends. 

So here’s a bottom line for Christians on Independence Day: embrace your absolute dependence on God by enjoying him and his love. And share that holy, selfless love with those around you in acts of inter-dependence. And, on the other hand, leave independence to those who, although enslaved to the fireworks of their personal ambitions, still think of themselves as free. They are not free, nor are we. They love the figure they see in the mirror. And we get to love the One we were made for: the only true God who is truly and wonderfully captivating!