The New Testament and Ethics

A Book-by-Book Survey

Green, Joel B.

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781441245663
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

This convenient text utilizes material from the well-received Dictionary of Scripture and Ethics to introduce students to the use of the New Testament for moral formation. This handy and affordable book-by-book survey of the New Testament contains key articles written by leading scholars and targeted to the needs of the classroom. It will serve as an excellent supplementary text in New Testament courses. The stellar list of contributors includes Robert Brawley, Bruce Chilton, Charles Cosgrove, David deSilva, Victor Paul Furnish, and Glen Harold Stassen.

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Overview

Ethics in Scripture

Allen Verhey

Ethics may be defined as disciplined reflection concerning moral conduct and character. In Scripture, such reflection is always disciplined by convictions about God’s will and way and by commitments to be faithful to God. Biblical ethics is inalienably theological. To sunder biblical ethics from the convictions about God that surround it and sustain it is to distort it. The fundamental unity of biblical ethics is simply this: there is one God in Scripture, and it is that one God who calls forth the creative reflection and faithful response of those who would be God’s people.

That unity, however, is joined to an astonishing diversity. The Bible contains many books and more traditions, each addressed first to a particular community of God’s people facing concrete questions of conduct in specific cultural and social contexts. Its reflections on the moral life, moreover, come in diverse modes of discourse. They come sometimes in statute, sometimes in story. They come sometimes in proverb, sometimes in prophetic promises (or threats). They come sometimes in remembering the past, sometimes in envisioning the future. The one God of Scripture assures the unity of biblical ethics, but there is no simple unitive understanding even of that one God or of that one God’s will. To force biblical ethics into a timeless and systematic unity is to impoverish it. Still, there is but one God, to whom loyalty is due and to whom God’s people respond in all of their responses to changing moral contexts.

Ethics in the New Testament

The one God of creation and covenant, of Abraham and Israel, of Moses and David, of prophet and sage raised the crucified Jesus of Nazareth from the dead. That good news was celebrated among his followers as the vindication of Jesus and his message, as the disclosure of God’s power and purpose, and as the guarantee of God’s good future. The resurrection was a cause for great joy; it was also the basis for NT ethics and its exhortations to live in memory and in hope, to see moral conduct and character in the light of Jesus’ story, and to discern a life and a common life “worthy of the gospel of Christ” (Phil. 1:27).

Jesus and the Gospels

The resurrection was the vindication of Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ. He had come announcing that “the kingdom of God has come near” (Mark 1:15), that the coming cosmic sovereignty of God, the good future of God, was at hand. And he had made that future present; he had made its power felt already in his words of blessing and in his works of healing. He called the people to repent, to form their conduct and character in response to the good news of that coming future. He called his followers to “watch” for it and to pray for it, to welcome its presence, and to form community and character in ways that anticipated that future and responded to the ways that future was already making its power felt in him.

Such was the eschatological shape of Jesus’ ethic. He announced the future in axioms such as “Many who are first will be last, and the last will be first” (Mark 10:31; Matt. 19:30; Luke 13:30). He made that future present by his presence among the disciples “as one who serves” (Luke 22:27; cf. Matt. 20:28; Mark 10:45; John 13:2–17). And he called the people to welcome such a future and to follow him in commands such as “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all” (Mark 9:35; cf. 10:44). To delight already in a coming kingdom in which the poor are blessed was even now to be carefree about wealth (Matt. 6:25, 31, 34; Luke 12:22) and to give generously to help the poor (Mark 10:21; Luke 12:33). To welcome even now a kingdom that belongs to children (Mark 10:14) was to welcome and to bless them (Mark 9:37). To respond faithfully to a future that was signaled by Jesus’ open conversation with women (e.g., Mark 7:24–30; John 4:1–26) was already to treat women as equals. To celebrate God’s forgiveness that made its power felt in Jesus’ fellowship with sinners (e.g., Mark 2:5; Luke 7:48) was to welcome sinners and to forgive one’s enemies.

Because Jesus announced and already unveiled the coming reign of God, he spoke “as one having authority” (Mark 1:22), not simply on the basis of the law or the tradition or the regularities of experience. And because the coming reign of God demanded a response of the whole person and not merely external observance of the law, Jesus consistently made radical demands. So Jesus’ radical demand for truthfulness replaced (and fulfilled) legal casuistry about oaths. The radical demand to forgive and to be reconciled set aside (and fulfilled) legal limitations on revenge. The demand to love even enemies put aside legal debates about the meaning of “neighbor.” His moral instructions were based neither on the precepts of law nor on the regularities of experience, but he did not discard them either; law and wisdom were qualified and fulfilled in this ethic of response to the future reign of the one God of Scripture.

This Jesus was put to death on a Roman cross, but the resurrection vindicated both Jesus and God’s own faithfulness. This one who died in solidarity with the least, with sinners and the oppressed, and with all who suffer was delivered by God. This Jesus, humble in his life, humiliated by religious and political authorities in his death, was exalted by God. When the powers of death and doom had done their damnedest, God raised up this Jesus and established forever the good future he had announced.

The Gospels used the church’s memories of Jesus’ words and deeds to tell his story faithfully and creatively. So they shaped the character and conduct of the communities that they addressed. Each Gospel provided a distinctive account both of Jesus and of the meaning of discipleship. In Mark, Jesus was the Christ as the one who suffered, and he called for a heroic discipleship. Mark’s account of the ministry of Jesus opened with the call to discipleship (1:16–20). The central section of Mark’s Gospel, with its three predictions of the passion, made it clear how heroic and dangerous an adventure discipleship could be. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (8:34 [and note the allusions to martyrdom in 8:35; 10:38–39]).

Hard on the heels of that saying Mark set the story of the transfiguration (9:2–8), in which a voice from heaven declared, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” It is striking that the voice did not say, “Look at him, all dazzling white.” The voice said, “Listen to him.” Silent during the transfiguration, Jesus ordered the disciples to say nothing of what they had seen until the resurrection, and then he told them once again that he, the Son of Man, “is to go through many sufferings and be treated with contempt” (9:12). Mark proceeded to tell the story of the passion, the story of a Christ who was rejected, betrayed, denied, deserted, condemned, handed over, mocked, and crucified, but still was the Son of God, the Beloved, and finally vindicated by God. The implications are as clear as they are shocking: Jesus is the Christ not by displaying some tyrannical power, not by lording it over others, but rather by his readiness to suffer for the sake of God’s cause in the world and by his readiness to serve others humbly in self-giving love (cf. 10:42–44). And to be his disciple in this world is to share that readiness to suffer for the sake of God’s cause and that readiness to serve others humbly in self-giving love.

The call to heroic discipleship was sustained by the call to watchfulness to which it was joined (13:33–37), by the expectation that, in spite of the apparent power of religious leaders and Roman rulers, God’s good future was sure to be.

Mark’s call to watchful and heroic discipleship touched topics besides the readiness to suffer for the sake of God’s cause, and it illumined even the most mundane of them with the same freedom and daring. Discipleship was not to be reduced to obedience to any law or code. Rules about fasting (2:18–22), Sabbath observance (2:23–3:6), and the distinction between “clean” and “unclean” (7:1–23) belonged to the past, not to the community marked by freedom and watchfulness. The final norm was no longer the precepts of Moses, but rather the Lord and his words (8:38). In chapter 10 Mark gathered the words of Jesus concerning marriage and divorce, children, possessions, and political power. The issues were dealt with not on the basis of the law or conventional righteousness, but rather on the basis of the Lord’s words, which appealed in turn to God’s intention at creation (10:6), the coming kingdom of God (10:14–15), the cost of discipleship (10:21), and identification with Christ (10:39, 43–45). Mark’s Gospel provided no moral code, but it did nurture a moral posture at once less rigid and more demanding than any code.

Matthew’s Gospel utilized most of Mark, but by subtle changes and significant additions Matthew provided an account of Jesus as the one who fulfills the law, as the one in whom God’s covenant promises are fulfilled. And the call to discipleship became a call to a surpassing righteousness.

Matthew, in contrast to Mark, insisted that the law of Moses remained normative. Jesus came not to “abolish” the law but to “fulfill” it (Matt. 5:17). The least commandment ought still to be taught and still to be obeyed (5:18–19; 23:23). Matthew warned against “false prophets” who dismissed the law and sponsored lawlessness (7:15–27). To the controversies about Sabbath observance Matthew added legal arguments to show that Jesus did what was “lawful” (12:1–14; cf. Mark 2:23–3:6). From the controversy about ritual cleanliness Matthew omitted Mark’s interpretation that Jesus “declared all foods clean” (Mark 7:19; cf. Matt. 15:17); evidently, even kosher regulations remained normative. In Matthew’s Gospel the law held, and Jesus was its best interpreter (see also 9:9–13; 19:3–12; 22:34–40).

The law, however, was not sufficient. Matthew accused the teachers of the law of being “blind guides” (23:16, 17, 19, 24, 26). They were blind to the real will of God in the law, and their pettifogging legalism hid it. Jesus, however, made God’s will known, especially in the Sermon on the Mount. There, he called for a righteousness that “exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees” (5:20). The Beatitudes (5:3–11) described the character traits that belong to such righteousness. The “antitheses” (5:21–47) contrasted such righteousness to mere external observance of laws that left dispositions of anger, lust, deceit, revenge, and selfishness unchanged. This was no calculating “works-righteousness”; rather, it was a self-forgetting response to Jesus’ announcement of the kingdom (4:12–25).

Matthew called the community to play a role in moral discernment and discipline. The church was charged with the task of interpreting the law, vested with the authority to “bind” and “loose” (18:18), to make legal rulings and judgments. These responsibilities for mutual admonition and communal discernment were set in the context of concern for the “little ones” (18:1–14) and forgiveness (18:21–35), and they were to be undertaken with prayer (18:19). Jesus was still among them (18:20), still calling for a surpassing righteousness.

In Luke’s Gospel, the emphasis fell on Jesus as the one “anointed . . . to bring good news to the poor” (4:18). Mary’s song, the Magnificat (1:46–55), sounded the theme early on as she celebrated God’s action on behalf of the humiliated and hungry and poor. In Luke, the infant Jesus was visited in a manger by shepherds, not in a house by magi (2:8–16; cf. Matt. 2:11–12). Again and again—in the Beatitudes and woes (6:20–26), for example, and in numerous parables (e.g., 12:13–21; 14:12–24; 16:19–31)—Jesus proclaimed good news to the poor and announced judgment on the anxious and ungenerous rich. Luke did not legislate in any of this; he gave no social program, but he insisted that a faithful response to this Jesus as the Christ, as the “anointed,” included care for the poor and powerless. The story of Zacchaeus (19:1–10), for example, made it clear that to welcome Jesus “gladly” was to do justice and to practice kindness. Luke’s story of the early church in Acts celebrated the friendship and the covenant fidelity that were displayed when “everything they owned was held in common” so that “there was not a needy person among them” (Acts 4:32–34; cf. 2:44–45; cf. also Deut. 15). Character and community were, and were to be, fitting to “good news to the poor.”

The “poor” included not just those in poverty, but all those who did not count for much by the world’s way of counting. The gospel was good news, for example, also for women. By additional stories and sayings (e.g., 1:28–30; 2:36–38; 4:25–27; 7:11–17; 10:38–42; 11:27–28; 13:10–17; 15:8–10; 18:1–8), Luke displayed a Jesus remarkably free from the chauvinism of patriarchal culture. He rejected the reduction of women to their reproductive and domestic roles. Women such as Mary of Bethany, who would learn from Jesus and follow him, were welcomed as equals in the circle of his disciples (10:38–42).

And the gospel was good news to “sinners” too, to those judged unworthy of God’s blessing. It was a gospel, after all, of “repentance and the forgiveness of sins” (24:47), and in a series of parables Jesus insisted that there is “joy in heaven over one sinner who repents” (15:7; cf. 15:10, 23–24). That gospel of the forgiveness of sins was to be proclaimed “to all nations” (24:47); it was to be proclaimed even to the gentiles, who surely were counted among the “sinners.” That story was told, of course, in Acts, but already early in Luke’s Gospel the devout old Simeon recognized in the infant Jesus God’s salvation “of all peoples” (2:31; cf., e.g., 3:6). The story of the gentile mission may await Acts, but already in the Gospel it was clear that to welcome this Jesus, this universal savior, was to welcome “sinners.” And already in the Gospel it was clear that a faithful response to Jesus meant relations of mutual respect and love between Jew and gentile. In the remarkable story of Jesus’ healing of the centurion’s servant (7:1–10), the centurion provided a paradigm for gentiles, not despising but loving the Jews, acknowledging that his access to God’s salvation was through the Jews; and the Jewish elders provided a model for Jews, not condemning this gentile but instead interceding on his behalf. In Acts 15, the Christian community included the gentiles without requiring that they become Jews; the church was to be an inclusive community, a welcoming community, a community of peaceable difference.

John’s Gospel told the story in ways quite different from the Synoptic Gospels, and its account of the moral life was also quite distinctive. It was written that the readers might have “life in [Jesus’] name” (20:31), and that life was inalienably a life formed and informed by love. Christ was the great revelation of God’s love for the world (3:16). As the Father loves the Son (e.g., 3:35; 5:20), so the Son loves his own (13:1). As the Son “abides” in the Father’s love and does his commandments, so the disciples are to abide in Christ’s love (15:9–10) and keep his commandments. And his commandment was simply that they should love one another as he had loved them (15:12; cf. 15:17). This “new commandment” (13:34) was, of course, hardly novel, but it rested now on a new reality: the love of God in Christ and the love of Christ in his own.

That reality was on display in the cross, uniquely and stunningly rendered by John as Christ’s “glory.” The Son of Man was “lifted up” on the cross (3:14; 12:32–34). His glory did not come after that humiliating death; it was revealed precisely in the self-giving love of the cross. And that glory, the glory of humble service and love, was the glory that Jesus shared with the disciples (17:22). They too were “lifted up” to be servants, exalted in self-giving love.

The commandment in John was to love “one another” (e.g., 15:12) rather than the “neighbor” or the “enemy.” John’s emphasis surely fell on mutual love, on relations within the community. But an emphasis was not a restriction, and the horizon of God’s love was the whole world (3:16). And as God so loved the world that he sent his Son, so Jesus sent his followers “into the world” (17:18; cf. 20:21). The mission of the Father’s love seeks a response, an answering love; it seeks mutual love, and where it finds it, there is “life in Christ’s name.”

Paul and His Gospel

Before the Gospels were written, Paul had addressed pastoral letters to the churches. He always wrote as an apostle (e.g., Rom. 1:1) rather than as a philosopher or a code-maker. And he always wrote to particular communities facing specific problems. In his letters he proclaimed the gospel of the crucified and risen Christ and called for the response of faith and faithfulness.

The proclamation of the gospel was always the announcement that God had acted in Christ’s cross and resurrection to end the reign of sin and death and to establish the coming age of God’s own cosmic sovereignty. That proclamation was sometimes in the indicative mood and sometimes in the imperative mood. In the indicative mood, Paul described the power of God to provide the eschatological salvation of which the Spirit was the “first fruits” (Rom. 8:23) and t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Contributors
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. Overview
• 2. Gospels and Acts
• 3. Pauline Epistles
• 4. Catholic Epistles and Revelation
• 5. Selected Topics in New Testament Ethics
• 6. Beyond the New Testament
• Index of Scripture and Ancient Writings
• Index of Subjects
• Back Cover