This post is a very rough sketch of ideas and may include unfinished, incomplete, or erroneous ideas that will later be corrected. This post will be part of a series that will form the basis of a new book I’m writing following on the themes of my last book, Thoughts From Reconstruction. All of these themes center around the New Covenant. You can find everything published so far in this series on the Highlights page under the My Most Important section.

Method

Before we get into the meat of things, we must get our heads around one thing: The New Covenant is simpler but it is also far more demanding. Not only is it more demanding on our humility, it is more demanding on our capacities, that is, to think about things from a truly righteous perspective and to act them out.

We are to judge angels, remember.

We, alone, do not have what it takes to judge righteously. This is why we have the scriptures, its wisdom, its examples, our family, friends, preachers, teachers, and the Holy Spirit. While popular for a time, we have seen the outcomes from willy-nilly, warm and fuzzy takes on “loving” your neighbour. We now see the fallacy of doing the simplest, most self-effacing, most doormat thing we can think of. It doesn’t help. We see, in fact, that it has long term harms. Every situation is different, but humans are humans and we need to say the uncomfortable thing at the appropriate moments.

Weaponized Compassion

We know in our hearts that it is not truly loving to spoil a child with endless cookies. And that it is not truly loving to an offender nor his victims to set him free without the opportunity of rehabilitation in prison.

There is a sense in which our compassion has been weaponized against us, we who are expected to be “shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16), and we are to blame for failing to remember this teaching from none other than Jesus, our Saviour.

When Jesus said he had not come to abolish the Law and Prophets but to fulfill them, he was also saying they were, in fact, valid and that means they are valuable wisdom for us in thinking through our choices. You must learn the Law and the Prophets for yourself, because they provide valuable wisdom. Then you must apply them through the New Covenant and the Greatest Commandment and then teach that through discipling.

Tabula Rasa Non Grata

We are not in a blank slate situation. Everything doesn’t go simply because it appears “loving”. We must consider, review, weight, apply, and teach what we have learned from the Bible, from the Holy Spirit, from preachers, from teachers, from experience, and from our conscience. Only then will we have the wisdom and knowledge to apply to the moral choices we will face.

To love God is at least to respect what God has said and that includes studying the Old Covenant through the lens we now have of the New Covenant. If Jesus didn’t come to fulfill the Law, and “We know that the law is good if one uses it properly.” (1 Timothy 1:8), then we ought to use it properly in the light of the Jesus’ teachings.

To love your neighbour is to love them enough to search out the wisdom of Scriptures, to observe and learn how people treat each, and what produces the best results, and then to apply what you have learned in your own life.

To preach the Gospel necessarily requires knowing the teachings of scripture and is helped immensely by having learned the examples of the first Christians who preached the Good News. The lives of saints, martyrs, missionaries, and evangelists will help you in preaching the Gospel.

To make disciples is also greatly aided by studying scriptures to see how Jesus, Himself, discipled the first disciples. Watching how the disciples lived and how they acted after Jesus’ resurrection is instructive for how we ought to be discipled and then go on to disciple others.

And how will you show mercy unless you understand the mercy granted in Jesus? Only study, experience, and the Holy Spirit can teach you that sometimes judgment is the mercy.

This is how we will be approaching moral decision making.

Wielding Wisdom

But more than a mere exercise of shallow answers to a set of the 4 principles, it is required of us to know the history, teachings, Law, Prophets, and examples of the faith handed down to us, by our teachers, and by scripture, in order to wield all the wisdom and knowledge that is required for each choice, now small and insignificant, then imposing and grave.

It’s not easy. Whoever thought judging angels would be? You already see that the New Covenant truly is simpler and yet far more demanding. But the New Covenant is the narrow way, the way to confidence in our moral order, and the way to eternal life. With discipline, we can come to understand the method that upholds our moral order and practice the Greatest Law with confidence.

This series will continue. Please check back from time to time, if you’re interested in reading new parts as they become available. The entire series will be made available on the Highlights page under the My Most Important section as each part is published.