The Expositional Evasion of Ethics

The recent mind-boggling advice offered by Alistair Begg, concerning a transgendered wedding1, touched off a flurry of social media discussions about the absence of ethical thinking within the pastorate. More than that, it has raised the question of what is meant by faithful preaching if such teaching fails to address the ethical application of God’s law. I do want to stress that this is not an article about Begg, or any specific cultural or political issue. The title and everything that follows make that plain. Likewise, the moral of this story is not that expositional preaching is “the problem.” It is not that Bible exposition is our idol—it is specifically that we are abusing the form of exposition as a shield to cover our real idols.

Pastors of Reformed churches especially have inherited a cultural moment in which “faithfulness” to God’s word is understood to be exclusively defined by expositional preaching and gospel-centeredness. However, it seems to me that both of those phrases could stand a little bit of scrutiny. Do not misunderstand. These ought to define preaching. My meaning is rather, to channel the old sage Inigo Montoya: I don’t think those words mean what you think they mean. 

What We Avoid in Our Exposition 

The glory of expositional preaching, so we assure ourselves, is that it prevents us from avoiding uncomfortable or unpopular issues. The structure of the preacher’s sermons—as well as his preaching schedule—is tied to the flow of the text. This is the standard line. It sounds right. But let me ask a few common sense questions, fellow preachers.

First, how did you know where that “flow” of the text starts? Again, don’t misunderstand. We all must start somewhere. The rationales for our decision should certainly begin with prayer and a keen pastoral eye for where our congregations are in their own “flow” (demographics, present understanding, treasured sins, cultural pressures, etc). But the fact remains, it is that decision that “starts the flow” of the text, and there are innumerable ways to aim the start of that flow at a place far away from the heat of present battles. The text does not start you in the text. It does not reach up and grab you and force you to begin in that place you would rather not.

Second, what exactly is God saying in that passage to the present audience? Yes, exegesis starts with the meaning to that ancient audience, but if it stops there, you are not a preacher. Not an expositional one. You are, at best, a data collector in the early stages of biblical theology. That is a necessary discipline. But it is still not preaching. Exposition is not a mere tour of data. That is why any decent book on preaching will insist that you have something like a “big idea,” or what the Puritans simply called the “doctrine” of the sermon. It was the basic truth that the text is communicating. But then this requires still one more step.

Sermons are not expositional unless and until they expose not only God’s meaning but our obstacles. God’s meaning must penetrate our whole heart and permeate our whole lives. If both ends are not unveiled, then my sermon was not truly expositional preaching. This alone is consistent with the way that Hebrews 4:12 describes what the word does to us. The preacher and his sermon are supposed to be a conduit toward that end.

All of this is to say that the “flow of the text” is relative if all we do is move their eyes from left to right. It can even be bent when no one is really looking. And why look? He is “sticking to the text.” But a preacher sticking to the text can still leave congregants sticking Jello to a wall when they struggle to see how he moved (or whether he moved at all) from a dry, irrelevant grammatico-historical method, upward and outward to systematic meaning and practical implications. In other words, this “flow” is actually not an infallible restraint against my own sinful motives, among which are insecurities about my own ignorance, cowardice to confront sin, or fear of losing people (ahem—money).

This is no deficiency in the Scriptures. This is a deficiency in us that we have learned to deflect as we hide behind a faux-faithfulness. 

Now let me get to my basic theological claim:

A use-and-a-half subtracted from the three uses of the law is not expositional preaching.

Now what do I mean by that? Anyone who has worn the label “Reformed” for any amount of time will have at least heard of the three uses of the law. These are the law’s evangelical, civil, and directive use. They go by different names (and even different orders if one has a Lutheran bent). The civil use of the law refers to how God’s commandments apply to man as man in society. The Law is not reducible to the Christian alone, and—when we are clear that there is a moral law dimension2—it is specifically aimed at restraining the extent of man’s wickedness in relation to his fellow man.

Every word of that is crucial. It is not an attempt to “change sinners” in their basic constitution, which the law does not do in its other dimensions anyway. Furthermore, the directive use of the law, which more specifically guides the Christian life, does have a civil dimension. This is seldom considered, but just think about it for a moment. The Christian has Christian-specific ways that God obligates him to live in relation to his fellow man in the public sphere. Thus, over and above God’s law to man-as-man, there is God’s law to Christian man in relation to the whole society of men. Anyone who denies that Scripture speaks to both obligations is not fit to stand behind a pulpit. 

Oddly enough, many of the same folks who deny that Scripture addresses man’s relationship to society freely apply the Scriptures to a quite nebulous rule against denying foreigners unqualified trespass of a nation’s borders, or to constantly moving goalposts on what counts as a loving relationship. When pressed, the language will shift from a civil use of the law to a “kingdom obligation” or “gospel justice” or “witness” or something of the sort.

No worries. Theirs isn’t a politicized lens into the text, but an ordinary expectation of followers of Jesus; ours is an attempt to impose Christian standards (or perhaps the Old Covenant theocratic rules) into the secular sphere where pluralism was meant to be the rule. Never mind that the moral obligations to which we refer are clearly and repeatedly spelled out in the Old and the New, whereas their principles are not only absent or taken out of context, but specifically outlawed as a matter of God’s creation norms.

It is a hermeneutical Bizarro World, except here, it is not that black is white and up is down. It is that what may be plainly exegeted is no longer expositional, yet what is so obscure that it requires the latest postmodern pansexual from Harvard Divinity School to discover it—that alone is assumed. Now the pietistic conservative takes his leave of the whole discussion. He will maintain the high ground by simple “exposition,” by which he means only those matters of ecclesiastical concern. 

In short, for the pietist who would do “exposition, not politics,” the idol that prevents application is still political.

The important thing to see is that the shoe is on the other foot in terms of who is bowing to this political idol. It is the pietistic sensibilities of those who would not ruffle the feathers of left-wing politics (or those same left-winged feathers in church leaders and members). They do not mind bringing the text to bear against the “moralism” and “triumphalism” of right-wing politics. There are no cultural penalties for the preacher who does that, and increasingly there are no longer any professional penalties either—as this profession is very much downstream from culture.

A few generations of pietism has created another difficulty here. So anemic has our civics education been, whether at seminary or otherwise, that most preachers (not to speak of laypeople) do not know the difference between a “political” thing and a “non-political” thing. We lack the categories of reasoning that would be able to differentiate between clear moral law in the text and its civic implications, as opposed to a truly debatable matter over which it would be quite inappropriate to use the text as a jackhammer on the conscience of our hearers.

Naturally the other side claims the same, but that begs the whole question now, doesn’t it?

And it is a question we are not allowed to ask, and a subject we are not allowed to study, by this very muzzling of the law. Where pietism reigns in the church, only the dominant political agenda of the culture can count for legitimate speech. It becomes the “a-political” air we breathe. To challenge it is what is now “political.”

It was all a rather ingenious campaign. Define as “political” only those uses of the law to the right of the descending left frame of the Overton Window and then allow free reign for progressive charlatans to engage in all manner of fanciful political application. Hence what used to be considered the moral law is now political idolatry. To even challenge such a downgrade in the realm of Christian teaching is to prove their point. Very clever indeed.

Now, as a clue to the prevalence of the texts open to legitimate moral law applications to the civil sphere, just ask yourself this one other question if you are a preacher: When is the last time you preached (expositionally, remember) through the Prophets? Well, why not? You know the answer. What is it that the Prophets rail against? Two things. You would have one, but if you know the books well, you know that you cannot have one without the other. Do not start to answer my question with Idolatry or Syncretism. That is true, but the hypocritical threefold mantra, “The temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, ” (Jer. 7:4) was not called deceptive because it was a call to genuinely pure religious life, the “culture” be damned. No—just the opposite! It was because Israel capitulated to the culture. Its temple became a safe haven to assuage the guilt of moral monsters. All their oppression and enslavement and theft and adultery—well, now, those are “not gospel issues.” When one follows the Regulative Principle ardently on the Lord’s Day and tramples upon the image of God the other six days, it is precisely idolatry and syncretism that one has embraced in his civic immorality. 

How We Use the Gospel to Avoid Shepherding 

“Yes, yes, yes—but that’s not a gospel issue!” Ever hear that one? Of course, we all have. Perhaps we will be prepared for it and reply, “Ok, but how can I apply the gospel or make it credible when everyone I know who disbelieves won’t take the church seriously because we have nothing to say about the transgenderism and genocide that holds a knife to the throats of their children?”

They have an answer to that one too. It is as oblivious as any response could be, but it will amount to this: “This world is not our home.”

Now we might expect these words in all sympathy from someone who was fighting the good fight and was at their wits end. Yet these words are almost always from those who have never let our wits begin—not our ethical wits in the church at any rate. 

Is the gospel so opposed to ethics, after all? 

We know that there is another extreme, and perhaps it was understandable that prior generations pushed so hard against it. Bavinck had spoken of those “ethical theologians” who followed Kant. They reduced Christian theology to being a matter of the heart alone, or else of “deeds not creeds.” Machen had fought against those hypocritical materialists of late modernity who gave us the social gospel. We conservative evangelicals sided with the “indicative” over the “imperative,” that is, we saw clearly that Jesus was our Savior and not merely our Example — that it was what He has already done for us, and not what we can do for ourselves and for others, by imitation, that constitutes the essence of the Christian gospel, or, at least the “spear” of it that pierces the heart of our hearers. All true, and still crucially important. 

Yet between the cross and the crown—in between the First and Second Advents of our Lord—though this world is not our home, it is nevertheless the stage of God’s glory precisely through all of those ethical arenas where the idols of secularism reside. The dangers to the souls of those we love do not come merely from idols that pull overtly against the evangelist’s focus on the gospel, but also from idols that pull covertly against the souls of those who are now out of audible reach. They can hear our sound waves. What they cannot make out is any moral clarity.

There are two basic ways (there may be others) that we avoid the work of shepherding souls away from the cliff toward the gospel precisely under the cover of being more “gospel-centered.” The first is to “maintain our witness” by avoiding the “political” stumbling blocks where presumably the gospel should be set forth; and the second is to establish the exclusive domain of the Christocentric (thus, the gospel indicative I mentioned above) in the basic focus of Bible passages, in contrast to the domain of the exemplary (thus, the ethical imperative I mentioned above).

If there was such a thing as “rolling over in your grave” for saints, Machen’s bones would certainly do so if he heard us using his distinction in this way. 

That first way seems to be the motive informing Alistair Begg. Usually it comes in the form of an accusation, and very often from those whose faith is undergoing “deconstruction,” if only we had eyes to see that. We are accused of poisoning the gospel with our talk of this or that cultural sin, but it is this accusation that puts the cultural cart before the gospel horse. “Cultural sin,” did you say? Whether a Freudian slip or not, it seems to me that the first question we ought to have asked is whether the thing is indeed sin. If it is, then, though we ought to always be on guard of minimizing our own sin as we broadcast the sins “out there,” there is certainly no virtue in reversing the scales of blame. Isaiah 5:20 would warn us that there is actually greater danger in doing so. As to that witness, the Bible never ties gospel faithfulness down to cultural appeasement. Just the opposite: Paul continues the theme of distinct holiness from the Old Testament to the New where he asks rhetorically, 

“What partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols?” (2 Cor. 6:14-16)

The whole question as to the relationship between law and gospel has been begged. What if so many of these things that we are calling “political” are just manifestly sin? What is it but God’s law that tells us so? At this point the demons whispering to such people raise a mighty hiss through them. We have in fact poked the political idols peculiar to our “gospel-centered” guardians. They will maintain that these things belong to those “matters indifferent.” Oh? The murder of abortion. The theft of the state. Sexual mutilation under the guise of “affirmation.” The false witness of Critical Race Theory. Who exactly has the political idol when these things are exempt from the condemnation of the second table of the law? And who is being expositional when such topics are avoided in spite of their profuse targeting throughout the Scriptures?

That brings us to the second way that “gospel-centeredness” paradoxically prevents people from hearing the gospel. Do not misunderstand—the Christocentric dimension of each text must be that which most penetrates the hearts of the hearers in the end. However, if we are talking in terms of exposition, let us be honest about which is clearer in narrative texts especially: types of Christ or examples of the characters in them? Now it is precisely the deficiencies of those examples (as well as ours to live up to the law which binds us to those circumstances) which point right back to Christ. That is the evangelical use of the law. But how exactly can it even accomplish that work if there is no law which binds us in the same, or similar, ways to that of the figure in the text? You see that even the evangelical use of the law requires some synergy between the moral law that bound the biblical examples and its claims on us.

To tie both of these more “gospel-centered” expositional evasions together, we need only to consider one of the most important ends of our presentation. Our gospel call must include a call to repentance, correct? But repent for what? All of our sins or only some? Of course, we cannot list them all, even as believers. That is not what I mean. But consider this:

Would it not be the most evasive sort of gospel presentation that “calls to repentance” only by avoiding the very sins most treasured in the heart and obvious life of our hearers? Do you see where I am going? Of course you do by now, because the sins buried in our so-called exposition are precisely those that Jerry Bridges once called “respectable sins.”3 Now he had in mind things that were common and refined in suburbia, such as gossip and gluttony and callous consumerism. This was the refinement of a culture that is now passing away. What passes for a “respectable sin” today has been determined by Progressive Christianity. Consequently, the sins most in need of public calls to repentance today are precisely those which the Revolution calls its virtues.

Perhaps that is really what is meant by those who can only say, “This world is not our home.” It may be that we have settled into a kind of Gnostic-gospel-centeredness that is oblivious to the actual world in which the real sins in need of atonement are so very transgendered, and so very political. 

It is all very heartless in any event. Pastoral ministry does not merely point to Christ at the front door, as our sacrifice for sin, but sets all of His excellencies forth.

Christ redeems in the gospel all that is good: the exemplary, the obligatory, the heroic, the masculine, the definitive, the earthy—all redeemed in Christ. Grace redeems nature, remember? In fact, grace perfects nature. Not all of it except for the politically controversial. No. All of it, or else, for you, Christ is not Lord of all.

Now one last word about that heartlessness.

I mentioned those uses of the law, and of course the reader may only have had that civil use of the law in mind. That is truly neglected here. Indeed, it is slandered in the “gospel-centered” evasion. But then there is that third use of the law. How should we then live? As a Christian parent, how should one speak to their son or daughter to prevent the deception of transgenderism? How should the parent relate if the child is too far gone along that path? How should we counsel those who are being bombarded with the notion that “whiteness” is a kin to the unpardonable sin? How should Christian civil leaders lead in their own communities as the twin tendencies of statism and globalism further coalesce into an unprecedented brand of tyranny? And by what law of Scripture are we bound to live with fellows who have cast off all recognizable bonds of civility—Christian or otherwise? To deny pastors the authority to speak to these issues, especially when Scripture most certainly does, is so far removed from true exposition and the true gospel that we must begin to call this what it is. 

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1. On a recent question-and-answer session on his daily radio program, Truth For Life, Alistair Begg—the senior pastor at Parkside Church near Cleveland, Ohio—advised a grandmother that it was permissible to attend the wedding of her transgender grandson, so long as he “knew where she stood.” 

2. As to understanding that there are moral law dimensions in all three of the uses of the law, one must make a thorough study of a doctrine of the law of God. See my articles on The Idea of the Law of God and The Perpetuity and Uses of the Law.

3. Jerry Bridges, Respectable Sins (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2007).