Christian Ethics by Georgia Harkness Part 1 Foundations of Christian Ethics
Chapter 5: God, Sin, and Christian Character
5. Victory over sin
Second, the Christian with a conscience must think of effects beyond himself. Not a few of those who do succeed in keeping their drinking within bounds have been influential in encouraging others to drink beyond these bounds. Paul again was right when he said, "Then let us no more pass judgment on one another, but rather decide never to put a stumbling-block or hindrance in the way of a brother. . . . It is right not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that makes your brother
stumble." (Rom. 14:13, 21.)
And third, the way of love is to put the emphasis on a positive respect for one’s body as the temple of God’s spirit, on one’s money as held in stewardship from God for constructive uses, on one’s mind as needing to be kept clear and vigorous for God’s service, on one’s spirit and all one’s social contacts as best finding active expression with "relaxation and warm fellowship" through channels that require no artificial
stimulation. The way of Christian love is not self-righteously to condemn another for holding a different view, but neither is it to surrender conviction at a point of grave concern.
On the second sin of the flesh to which reference has been made — lust in the form of overt transgression or, as Jesus saw it, the lustful look and the impure thought — I shall not say more at this point. A later chapter will deal with family relations, and there is the place to discuss it. It is enough to say here that sex, unlike alcohol, is God’s good gift and in relations of pure and holy love can be used sacramentally. Lust
becomes, therefore, the more debasing and the more sinful when what is intended for good is perverted to selfish and sensual indulgence. Only a neurotic and pleasure-mad society could commercialize and pervert it as ours does.
neighbor as well as in reorientation of the soul toward God. We shall do better to speak of this with regard to others than ourselves, lest we think of ourselves "more highly than [we] ought to think," but the fact of it is basic to Christian character.
How does this victory take place? Here again Jesus tells what we need to know. The experience of Paul and of the New Testament community and the total history of the Church gives helpful amplification if we do not distort it into supposing that the change involved in becoming a Christian must always come about in just the same way. We noted in Chapter III what Jesus made the main requirements: commitment of will, repentance, the willingness to forgive others if we would be forgiven, faith in God. Love and the doing of the works of love then become both the evidence and the obligation of a God-centered life.
Such conversion may be gradual or sudden. In the moral decisions of a lifetime that are involved in it, one of them may or may not overshadow all the rest to become the kind of dramatic reorientation that Paul had on the Damascus road. Personal decision there must be, and background as well as foreground, and in the total experience, Christian nurture,
Christian worship, and the acceptance of opportunities for Christian service play an essential part. I shall not attempt here to describe in detail what happens in conversion to the Christian life, for I have done this previously in a number of writings.7
Much is being said and written of late as to man’s basic anxiety before the precariousness of existence as the source of all his other aberrations.
While not much has been said about it in this chapter, since I believe that self-love rather than anxiety lies at the root of sin, faith and love must go hand in hand in the conquest of sin. "‘There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear." (I John 4:18.) It is the perfect love of God as this has come to us in God’s Son that conquers both fear and sin;
it is our faith and love that lead us to him. Victorious living comes through the conjunction of God’s act with our humble, obedient, trustful acceptance of his proffered gift.
Thus it comes about that no man needs helplessly to struggle under the burden of his sin, and no man ought to assume that without personal commitment to Christ he is good enough. Both courses lead to
frustration and defeat. To the degree that personal Christian experience becomes a reality — whether it is called redemption through
justification by faith or in more popular language simply "becoming a
Christian" — it makes a profound difference in personality. It touches life at its center. By it the whole of life takes on a new orientation, vitality, and power. To enter into this heritage of Christian faith at first hand, and to become a "new creation" in Christ, is the most important step that can be taken by any soul.
NOTES:
1. Institutes of the Christian Religion II, 1. 8-9. A Compend of the Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. Hugh Thomson Kerr, Jr.
(Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1939), pp. 43-44.
2. Cf. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man (New York:
Chas. Scribner’s Sons, 1943), Vol. I, ch. vii, for an elaboration of this view; also John L. Casteel, Rediscovering Prayer (New York:
Association Press, 1955), ch. 3, for an interesting application to the personal devotional life.
3. Cf. A. C. Knudson, The Principles of Christian Ethics (New York and Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1943), ch. iv.
4. Resolution on World Order and International Peace, Discipline, 1956,
¶ 2024.
5. Capital punishment is itself of very questionable Christian
justification. Though ostensibly based on the need to protect society against murder, it too often rests on the application of the lex talionis.
6. Chad Walsh and Eric Montizambert, Faith and Behavior (New York:
Morehouse-Gorham Co., 1954), p. 33.
7. See my Religious Living (New York: Association Press, 1937;
published in The
Religious Life, 1953); Understanding the Christian Faith, ch. viii;
Prayer and the Common Life (New York and Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1948), ch. 12; The Modem Rival of Christian Faith, ch. xi.
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Christian Ethics by Georgia Harkness Part 1 Foundations of Christian Ethics
Georgia Harkness was educated at Cornell University, Boston University School of Theology, studied at Harvard & Yale theological seminaries and at Union
Theological Seminary of New York. She has taught at Elmira College, Mount Holyoke, and for twelve years was professor of applied theology at Garrett Biblical Institute. In 1950 she became professor of applied theology at the Pacific School of Religion, in Berkeley, California. Published in 1957 by Abingdon Press. This book was prepared for Religion Online by Harry W. and Grace C. Adams.