Freedom for Obedience: Evangelical Ethics in Contemporary Times

The Christian ethic…is an ethic that cannot be assimilated into the moral consensus of the wider community…. The way of the cross cannot be reconciled with the way of the world, just as the gospel cannot be conjoined with the laws that gave stability to social order… The thesis of this book is that human justice can never be a substitute for divine justification…but it can be a sign and witness to the justifying grace of God in Jesus Christ. Humanitarian works can never reach the heights of deeds of sacrificial love and mercy, but they can point to this higher righteousness and awaken a thirst for it… We must always be on guard against two perils: the Scylla of legalism and rigorism and Charybdis of antinomianism. An ethics of the divine commandment, by uniting law and grace, the imperative and the indicative, shows how we can live the authentic Christian life in obedience to the highest, which is not a law but a person, not an ideal but the reality of the New Being, the power of crucified love, as we see this in Jesus Christ. - (from Freedom for Obedience)