All or nothing.

Like so many other things taught by the Bible, Christian ethics is at its core terrifically paradoxical, and that’s why so many people (myself included) so regularly get it wrong.

First, the Bible calls each of us to an incredibly demanding standard of personal holiness, not indulging in anything offensive to God. But this naturally leads to a problem. In our quest for personal purity, we tend to surround ourselves with other people who are also striving for purity and to condemn and ostracize those who are not. This is the heresy that tends to beguile Christian conservatives.

And so, second, the Bible also calls each of us to an incredibly demanding standard of relational holiness, deliberately seeking out and nurturing relationships precisely with those people who are not personally holy. But this also can lead to a problem taken on its own. In our desire to be with people, we can forget about the need for living properly and act as if such standards don’t matter at all, ostracizing people who do care about personal purity. This is the heresy that tends to beguile Christian liberals.

Those who embrace only the first principle miss the fact that real goodness isn’t merely a matter of self-mastery, but also of seeking to restore those who do not have it. Where is divine grace if we only love the loveable? But those who embrace only the second principle miss the fact that it is only by other people being so wrong that us loving them becomes so right. Why is divine grace special if everyone is loveable?

It is only by continuously pondering how the Gospel embodies both principles that we can ever hope to avoid the dangers of either principle on its own.