"The Gospel reminds moral people that they are no closer to God than the most immoral person."
and
"The Gospel reminds immoral people they are no farther from God than the most moral person."
In my informal polling of fellow Christians I was not able to find anyone (other than my lovely wife) who disagreed with the above quotes. Some agreed outright, and others gave responses that were uncertain or conditional. But no one said, "That's completely wrong," or, "What rubbish!" or, "How can a pastor say that - the Bible teaches the opposite!"
So I think I have an uphill battle here as I try to make a biblical case for the relationship between morality and closeness to God. I will do what I can to persuade.
The Bible has much to say about moral and immoral behavior. It tells us to do the former and shun the latter. For example, Isaiah 1:16b-17a: "Cease to do evil, learn to do good," and 1 Peter 3:10b-11a: "Let him turn away from evil and do good." It would not be difficult (only time-consuming) to list a thousand Bible texts that tell us to do good things and not to do bad things. That message is on nearly every page and hard to miss.
The Bible also defines moral and immoral behaviors for us, and gives many examples. Again, we could cite a thousand texts. I will mention just one, Galatians 5:19-23, which analyzes goodness in terms of the fruit of the Spirit ("love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control") and wickedness in terms of works of the sinful nature ("sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these"). In addition to its lists of virtues and vices the Bible gives many stories - some historical, some in the form of parables - that show what moral and immoral behavior look like. King David committed adultery and schemed the death of an innocent man (2 Samuel 11). That was bad. The Samaritan generously helped a crime victim he found by the side of the road (Luke 10:29-37). That was good.
So the Bible commands us to be moral and not immoral, and it defines and illustrates morality and immorality so that we can see pretty clearly what we are supposed to do and not do. I do not think this is controversial.
My controversial point is this: in flat contradiction to the quotes above, moral people are closer to God than immoral people. Conversely, immoral people are farther away from him. So when Jesus says, "The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil" (Luke 6:45), we should understand that the good person is closer to God than the evil person. Likewise, the man who "delights in the law of the Lord and meditates on it day and night" is closer to God than the one who "walks in the counsel of the wicked, stands in the way of sinners, and sits in the seat of scoffers" (Psalm 1). The good Samaritan is closer to God than the selfish Levite. And so on and so forth.
Of course, "closeness to God" must be understood metaphorically. It is impossible to understand it otherwise, given that God is omnipresent. (Jeremiah 23:24: "'Do I not fill heaven and earth?' declares the Lord.") Technically, all things are equidistant from an omnipresent God. But I think most people grasp with intuitive ease the imagery of "nearness" or "closeness" to God as opposed to "distance" or "separation" from him. Devotional literature is full of such talk, as when William Cowper (1731 - 1800) bemoaned some sin that pushed the Spirit of God away:
Return, O Holy Dove, return
Sweet Messenger of rest
I hate the sin that made Thee mourn
And drove Thee from my breast
But does the Bible itself speak of moral behavior bringing us closer to God, and of immoral behavior separating us from him? Absolutely. It does so repeatedly.
Isaiah 59:2 says, "Your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear." The next verse gives examples of the immoral behaviors that create this distance from God: "Your hands are stained with blood, your fingers with guilt. Your lips have spoken falsely, and your tongue mutters wicked things." So lies and slander and the shedding of innocent blood make God go away.
So also does the sin of treating one's wife badly. 1 Peter 3:7 tells husbands to live with their wives in an understanding way and show them honor "so that your prayers may not be hindered." It sounds like God will not bend his ear quite so closely to a man who is mean to his wife.
Conversely, "The Lord is near [emphasis added] to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth" (Psalm 145:18). I believe the qualification "in truth" is important, because many call on God insincerely, and that insincerity is proven by their wickedness. For example, Isaiah 29:18: "These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me," and Luke 6:46: "Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?". While God separates himself from people who behave wickedly, he is near to those who call on him in truth - which is elsewhere spoken of as having "clean hands" or "pure hearts." See for example James 4:8: "Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded." James teaches that we can indeed get close to God, and that he will get close to us. But we must clean our hands and purify our hearts. Repentance is not optional if we want to be near God. It is necessary. "Without holiness no one will see the Lord" (Hebrews 12:14).
David's music director Asaph knew what it took to be near God. At the conclusion of Psalm 73 he wrote, "As for me, it is good to be near God" (verse 28), and "Those who are far from you will perish" (verse 27). Psalm 73 is particularly instructive in this regard because earlier in the poem Asaph expressed despair over the apparent futility of goodness. "Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure and washed my hands in innocence," he wrote (verse 13). Good behavior had not brought him good fortune. "All day long I have been afflicted, and every morning brings new punishments" (verse 14). Meanwhile, wicked, arrogant and violent people "have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong. They are free from common human burdens; they are not plagued by human ills" (vs. 4-5). Had Asaph gone on to conclude that wicked people not only had better luck in the short term but stayed "just as close to God" in the long term as the pure-hearted, I suppose he might have "lost his foothold" altogether (verse 2), and succumbed to nihilistic despair or narcissistic self-indulgence. But by God's grace he did not slip into that foolishness. Nor did he trespass divine boundaries tempted by the beguiling thought: "If I behave immorally, I'll be no further from God than I was before!" Asaph knew better.
If it were true that "moral people are no closer to God than the most immoral person," then we might expect that the Bible's constant admonitions to behave morally would be followed by statements that gently break to us the news that - contrary to all hope - God will draw no closer to us if we obey than if we disobey. For example, Matthew 5:8 might read, "Blessed are the pure in heart, even though their purity of heart won't bring them any closer to God than the corrupt of heart." Or Matthew 5:9 might read, "Blessed are the peacemakers, despite the fact that God will remain just as distant from them as he does from the warmongers." But of course, that is not what Jesus said. He gave rather than withheld hope of God's nearness. He said, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God," and "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God."
I would like to think that the biblical case for moral people being closer to God than immoral people has been sufficiently made at this point. If doubts linger, I can only say that there are many, many more Bible texts where those came from. But I will not belabor the point. The person who fails to see this doctrine in the verses above is unlikely to see it in a hundred more. Instead, I will try to meet some objections.
Some might point out that the pastor quoted above was not affirming that the Bible as a whole taught that the most moral person was no closer to God than immoral people: rather, it was the gospel in particular that maintained this.
But this objection cannot stand. First, it is not good theology to assume that the gospel contradicts what the rest of the Bible affirms. (It is bad pedagogy too! Pity the humble parishioner who, reading his Bible, must constantly remind himself, "Here is the principle clearly being taught - but I must remember that the gospel says the opposite." How is the poor man to know, at the end of his devotional reading, which end is up?). It is better to understand the gospel as fulfilling rather than contradicting the rest of the Bible's teachings. The Gospel writers themselves (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) regularly emphasized the theme of Jesus being the fulfillment rather than the rejection of biblical truth.
Second, it must be noted that the Bible texts cited above that establish the connection between moral behavior and closeness to God are taken from both the Old and the New Testaments. They were written both before and after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. The gospel changed many things, but it left this principle intact. To say that the relationship between good behavior and closeness to God was strictly an Old Covenant teaching (like circumcision or not eating pork) that the New Covenant rendered obsolete is simply false. Nor can we say that that "closeness to God" or "distance from him" is a principle that should be taught only to the redeemed, because unsaved people are all precisely the same distance from God. No fair reading of the texts can justify this distinction. If you look up and read the actual Bible verses - like the Sermon on the Mount - it becomes very clear that these warnings and encouragements were addressed to a mixed company of the saved and the damned.
Another response might be to say that the pastor quoted above "didn't really mean" that, according to the gospel, moral people were no closer to God than immoral people. Instead he "really meant" something else. This strikes me as misguided generosity. While it is a gracious instinct to re-interpret a sincere pastor's teaching so as to render it biblically orthodox, I'm afraid such an approach ultimately leaves us dull and no closer to the truth. It burdens us with the weary task of "guessing what he meant" rather than challenging us with the good work of "testing what he said." And maybe he actually did mean what he said! I have often found myself "reinterpreted" by people who refused to take my actual words at face value, and I have wanted to respond, "Could we review the audio tape?" or, "I chose my words carefully, and I stand by them and their plain meaning."
But in this case the actual wording in the slogans quoted above is so far from the Bible's regular teaching on the matter that we may have no choice but to do a little re-interpretation in order to get at the seed thought behind the unorthodox expression. In what follows, I will interpret the quotes above in terms of a common sermon illustration used by many evangelical preachers that depicts our standing before God.
It is called "the bridge" illustration. The idea is that our sins have opened an unbridgeable chasm between us and God. See Isaiah 59:2 above, "Your sins have separated you from God," and Romans 3:23, "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." We try to cross that bridge by our good behavior but can never get far enough. It is like sticking a six foot plank over the lip of the Grand Canyon - it won't reach the other side. Only Christ, by his righteousness and through his perfect sacrifice, bridges the gap. Through faith in him - not through sincere efforts to build ourselves a longer plank - we cross over the gap into eternal fellowship with God. Sometimes the distance between us and God is represented by the Pacific Ocean, which we try to swim across by doing good. Some bad swimmers only go 10 feet before they drown, while other very good swimmers go 10 miles or more. But none of them make it from California to Japan. The best swimmer and the worst swimmer equally need a boat to ferry them across the ocean. Mother Theresa and Adolph Hitler equally need Jesus to save their souls.
Seen from this perspective, the distance between extreme morality and extreme immorality dissolves into an irrelevance. Who cares whether you swim 10 feet or 10 miles? You are going to drown anyway. If you are going to get to Japan, there must be another way! The Christian answer is that Jesus is the Way.
And I agree that Jesus is the way, and I agree that "swimming across the ocean" is a futile idea. But the reason I still disagree with the doctrine that "moral people are no closer to God than the most immoral person, and immoral people are no farther from God than the most moral person" might be expressed through a question I would ask that presses the metaphor of the seemingly impossible ocean voyage: namely, "But what if God told us to get into the ocean and start swimming?" Because, metaphorically speaking, that is exactly what we see in Scripture.
Shortly before Jesus began his ministry, his predecessor John the Baptist "appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins" (Mark 1:4). He was one of many figures in the Bible (and throughout history) who told people to be good. For example, he said, "Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none." Tax collectors asked him what they should do, and he said, "Don't collect any more than you are required to." Soldiers asked him the same, and he said, "Don't extort money, don't accuse people falsely, and be content with your pay." (See Luke 3:10-14). That is, he gave people moral rules, a set of do's and don'ts, and told them Messiah was on the way. Some confessed their sins, repented of them, and were baptized by John. Others, in particular the notoriously corrupt religious leaders of the day, felt that they had nothing to repent of and rejected John's baptism. Their inability to feel guilt was astonishing. Scripture characterizes them as men who, among other things, enriched themselves by defrauding vulnerable widows of their homes (Luke 20:47), ordered the execution of a man whose only crime was the experience of a miracle that led people to believe in Jesus (John 12:10-11), and deliberately sought false testimony against an innocent man so that he would be slowly tortured to death (Matthew 26:59). Small wonder John called them "a brood of vipers" (Matthew 3:7) and Jesus called them "sons of hell" (Matthew 23:15)! As a group (though certainly there were individual exceptions), they were profoundly corrupt and unable to see themselves as bad. Whenever I hear evangelical preachers depict Pharisees as "decent, moral, law-abiding men," I think, "Hmm - they must be reading a different Bible."
Scripture records a sharp contrast between people who took moral steps of obedience in response to the preaching of John and those who, despite listening to him, hardened their hearts and refused to repent of anything they did. The first group loved and accepted Jesus while the second group hated and rejected him. See Luke 7:29-30: "All the people, even the tax collectors, when they heard Jesus’ words, acknowledged that God’s way was right, because they had been baptized by John. But the Pharisees and the experts in the law rejected God’s purpose for themselves, because they had not been baptized by John."
The person who turns away from immorality when made aware of it is the one whose heart is most receptive to the gospel of grace when it comes. Just as deliberate sin hardens the heart and obscures spiritual sight, so deliberate repentance softens the heart and makes a person able to see that he is helpless apart from Christ. When C. S. Lewis reflected on his very reluctant conversion from atheism to theism and then to Christianity, he wrote, "It is significant that this long-evaded encounter happened at a time when I was making a serious effort to obey my conscience. No doubt it was far less serious than I supposed, but it was the most serious I had made for a long time." He learned from experience what his master George MacDonald taught so frequently: "Obedience is the opener of eyes."
And disobedience closes them. That is why I warn people to shun bad behavior of any kind. The quotes at the top of this essay are wrong - wrong through and through, utterly wrong, unbiblical, and dangerous to believe. If you behave immorally, you will not find yourself at precisely the same distance from God as the man who makes a sincere effort to obey his conscience. Instead, you will find yourself further away. Immorality will blind your eyes, darken your heart, and confuse your intellect. It may even send you so far away from God that he will some day grant your awful wish to spend your eternity apart from him.
So be good. For God's sake, be good.
