Adjust Your Vision: Seeing Black And White Where The World Wants Gray

But for you and me the more attractive and dangerous lies are generally more subtle — things that draw less attention when we accept them because they seem so right and reasonable, or because they fit in so easily with the society we live in. A good place to see this at work if you frequent the internet is the question and answer section of the WELS web site. I read that pretty regularly, and it’s revealing how the same issues keep coming up — things like infant baptism, the roles of men and women, sexual morality, and so on. Frequently what the questioners are really looking for is not what God clearly says in his Word on a subject, but for an acceptable way around what God clearly says in his Word.

Still, no matter what it is or how attractive a lie is to us, what it comes down to is accepting the false idea that certain truths of God’s Word are negotiable or can be ignored when we think we have good enough reasons. Take the Christian who decides to sleep with someone he or she is not married to — is it because he or she never heard that the Sixth Commandment condemns such things? Not likely. Or consider believers who knowingly leave a church where the truth of God’s Word is purely and unashamedly taught for a church that mixes truth with error — they have their reasons, of course, but the end result is still that they have willingly submitted themselves to lies told in God’s name and told themselves that the Lord won’t mind. But he does mind. He says, “Let the one who has my word speak it faithfully.” No one has the right to add, subtract, or change God’s Word. No one, no matter his or her reasons, has any business calling “gray” what the Lord has laid forth in black and white.

III. In fact, it’s quite foolish to do so, isn’t it? No one wants to be on the receiving end of “a hammer that breaks a rock into pieces.” Now sure, we grant that there’s a lot of false doctrine out there that is believed and even taught with the best of intentions — people just don’t know the truth — but innocent motives still can’t make human lies into the Word of God.

Because there is a fundamental difference between God’s Word and man’s ideas, not just in content, but also in quality. Let the false prophets share what they think or imagine God has said and compare their words to what he has actually said. There’s no real comparison — their words are like straw, chaff, cornhusks, banana peels — things of no real value — and God’s Word is the grain, the kernel, the fruit — nourishing, healthy stuff that we need for life.

In God’s Word we find the true account of his law — we read not only what he really wants us to do and not to do, we also discover that all his commands are rooted — not in some kind of kill-joy spirit — but in his love for us and his desire to bless us. We also find the terrible pronouncements of what happens to those who do not obey his law every day and in every way — death and an eternity separated from God’s love in hell. But even those words of justice and damnation are backed by God’s love, because he warns us only so that we will turn from every sort of sin and turn to him for forgiveness and salvation.