~ Taken from Reflections on Second Timothy ~
An example of Christian compromise in the area of ethics is graded absolutism. In this prevalent system of ethics, first, God’s commands are prioritized, often not according to revelation but according to man’s opinion. Second, many situations are said to present dilemmas, according to man’s judgment, in which two divine commands (or at least two) seem to apply, but a person must violate one of them in order to obey the rest. Third, the command that is regarded to be the higher one is obeyed, and the other one is broken, while the breaking of it is, without biblical warrant for saying so, not regarded as sin. Graded absolutism is in reality guided relativism.
The rebellion is quite explicit, but the blasphemy is implied. That is, when God gave the commandments, he did not have the intelligence or the foresight to realize that they would generate ethical dilemmas in so many situations, in which it would be impossible to obey all relevant commandments. But it appears that man detects these dilemmas rather easily. We may not be able to kill God, but we can at least work around him. So we prioritize his commandments, sometimes according to his revelation, sometimes according to our own judgment, and decide to obey only those that we consider feasible in any situation.
Can he expect more from us? What, total obedience to every command in every situation? Does God really think that he is God? What if someone knocks on the door and demands to know the location of a friend so that he may murder him? This is the classic test case. Is it not more important to protect a man’s life, than to tell the truth, although truth is the principle by which God functions, by which he establishes the value of life, and by which he testifies to us the gospel of grace? But there is no way to obey both commands, is there? What did you say? We should attempt to subdue the attacker, or refuse to disclose the information and risk suffering torture, or even sacrifice our own life to save the friend? You must be joking. We only gave you two options to choose from. Man-centered thinking cannot process selfless courage and sacrifice. Stop confusing us.
Consider what this means for Jesus Christ. Scripture says that he was tempted, but he never sinned. What would this mean according to the proponents of graded absolutism? They say that divine commands often contradict due to the circumstances in which they apply, and when they contradict, the right thing to do is to obey the higher command, whereas to disobey the lower command does not count as sin. This means that, in their view, Jesus could have killed hundreds of thousands of people with his bare hands – men, women, and children – but as long as he was obeying a higher command in each case, he never sinned or murdered anyone. Or, he could have committed fornication, even homosexual acts, hundreds of thousands of times. He could have raped thousands of women and children. He could have stolen hundreds of thousands of times, and lied hundreds of thousands of times. If he was compelled to do so in each case in order to follow a higher command, then he did not sin.
At least by implication, this is their idea of the sinlessness of Christ. If they do not abandon graded absolutism after this has been clearly and repeatedly explained to them, then they should be tried before the church and excommunicated. People who know that their doctrine implies this blasphemy about Christ and still insist on it cannot be considered Christians. And all those who spare them share in their sin. The only correct view is to acknowledge that God’s commands never contradict one another, and that it is always logically possible to obey all of them.
Recommended:
Graded Absolutism
Double Graded Absolutism