God’s Word Must Govern Our Definition of What Is Good

“The sum of your word is truth,

and every one of your righteous rules endures forever.” — Psalm 119:160 (ESV)

One of the great dangers facing the church in every generation is the temptation to call something good simply because it appears good to us. Human beings naturally evaluate actions according to what seems reasonable, compassionate, fair, or beneficial. But Scripture repeatedly warns us that our judgment has been corrupted by sin. Proverbs 14:12 says, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.” Therefore, Christians cannot allow personal feelings, cultural expectations, or changing social standards to determine what is good. If God is good, and if His Word is true, then God alone possesses the authority to define goodness. The Christian does not stand over Scripture and decide which commands seem loving; we stand under Scripture and allow God to teach us what love actually is. 

We see this principle clearly in 1 Kings 20. God had given Ahab victory over Ben-hadad, king of Syria, despite Ahab's wickedness and Israel's unfaithfulness. Yet after Ben-hadad was defeated, Ahab spared him and entered into a covenant with him. From a purely human perspective, Ahab's decision might appear merciful. Ben-hadad humbled himself before Ahab, and Ahab responded by calling him “my brother” (1 Kings 20:32). Ahab placed him in his chariot, negotiated with him, made a covenant with him, and released him. Someone observing the situation without God's revelation might have praised Ahab for showing compassion to a defeated enemy. But God did not praise Ahab. Through His prophet, the Lord declared, “Thus says the LORD, ‘Because you have let go out of your hand the man whom I had devoted to destruction, therefore your life shall be for his life, and your people for his people’” (1 Kings 20:42). What appeared merciful in human eyes was rebellion in the eyes of God.

That distinction is crucial. Ahab's problem was not that mercy is evil. Scripture repeatedly praises mercy. Jesus Himself said, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy” (Matthew 5:7). Ahab's problem was that he attempted to exercise mercy contrary to the revealed will of God. He acted as though his judgment were wiser and more compassionate than God's judgment. He effectively placed his definition of goodness above God's command. Whenever we do the same, we repeat the fundamental error of Ahab. We may call our actions loving, gracious, tolerant, or compassionate, but no amount of good-sounding terminology can transform disobedience into righteousness.

This is particularly important because we live in a culture that constantly uses words such as love, compassion, justice, kindness, and acceptance. Christians should cherish these words because they describe virtues deeply rooted in the character of God. Yet our culture increasingly wants these virtues separated from the God who defines them. The result is a definition of love determined primarily by human feelings and desires. Love becomes affirmation. Compassion becomes refusing to confront destructive behavior. Kindness becomes silence concerning sin. Acceptance becomes approval. But Christians cannot allow the world to redefine biblical virtues and then pressure the church into adopting those definitions. Isaiah 5:20 warns, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness.”

Scripture does not merely command us to love; Scripture tells us what love looks like. Paul writes that love “does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth” (1 Corinthians 13:6). Those words destroy the idea that biblical love means unconditional affirmation. Love cannot celebrate what God calls wrongdoing because love rejoices with truth. If something is sinful, encouraging someone to continue in it cannot ultimately be loving. We may speak gently. We should be patient. We must treat every person with dignity as one made in the image of God. But we cannot tell someone that rebellion against God is good simply because telling the truth might be uncomfortable. Love and truth are not enemies. Biblical love is inseparable from biblical truth.

Jesus provides the perfect example. No one has ever loved sinners more deeply than Christ, yet no one spoke about sin more truthfully. When the woman caught in adultery stood before Him, Jesus did not condemn her to the punishment demanded by those seeking to trap Him, but neither did He redefine adultery to make her comfortable. He told her, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more” (John 8:11). Grace did not require Jesus to call her sin righteousness. His mercy moved her away from sin rather than encouraging her to remain in it. That is an important pattern for Christian compassion: we do not demonstrate love by making people comfortable in the very things from which Christ came to save them.

This is why we cannot love someone by encouraging what God calls sin. If Scripture identifies something as sinful, the church does not possess the authority to pronounce it righteous. Whether the issue involves sexual immorality, greed, drunkenness, adultery, pride, bitterness, dishonesty, hatred, idolatry, or any other sin, God's judgment remains authoritative. Paul asks in Romans 6:1–2, “Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?” Grace is not God's permission to remain enslaved to sin. Grace is God's power and favor toward sinners who could never save themselves. The gospel does not merely forgive us; it begins transforming us.

Christians also do not honor God by refusing to say what God has clearly said. There is a temptation to remain silent because we fear being thought judgmental, unkind, or intolerant. Certainly, Christians can speak truth harshly, proudly, or hypocritically, and Scripture condemns such behavior. We are commanded to speak “the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15). But notice that Paul does not solve the problem of unloving truth by eliminating truth. Instead, truth must be spoken with love. Biblical courage and biblical compassion belong together. Our manner should be gracious, but our message must remain faithful.

Paul understood this responsibility when he addressed the Ephesian elders in Acts 20. Looking back over his ministry among them, he said, “I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27). That must remain the responsibility of the church today. We do not have permission to preach only the portions of Scripture that our generation finds agreeable. If God's Word confronts our politics, we must preach it. If God's Word confronts our sexuality, we must preach it. If God's Word confronts our marriages, finances, ambitions, prejudices, pride, parenting, entertainment, or priorities, we must preach it. The authority of Scripture means that every area of life stands beneath God's Word.

Our compassion, therefore, must always be governed by truth. Jesus prayed to the Father concerning His disciples, “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:17). Notice that Jesus did not say merely that God's Word contains truth or that it becomes true when human beings agree with it. God's Word is truth. This is why the doctrine of biblical inerrancy matters so deeply. If Scripture is the breathed-out Word of the God who cannot lie (2 Timothy 3:16; Titus 1:2), then the Bible does not need to be corrected by the moral sensitivities of each new generation. Rather, every generation needs its moral sensitivities corrected by the Bible.

This requires humility because there will be moments when God's Word contradicts what feels right to us. Ahab illustrates what happens when human judgment becomes supreme. He apparently believed he had sufficient reason to spare Ben-hadad, but God's command had already settled the matter. Christians must learn to say, “If my feelings disagree with Scripture, my feelings must be corrected. If my culture disagrees with Scripture, my culture is wrong. If my traditions disagree with Scripture, my traditions must change.” This is not intellectual arrogance. Quite the opposite: it is humility before God. Isaiah 66:2 describes the person upon whom God looks favorably as “he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.” 

At the same time, submission to Scripture must never turn Christians into cold or self-righteous people. We do not confront sin because we believe ourselves morally superior. We confront sin as sinners who have been rescued by grace. Paul reminds Titus that “we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures” (Titus 3:3). What changed us was not our superiority but “the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior” (Titus 3:4). Therefore, when we speak biblical truth to others, we should do so with tears rather than arrogance, patience rather than irritation, and hope rather than condemnation. The Christian says, in effect, “God's Word condemns this sin, but the same Word points us to a Savior who receives sinners.”

This brings us directly to the gospel. God's greatest demonstration of love was not pretending that our sin did not matter. If love simply meant overlooking sin, the cross would have been unnecessary. Instead, “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). At Calvary, we see both the seriousness of God's judgment against sin and the immeasurable depth of His mercy toward sinners. Christ bore the judgment deserved by His people so that God might remain “just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26). The cross therefore permanently destroys the false choice between truth and love. At the cross, God's holiness and mercy meet perfectly.

The church must recover confidence that God's commands are themselves good. We should never speak as though Scripture forces us reluctantly to hold positions we secretly wish were different. David declares, “The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul” (Psalm 19:7). God's commandments flow from God's character, and God's character is perfectly good. Therefore, when Scripture contradicts the spirit of our age, Christians should not apologize for God's Word; we should explain it carefully, defend it faithfully, obey it humbly, and proclaim it compassionately. The world does not need Christians who are embarrassed by biblical truth. It needs Christians who are so convinced of God's goodness that they trust His Word even when obedience is costly.

The lesson of Ahab and Ben-hadad therefore reaches far beyond an ancient battlefield. It confronts every Christian with a fundamental question: Who has the authority to define what is good? If we answer, “God does,” then we must allow His Word to govern our understanding of love, compassion, justice, mercy, and righteousness. We cannot love people by encouraging what God calls sin. We cannot honor God by remaining silent about what He has clearly spoken. And we cannot practice true compassion by separating compassion from truth. As Psalm 119:160 declares, “The sum of your word is truth, and every one of your righteous rules endures forever.” Cultures change. Moral fashions change. Human opinions change. But God's Word does not change.

Our calling, then, is not to make Scripture acceptable to the world but to remain faithful to the God who has spoken. We must speak truth without cruelty and show compassion without compromise. We must refuse the arrogance of believing that we are more loving than God or that our generation has discovered a morality superior to His revelation. Above all, we must point sinners ~ including ourselves ~ to Jesus Christ, where perfect truth and perfect grace meet. The church will love this generation best not by echoing everything it wants to hear, but by faithfully proclaiming everything God has said. “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Psalm 119:105). When the world grows dark and definitions of good and evil shift around us, God's Word must remain the light by which we see.