I just wanted to share an essay I wrote for one of my classes this week in response to the question of “What is the task of Christian ethics?”

The task of Christian ethics is to get our house in order so that we may be redemptively hospitable to the sin-ravaged sojourner. Christians are also sojourners, but Scripture casts the church in the type of a household. Our household is to be characterized as a place where we are known for our love for one another because of our love for God. God is to be the authority and love is to be the ethos that exudes from every member of His household. We love others because we have been loved and commanded to share it with others.

The command to love others rouses us to action as we create redemptively hospitable contexts wherever two or three of us are gathered. We act redemptively because we have been redeemed. We oppose devastation and all that brings death because we have been made whole and resurrected. We welcome the devastated and the dying wherever we find them because we remember how exhausted we were when someone brought us in. Christians must say no to some things because we’ve already said yes to Jesus who came to save the world and not to condemn it.

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