“Why not say — as we are being slanderously reported as saying and as some claim that we say — ‘Let us do evil that good may result?’ Their condemnation is deserved” Rom. 3:8 (NIV).
Paul was being accused unjustly of saying “Let us do evil that good may result.” He was not guilty of this. Could we be?
All too often we feel our goal is so pure, our end is so lofty, that we are justified doing whatever is necessary to help God achieve what we perceive to be His will. Even if it is His will, His ways are not our ways, nor His thoughts our thoughts. We need to trust in the Lord with all our hearts and not lean on our own understanding. If God is in charge, we need to realize we are not. He does not need us to violate His principles to achieve what we believe to be His will.
Consider King Asa when he faced the largest army ever described in scripture. He said, “Help us, 0 LORD our God; for we rest on thee. So the LORD smote the Ethiopians before Asa.” In the very next chapter, which takes place some 20 years later, we find King Asa is being rebuked by God’s messenger. This time Asa has relied on the King of Syria, instead of on the Lord. Asa could not take criticism even though it was from God, and he went into a rage and put God’s seer in prison. His end of defeating Israel seemed to have justified his means of hiring the Syrians but it was not God’s will. “Asa was diseased in his feet, yet in his disease he sought not to the LORD, but to the physicians.” He started out so good when he relied on God. He ended up a sick old man persecuting God’s messenger. All because he thought the end justified the means.
A number of kings broke God’s commands not to marry foreign, idolatrous wives. The kings no doubt felt the end justified the means because the purpose was a benefit to the nation — to promote peace between nations, or in the case of Jehoshaphat, to encourage the reuniting of the divided kingdom. God is able to bring peace, win wars, reunite kingdoms, without man violating His precepts to accomplish the purpose. It is always wrong to disobey God’s commands in order to do what we perceive is God’s will. And it so often backfires, as it did for the kings who married wicked women who led them into idolatry.
Our words and actions are important. Moses spoke unadvisedly with his lips and smote the rock. The water gushed out, his end accomplished, but he was kept out of the promised land. His means were wrong.
Jesus admonishes us, “But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.” “Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes” warns Isaiah.
We may be convinced that what we want to accomplish is God’s will, but this should never cause us to justify doing evil that good may come. God is able to bring about His desired end without us sinning and taking matters into our own hands to help Him.
None of us is above the Lord’s commands. We must “do justly.” Asa could not take criticism even from God’s seer who said, “For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him.” Let us listen to the wise counsel of God. “Be not wise in your own conceits,” admonishes Paul. Solomon exhorts us to “Trust in the LORD with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding.”
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One