Laxity in Christian ethics is a strategy that tends toward permissiveness. Those who use this strategy are slow to identify and condemn sins in the modern world. As a result, they frequently end up permitting what the Bible prohibits and overlooking what the Bible commands.

Christians are predisposed to lax readings of Scripture for at least two reasons. Sometimes, they wrongly believe that the situations in the Bible are so different from situations in modern life that the Bible cannot be applied to our day. At other times, they believe that the situations in the Bible are too vague to be applied to modern life.

Think of a house with a large yard surrounded by hazardous wilderness. The house represents those things that are clearly commanded or permitted in Scripture. The wilderness represents those things that are clearly forbidden in Scripture. The yard represents those commands and prohibitions that, to one degree or another, are unclear to the reader. Now suppose we want to build a fence around those things that Scripture permits so that we can define the boundaries of Christian morality. A strategy of laxity would tend to build the fence as close as possible to the edge of the wilderness to permit the things that are unclear.

But there’s a problem with this lax practice. Not everything that is unclear to us is permitted. And if we put the fence at the edge of the wilderness, we’ll almost certainly permit things that Scripture actually forbids. For example, in Jesus’ day, some people believed that so long as they did not commit physical adultery, they were not violating the commandment against adultery. They were lax in seeing the true implications of this commandment for situations other than physical infidelity. But in Matthew 5:28, Jesus corrected them, saying:

Everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

When we fail to learn the facts, goals and means related to the commandment against adultery, we can easily deny that both adultery and lust violate God’s will. So, one of the best ways to avoid this error is to understand both the Bible’s similarity to the modern world and its clarity. Whenever we’re tempted to think that the Bible is inapplicable because its situations are so different from ours, we need to look more closely at the facts, goals and means related to Scripture, as well as the facts, goals and means of modern life. If we do, we may discover some correspondence that helps us apply Scripture. But even if the situations of Scripture and modern life still appear to be different, we shouldn’t conclude that the Bible is inapplicable. Rather, we should admit that we don’t yet know enough to come to a conclusion, and we should keep investigating.

On the other hand, with regard to the Bible’s vagueness, the Bible also teaches that Scripture is sufficiently clear. The Bible is not equally clear in all areas, and not every person can understand every passage. But Scripture is always clear enough for us to draw ethical applications from it. So, whenever we’re tempted to think that the Bible is unclear, we should remember that the fault lies with us, not with Scripture