Kootenai Church Sunday School: Christian Ethics

Dave Rich explores love as a Christian virtue that pervades all moral decisions and relationships. This comprehensive virtue extends to believers and the lost, demonstrated through obedience, gratitude, and sacrificial service modeled after Christ's atoning love. Love as a Christian virtue means imitating God, who first loved us, fulfilling the law through neighbor love, and speaking truth lovingl...

Dave Rich explores love as a Christian virtue flowing from God's eternal nature within the Trinity. This love extends from the Father's love for the Son before creation, and it reaches believers through union with Christ. Christian love toward God manifests primarily through obedience to His commandments and covenant loyalty. Love as a Christian virtue includes profound gratitude for redemption fr...

Dave Rich examines faith as a Christian virtue rooted in knowledge, assent, and trust in God's promises. Beyond justifying faith that receives salvation through Christ's righteousness, believers cultivate faith as a Christian virtue throughout sanctification. This active faith demonstrates itself through obedient works, as illustrated by Abraham and Rahab. Without faith as a Christian virtue, plea...

Dave Rich examines virtue ethics within Christian teaching, contrasting secular approaches with biblical principles. While godless virtue ethics lacks authority and struggles with practical guidance, Christian virtue ethics finds its foundation in God's character and Christ's perfect example. Scripture emphasizes moral excellence through passages such as 2 Peter 1:3-8, which call believers to cult...

Dave Rich examines the glory of God as the central purpose of Christian living in this lesson on Christian ethics. The glory of God represents the ultimate telos—the motivation and purpose—behind every ethical decision believers make. Throughout Scripture —from Psalm 86 to Revelation 4 —the glory of God emerges as the reason for creation and the believer's chief end. The Hebrew word kavod and the...

Dave Rich examines situationism, the ethical system popularized by Joseph Fletcher, which claims that love is the only moral absolute. Through careful biblical analysis, Rich demonstrates why situationism fails as a Christian ethic despite its appealing simplicity. Fletcher's system collapses ethical decision-making into a single principle: do whatever seems most loving in any situation. However,...

Dave Rich examines the foundational ethical frameworks of deontology and teleology through a Christian lens. Deontology emphasizes rules-based ethics where acts conform to authoritative commands, while teleology focuses on purposes and intended results. Rich explores how secular systems like utilitarianism and ethical egoism attempt to establish moral authority apart from God, yet ultimately fail...

Dave Rich examines the fundamental question of what makes a thing good by contrasting voluntarism vs. essentialism through the lens of Scripture. The discussion addresses whether God wills something because it is good, or whether something is good because God wills it. Through careful theological analysis, Rich demonstrates that God's immutable nature resolves this dilemma—His will is eternal, unc...

This introduction to Christian ethics explores the foundational principles of biblical morality. The lesson examines three categories of ethics: descriptive, normative, and meta-ethics, with particular focus on understanding how Christians should approach ethical questions. Christian ethics differs fundamentally from secular philosophy because believers possess Scripture as their authoritative sou...