On consent, conscience, and the exercise of freedom
We hear a great deal about consenting adults. And rightly so. Consent matters. It acknowledges that another person possesses dignity, freedom, and the right to make decisions concerning his or her own life.
But consent answers only one question: Did we agree?
It does not necessarily answer another: Was what we agreed to do right?
Two people may freely agree to do something good. They may just as freely agree to do something wrong. Their agreement does not, by itself, determine the morality of their action.
Ananias and Sapphira provide a sobering example. They agreed together to misrepresent their gift to the early church. Their agreement was mutual. Their deception was mutual. And Peter asked Sapphira why they had agreed together to test the Spirit of the Lord (Acts 5:9).
Their consent did not make their conduct righteous.
The Law and the Heart
We encounter a similar distinction in our understanding of law.
The Declaration of Independence speaks of governments deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Consent is essential to the legitimacy of government, but even the Declaration speaks of just powers. The consent of the governed does not make every governmental action just.
Nor does legality establish morality.
Something may be legal and still be wrong. Something may be illegal and yet morally necessary. The Hebrew midwives who refused Pharaoh's command to kill the male Hebrew infants understood that distinction long before Peter declared, “We must obey God rather than people” (Acts 5:29).
Law has its place. It restrains wrongdoing, protects people, and provides order. But law necessarily contains an element of coercion. It can require or prohibit conduct through the threat of consequences.
It cannot, by itself, create a righteous heart.
There is a difference between doing what is right because the law requires it and doing what is right because it is right.
And there is a difference between refraining from wrongdoing because we fear punishment and refraining because we love what is good.
Jeremiah anticipated something greater than external compliance when he spoke of God's instruction being written upon the hearts of his people (Jeremiah 31:33).
The goal is not merely obedience under compulsion. It is faithfulness arising from within.
The Importance of Circumstances
But moral reasoning is not always as simple as identifying a rule and applying it without qualification.
Circumstances matter.
Consider marriage. Scripture presents sexual intimacy within marriage as good. Yet marriage does not mean that either spouse has surrendered the freedom to consent to a particular expression of intimacy.
The relationship provides the appropriate context. Mutual consent is essential to the particular act. And love governs how each spouse treats the other.
An otherwise permissible act can become wrong when imposed without consent.
Thus, consent may be necessary without being sufficient.
The same distinction applies elsewhere. An action that is ordinarily appropriate may become inappropriate because of its circumstances, its consequences, or its effect upon another person.
This is not necessarily moral relativism. The underlying moral principles may remain constant even when their application differs.
Indeed, the ability to distinguish between principle and circumstance is essential to moral discernment.
Reading Paul's Letters
This is particularly important when we turn to the apostle Paul.
We sometimes read his letters as though they were chapters in a systematic textbook of Christian doctrine and conduct.
But they were letters.
They were written to particular people, in particular places, facing particular circumstances.
The Corinthians were divided over leadership, struggling with questions of marriage and sexuality, disputing food offered to idols, and misunderstanding the exercise of spiritual gifts.
The Galatians faced questions about circumcision, the law, and the freedom of Gentile believers.
Philemon received a deeply personal appeal concerning Onesimus.
Paul was not writing in a vacuum. He was addressing the lives of people he knew, or communities whose circumstances had been reported to him.
In fact, when he writes in 1 Corinthians 7:1, “Now in response to the matters you wrote about,” he reminds us that we possess only one side of an ongoing conversation.
We do not have the Corinthians' letter.
That should encourage a measure of humility in our interpretation.
We must ask not only What did Paul say? but also Why did he say it? To whom? Under what circumstances? And what enduring principle was he applying?
The occasional nature of Paul's letters does not deprive them of authority. But it does require us to distinguish the enduring truth from the particular situation in which that truth was expressed.
Everything Is Permissible
Twice in 1 Corinthians, Paul addresses the claim that everything is permissible.
In 1 Corinthians 6:12, he responds by asking whether something is beneficial and whether it exercises mastery over him.
In 1 Corinthians 10:23, he adds another consideration: Does it build up?
Then he moves beyond the individual:
“No one is to seek his own good, but the good of the other person” (1 Corinthians 10:24).
That changes the question.
It is no longer enough to ask whether I have the right to do something.
I must ask whether exercising that right is good.
Does it build up? Does it harm? Does it serve another person? Does it express love?
Paul does not abolish freedom. He calls us to exercise freedom responsibly.
In Romans 14, he recognizes that believers may reach different conclusions about matters of conscience. He does not insist that every believer adopt the same practice. Instead, he calls them to act from conviction while considering the effect of their conduct upon others.
Freedom and responsibility belong together.
What Do We Mean by Love?
But here we encounter another difficulty.
We use the word love to describe an extraordinary variety of experiences.
We love our spouses. We love our children. We love our friends. We love our pets. We love music, a favorite meal, or a beautiful sunset.
We use the same word for affection, attraction, desire, loyalty, compassion, commitment, pleasure, and self-sacrifice.
These experiences are not identical. Yet our language gathers them beneath a single word.
And language does more than communicate our thoughts. It helps shape them.
We cannot simply undo the cultural and linguistic inheritance through which we understand love. It is woven into the way we think, speak, and relate to one another.
But we can recognize its limitations.
We can mistake affection for love. We can confuse desire with devotion. We can assume that making someone happy is necessarily an expression of love.
And we can persuade ourselves that because two people love one another, whatever they agree to do must be right.
But calling something love does not make it good any more than calling something consensual makes it righteous.
This is where Paul's description of love in 1 Corinthians 13 becomes particularly important.
Paul does not merely tell us what love feels like. He describes what love does.
Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not insist on its own way. It does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth.
Love is not indifferent to what is right.
Nor is love merely the gratification of another person's desires.
Love seeks the genuine good of another, even when doing so requires restraint, sacrifice, correction, or the surrender of something we ourselves desire.
But even that understanding requires discernment. We can sincerely believe that we are acting lovingly and still misunderstand what is good for another person.
Paul recognized this when he prayed that the Philippians' love would abound in knowledge and discernment (Philippians 1:9–10).
Love must be informed by truth.
And for the Christian, that brings us to the character of God.
John does not merely tell us that God loves. He tells us that God is love (1 John 4:8).
That reverses the direction of our reasoning.
We do not begin with everything our culture calls love and then attribute those qualities to God.
We come to know God, and in knowing him, we begin to understand what love truly means.
Beyond Permission
We began with consent.
Consent is good. It matters. It is often indispensable to morally acceptable conduct.
But consent is not the source of morality.
Neither is legislation.
Nor is the mere existence of personal freedom sufficient to establish that every exercise of that freedom is wise or loving.
The question is not simply whether we may do something.
It is whether we ought to do it.
And perhaps even that question does not take us quite far enough.
We may do what is right because the law requires it.
We may do what is right because we have come to recognize it as right.
But Christian love invites us further—not away from righteousness, but into its fullest expression.
We do what is right because we love God and because we love the people whom God loves.
These are not necessarily successive stages of moral development. Obedience, conviction, and love can operate together. Indeed, they ought to become increasingly inseparable.
Jesus connected love and obedience when he told his disciples, “If you love me, you will keep my commands” (John 14:15).
And Paul wrote that love does no wrong to a neighbor and therefore fulfills the law (Romans 13:10).
Love does not make wrongdoing right. Nor does it eliminate the need for discernment.
Rather, love gives direction to our freedom.
Paul expresses this beautifully in Galatians 5:13:
“For you were called to be free, brothers and sisters; only don't use this freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but serve one another through love.”
Freedom is not an escape from moral responsibility.
It is an opportunity to exercise that responsibility willingly.
Not because someone has compelled us.
Not because a law threatens punishment.
Not merely because another person has agreed.
But because we have come to recognize what is good, and because love moves us to seek that good for others.
The question is not merely, “May I do this?”
Nor even, “Is this right?”
The fuller question is, “What does love, informed by truth, require of me?”
