Is the concept of choosing the "lesser of two evils" biblical?

The light of these faithful Jews was far short of what the Christian ought to have now: they had only that revelation of God which was the portion of Israel. But faith always understands God: whether there is little light or much, it seeks and finds the guidance of God. And these men were in the exercise of a very simple faith. The emperor had put forth a decree that was inconsistent with the foundation of all truth — the one true God. Israel was called expressly to maintain that Jehovah was such, and not idols. Here was a king who had commanded them to fall down and worship an image. They dare not sin; they must obey God rather than man. It is nowhere said, that we must ever disobey man. God must be obeyed — whatever the channel, God always. If I do a thing, ever so right in itself, on the mere ground that I have a right to disobey man under certain circumstances, I am doing the lesser of two evils. The principle for a Christian man is never to do evil at all. He may fail, as I do not deny; but I do not understand a man quietly settling down that he must accept any evil whatever. It is a heathenish idea. An idolater that had not revealed light of God could know no better. Yet you will find Christian persons using the present confession of the condition of the Church as an excuse for persevering in known evil, and saying, Of two evils we must choose the lesser! But I maintain that, whatever the difficulty may be, there is always the path of God for the godly to walk in. Why then do I find practical difficulty? Because I wish to spare myself. If I compound for even a little evil, the broad way of ease and honour lies open, but I sacrifice God and come under the power of Satan. It was just the advice that Peter gave our Lord when He spoke of being put to death. "Far be it from thee — pity thyself, — Lord." So with the Christian. By doing a little evil, by compromising the conscience, by avoiding the trial that obeying God always entails, no doubt a person may thus often avoid a good deal of the world's enmity, and gain its praise, because he does well to himself. But if the eye is single in this, God always must have His rights, always be owned in the soul as having the first place. If God is compromised by anything required of me, then I must obey God rather than man. Where this is held fast, the path is perfectly plain. There may be danger, possibly even death staring us in the face, as it was on this occasion. The king was incensed that these men should dare to say, "O Nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter." Not careful to answer him! And what were they careful for? It was a question that concerned God. Their care was to "render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." They were in the very spirit of that word of Christ before it was given. They had walked dutifully in the place the king had assigned them: there was no charge against them. But now there arose a question that deeply affected their faith, and they felt it. It was God's glory that had been interfered with, and they trusted in Him.

It is easy to extol and natural to justify whatever religious system we have been born and bred in; but this is the order of the flesh, not of the Spirit. Neither is it wise nor safe to take for granted or to evade so serious a question, the glory of the Lord being concerned in the matter. What I desire for myself and for God's people, if it please Him to give it the least weight in the hearts and consciences of any, is, that we may feel more deeply the common sin of the Church, of that which here below bears the name of Christ, that we may confess it to God and to one another, and that we may cease from known evil through His grace, whatever may be the sacrifice. May we be kept from the common but unholy maxim of choosing the lesser of two evils, a procedure on which God never put His seal, and which faith never can accept.

It is not enough in the ministry of Christ that one should have good and holy ends before one; the means ought to be as unexceptional as the avowed aim: where it is not so, where the measure adopted to attain the object are unworthy of Christ, it is to be feared that the real end in view is no better. At any rate, and always, the man of God must consider habitually, and with rigour, as before God the ways he pursues, lest the enemy entrap him into the hateful snare of doing evil that good may come, which is sure ere long to emerge into the blindness of unmitigated evil in both ways and ends, to the deep dishonour of Him Whose name is made to cover all. Oh, what has not been done "to His greater glory"! The day will declare in Christendom at least as great wrongs against God and man, as in heathenism, and with far greater hypocrisy.

So, in the apostasy of Saul in 1 Samuel 15, we find the same basis of judgment - "Why didst thou not obey the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice"; even as we find its principle and its perfection in our Lord's constant walk. It is the character of the believer's sanctification - sanctified unto obedience and the blood of sprinkling of Jesus Christ; 1 Peter 1:2. This is that to which the believer is sanctified; this the purpose, the object, of his sanctification: so, where the contrary state is spoken of in Ephesians 2, "Wherein in times past ye walked according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience."

6 Nor does anything ever affect this essential principle: nothing but sin can draw a man out of it. The doing our own will is always sin, always the acting of the old man, not subject to God or it would do His will, not its own - the nature which does not bring in God, but acts for itself. The object of obedience may be in question, but self-will is always wrong. Thus Peter, when charged before the high priest's council with disobedience to its behests, does not plead a right to do his own will - a right to do what he pleased; he had no such right. As towards God, it would have been the expression of self-will; he would not have been honouring God therein. His word was not, 'I have a right to do what I like without reference to you'; but, "We ought to obey God rather than men." It would have been really disobedience to have obeyed them. God would have been disobeyed in the result. Peter would have acquiesced, yea, taken a leading part in disobedience, as far as he was concerned.

Scripture is very careful to press the respect and obedience which are due to authority, but it is not a Christian's work to occupy himself with settling questions of the earth. He has nothing to do with the ways and means whereby kings or other governors have reached their place of authority. There may have been wars, and revolutions, and all sorts of questionable means for them to arrive at such exaltation. What he has to do is to obey, as a matter of fact, those who are in authority. "Let every soul be subject unto higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God." (Rom. 13:1.) Scripture does not demand obedience to the powers that ought to be, but to "the powers that be." No doubt this may expose to danger where a revolutionary leader usurps authority for a season; but God will care for results, and the duty of the Christian remains simple and sure. He obeys the powers that be. Notwithstanding, all obedience in man has its limits. There are cases where the Christian is bound, I do not say to be disobedient, still less to set up his own authority (which is never his duty), but "to obey God rather than men." (Acts 5:29.) Where earthly authority demands sin against God, for instance where a Government interferes with and forbids the stewardship of the believer in proclaiming the name of Christ, it is evident that it is a question of a lower authority setting aside the highest. Consequently the principle of obedience to which the Christian is bound forbids his being swayed by what is of man to abandon what he knows to be the will of God.

The decree would be easily understood: it was simple and brief, and the penalty was plain. Nor was there much, according to human thoughts, required. An act of prostration before the king's idol at the appointed moment, and the whole thing was over. But the decree needs a little examination. It was, as before observed, the intrusion of man's will into God's domain. Obedience to the powers that be, as may be hereafter more fully explained, is a sacred duty; but obedience to the powers that be can only be rendered within the circle of their own lawful authority. If they step out of this circle, as the rulers in Jerusalem did when they commanded the apostles not to teach or to preach in the name of Jesus, they must be told, as Peter and John answered, "We must obey God rather than men." Absolute monarch, therefore, as Nebuchadnezzar was, he stepped outside of his own domain, and claimed for himself what was due to God alone, when he issued his decree.

Peter speaks of suffering for conscience' sake, for righteousness' sake, for Christ's sake, and for evil doing. I may possibly suffer for my own sin, but I ought never to, and why? Because Christ has suffered for sins. I may suffer for conscience' sake, because there may come a question of doing something which a master orders, but which is contrary to God, and then of course Gad must be obeyed rather than man. Obedience to God is the first thing — the great ruling principle of the Christian's life. If in obeying a master I must disobey God, I am shut up to what Peter says in Acts 4, "Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken to you more than to God, judge ye." It never can be right to disobey God, in order to obey man, and the saint is never supposed to do such a thing.

Verse 16. "For what knowest thou, O wife?" etc. A truly solemn question, here put by the apostle for the double purpose of encouraging true faith, and of discountenancing that species of natural importunity which sometimes takes its outward form. The common tendency, to do evil that good may come, might easily find room to operate in cases of this kind. A Christian wife, or husband, might reasonably wish to detain a reluctant partner, in the hope of winning such to Christ. But this wish must not be gratified at the expense of liberty. Faith has no need of such methods to attain its end. Its first and last principle is unqualified subjection to God. Its dearest interests are committed trustingly to Him, and to His will. Nor does it ever shine so brightly as when submitting willingly, at God's command, to such privations as appear to shut out natural hope. Subjection to the mighty hand of God is the leading idea in all these admonitory provisions for the well-being of His saints.

Then, as to the object for which real Christians usually yoke themselves with those who, even on their own confession, and in the judgment of charity itself, are not Christians at all, it will be found, in the end, that no really divine and heavenly object can be gained by an infringement of God's truth. Per fas aut nefas can never be a divine motto. The means are not sanctified by the end; but both means and end must be according to the principles of God's holy word, else all must eventuate in confusion and dishonour. It might have appeared to Jehoshaphat a very worthy object, to recover Ramoth Gilead out of the hand of the enemy; and, moreover, he might have appeared a very liberal, gracious, popular, large-hearted man, when, in reply to Ahab's proposal, he said, "I am as thou art, and my people as thy people; and we will be with thee in the war." It is easy to be liberal and large-hearted at the expense of divine principle; but how did it end? Ahab was killed, and Jehoshaphat narrowly escaped with his life, having made total shipwreck of his testimony.

Thus we see that Jehoshaphat did not even gain the object for which he unequally yoked himself with an unbeliever; and even had he gained it, it would have been no justification of his course. Nothing can ever warrant a believer's yoking himself with an unbeliever; and, therefore, however fair, attractive, and plausible the Ramoth expedition might seem in the eye of man, it was, in the judgment of God, "helping the ungodly, and loving them that hate the Lord." (2 Chr. 19:2.) The truth of God strips men and things of the false colours with which the spirit of expediency would deck them, and presents them in their proper light; and it is an unspeakable mercy to have the clear judgment of God about all that is going on around us: it imparts calmness to the spirit, and stability to the course and character, and saves one from that unhappy fluctuation of thought, feeling, and principle which so entirely unfits him for the place of a steady and consistent witness for Christ. We shall surely err, if we attempt to form our judgment by the thoughts and opinions of men; for they will always judge according to the outward appearances, and not according to the intrinsic character and principle of things. Provided men can gain what they conceive to be a right object, they care not about the mode of gaining it. But the true servant of Christ knows that he must do his Master's work upon his Master's principles and in his Master's spirit. It will not satisfy such an one to reach the most praiseworthy end, unless he can reach it by a divinely appointed road. The means and the end must both be divine. I admit it, for example, to be a most desirable end to circulate the scriptures — God's own pure, eternal word; but if I could not circulate them save by yoking myself with an unbeliever, I should refrain, inasmuch as I am not to do evil that good may come.

David thus thinks that conspiracy can justify conspiracy, and, in the war that has begun, deceit may rightly counterwork deceit. Evil with a good end will thus become good; or at least we may do it that good may come: a conclusion which the apostle declares to subject to just judgment those who hold it. Yet it is still maintained under all the light of Christianity, and practically followed by how many in how many forms! This principle is one that David has himself acted on, as we remember, in the old days of Philistine refuge; and these things, if not judged, may easily revive after a long time of dormancy.