Right living, grounded in the unchanging Word — choose any three
Reading different theological perspectives. Historical readings express their authors' perspectives, including Arminian and Reformed or Calvinist traditions. Inclusion does not make an author's position settled CTS doctrine. Read with Scripture and the assigned material. A supported answer from another evangelical perspective should be assessed on its reasoning, not penalized simply for differing from the author. If an automated score rejects such an answer, ask CTS for review.
Master’s Assigned Readings (all five)
M.Div. and Th.M. students read all five assigned selections and take their separate exam after activation. The test page states the current rule; valid earlier completions remain valid.
Optional Honors (choose three)
Honors is optional on every track. Certificate and Associate students may read three honors selections without a required-reading exam. Honors does not replace either master’s exam.
The Master's textbook test: read Alexander, Christianity and Ethics (assigned excerpts), then take its test: twenty fill-in-the-blank questions, drawn from forty; eighteen right passes. Each answer is marked right or wrong at once. Correct answers and explanations are available after the attempt passes. It is separate from the reading test on the five digests below: passing one does not pass the other. On the M.Div. and Th.M. tracks both tests are being introduced; each test's page says whether it is in force yet. Until then any student may take them, and a pass is kept in your record.
How to read this shelf
This course teaches Christian ethics for the whole of life. These five readings are Chapala Theological Seminary digests, walking through the Christian moral life — its foundation in grace, the two great commandments of love, the transformation of holy character, ethics in the everyday round of money, home, and work, and the ethics of the pastor and the Christian in the world — and drawing on its classic public-domain guides, from Watson and Taylor and Edwards to Wesley, Baxter, Spurgeon, and Wilberforce. Each is written to be read on its own, in English, Spanish or French. Choose any three, read them in full, and record your reading below.
Because the newest questions the course raises — in bioethics and in our present debates over sexuality and gender — have no literature from past centuries, this shelf supplies instead the deep biblical and moral foundations on which the course builds its answers: the moral law, the holy life, and the love that fulfills the law. Read each with an open Bible, asking not merely to know what is right but to become the kind of person who does it.
The Master's reading test: separate from the honors invitation below. Honors asks you to read any three of these digests; the Master's test covers all five. It has twenty fill-in-the-blank questions, four from each reading, drawn from forty; eighteen right passes. Each answer is marked right or wrong at once; correct answers and explanations are available after the attempt passes. You may try again after a short wait. The test is being introduced: its page says whether it is in force yet. Until then any student may take it, and a pass is kept in your record.
With Honors — an invitation, not a requirement
The honors reading attestation is optional for every degree. Certificate and Associate students complete the course through its units. On M.Div. and Th.M., the assigned textbook and required-reading tests also count after activation; valid earlier master’s completions remain valid. Reading three digests for honors does not replace either test.
These supplemental readings are the path to one added distinction — your degree awarded with honors. Each class whose reading you complete counts toward it: twelve classes for the Certificate, fifteen for the Th.M., twenty-five for the Associate, and thirty for the M.Div. Choose any three of the readings below, read them in full, and record your reading on your honor — then track your progress on the Honors page.
No constant internet required — see below
Reading the digests
Each of these five readings is a Chapala Theological Seminary digest, written by CTS and available here on the site — every one opens directly from this page, in English, Spanish or French, with nothing to download. Each digest rests on the classic public-domain works of Christian ethics, but the digests themselves are CTS-authored teaching, not reproductions; those classic works are freely available online for any who wish to read them in full.
Reading in another language
Each reading below is written by CTS in English, Spanish and French — simply use the language choices at the top of the page (English · Español · Français) to switch languages. (If you ever wish to read something else in another language, the Chrome browser can also translate any web page for you.)
The Five Readings
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The Foundation · Grace, Not Rules
1.The Foundation of Christian Ethics: Grace, Not Mere Rules
A CTS digest · ~2,000 words per language
What makes Christian ethics distinctive — the outworking of a heart changed by grace, not a rule-list or self-improvement. Grace before law (God redeemed Israel before Sinai; “we love because He first loved us”); the moral law still guiding as a delighted lamp, not a judge; and all grounded in God’s unchanging character (“be holy, for I am holy”) — so obedience becomes joy, guarding against both legalism and despair.
CTS DIGESTRead the full digest — opens right here
The Chapala Theological Seminary digest — an original summary written by CTS, available in English, Spanish and French, readable offline. This is the CTS digest, not the full original source text.
The Foundation of Christian Ethics: Grace, Not Mere Rules
A Chapala Theological Seminary reading — what makes Christian ethics distinctive: a heart changed by grace, guided by God's law, grounded in God's character
A CTS-authored survey, anchored in the classic public-domain works of Christian ethics (Watson, Ryle, Edwards, and others), and in Scripture.
Christian Ethics
Grace Before Law
God's Character
Anchored in classics
A word before you read. This first reading lays the foundation for the whole course of Christian ethics. It begins not with rules but with grace, flows from a heart changed by the gospel, is guided (not condemned) by God's moral law, and is grounded in the unchanging character of God whom we are called to reflect.
1.What Makes Ethics “Christian”
Every culture and every philosophy has its own ethics — its ideas of right and wrong, its rules for how a person ought to live. But Christian ethics is distinctive, and we must see clearly from the very start how it differs. It is not, at its foundation, a bare list of rules to be kept, nor is it a program of self-improvement by which we somehow make ourselves good. It is, rather, the outworking, in the whole of daily life, of a heart that has first been changed by the grace of God. Christian ethics does not begin with the command, "do this, and you shall live." It begins instead with the joyful announcement, "God has already done this for you, in Christ — now go and live, in grateful response." The good news always comes first; and the good life flows out from it, as a river flows from its spring.
2.Grace Before Law
This is the great pattern that runs all through Scripture, and it is the very foundation of all Christian ethics: grace comes first, and then comes the response. Consider carefully how God gave His law to Israel at Mount Sinai. Before He spoke a single commandment, He first reminded them who He was and what He had already done: "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage." I have already rescued you, He says; I have already made you my own; now, here is how to live as my redeemed people. The commandments were never a ladder to be climbed up to God in order to win His acceptance. They were the shape of a life to be lived in glad covenant with the God who had already saved them. And so it is, exactly, for us. We do not obey God in order to be saved; we obey Him because we already have been saved. As the apostle John puts it so simply and so beautifully, "we love because He first loved us." Christian obedience, from beginning to end, is the grateful response of a heart that has been redeemed — never the anxious striving of a heart trying desperately to earn God's favor.
3.The Moral Law Still Guides
Now, this good news of grace does not for a moment mean that the moral law is simply thrown away or forgotten. The Ten Commandments, and the moral law that they express, still truly guide the Christian life. They show us the shape of a life that pleases God — a life of wholehearted love for God and genuine love for our neighbor. Jesus Himself did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it; and He actually deepened it, showing that it reaches all the way down into the heart. It is not only "do not murder," He taught, but "do not even hate"; not only "do not commit adultery," but "do not even lust." So the law is no longer our judge — for Christ has already borne its full condemnation in our place — but it very much remains our guide, a lamp held up to show us how we ought to walk. The Christian, therefore, does not despise God's commandments; he comes, rather, to delight in them, just as the psalmist did when he cried out, "Oh, how I love Your law!" Set free from the law's condemnation by grace, we are at last set free truly to love it, and to keep it.
4.Grounded in God's Character
And where, in the end, does the whole of Christian ethics finally rest? It rests not in mere human opinion, nor in the ever-shifting values of the passing age, but in the unchanging character of God Himself. God is holy — and therefore He calls His people to be holy: "you shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy." God is love — and therefore He calls His people to love. God is faithful, and just, and merciful, and true — and His people are called to reflect that same character out into the world around them. Christian ethics is, at its very heart, the call to become like God: to become, by His grace and by the work of His Spirit within us, the kind of people who genuinely reflect His holiness and His love. This is precisely why Christian ethics is never arbitrary or changeable at human whim — it flows directly from who God eternally and unchangeably is. And it is also why it is so deeply good for us: for to become like God is to become, at last, truly and fully human, exactly as we were made from the beginning to be.
5.A Changed Heart, a Changed Life
So here is the foundation of all Christian ethics, and it must be laid down first, before anything else can be built upon it. It begins with grace, and not with rules. It flows from a heart that has been changed by the gospel, and not from gritted-teeth willpower. It is guided by God's good moral law, which we come to delight in rather than to despise. And it is grounded, finally, in the unchanging character of God, whom we are graciously called to reflect. If you try to build the Christian life the other way around — starting with the rules, straining to be good in your own strength, hoping somehow to earn God's favor by your efforts — you will end, sooner or later, in either pride or despair. But if you begin exactly where the gospel itself begins — with all that God has already done for you in Christ, simply receiving His grace, and then letting a grateful love for Him gently reshape your whole life — then obedience becomes not a heavy burden at all, but a genuine joy; and holiness becomes not a cold and dreary duty, but the glad and willing response of a heart that has been truly set free. So let grace be your foundation. Let love be your motive. Let the very character of God be your pattern. And let the whole of the Christian life be, from first to last, the grateful outworking of the grace that you yourself have freely received.
6.Taking It to Heart
For reflection. When you think of living rightly, do you begin with rules and effort, or with the grace God has already shown you in Christ? Do you experience God's commandments as a burden to be endured, or as a lamp you delight to walk by? And does your obedience flow from grateful love — or from an anxious hope of earning what has, in fact, already been freely given?
The Heart of Ethics · Love
2.The Two Great Commandments: Love God and Love Neighbor
A CTS digest · ~2,000 words per language
On love for God and neighbor hang all the Law and the Prophets. Love for God as first and greatest, our highest joy (the first table); love for neighbor reaching even to the stranger and enemy — the Good Samaritan, “love your enemies” (the second table); what love truly is — active, patient, self-giving goodwill, not sentiment (1 Corinthians 13); and love as the sum of all virtue, which we give only because God first poured His love into us.
CTS DIGESTRead the full digest — opens right here
The Chapala Theological Seminary digest — an original summary written by CTS, available in English, Spanish and French, readable offline. This is the CTS digest, not the full original source text.
The Two Great Commandments: Love God and Love Neighbor
A Chapala Theological Seminary reading — the heart of Christian ethics: love for God, love for neighbor, and what that love truly is
A CTS-authored survey, anchored in the classic public-domain works of Christian ethics (Edwards, Watson, and others), and in Scripture.
Christian Ethics
Love God and Neighbor
The Greatest Virtue
Anchored in classics
A word before you read. If Christian ethics rests on grace, what shape does it take? Jesus answered in one word: love. This reading walks through the two great commandments — love for God and love for neighbor — on which hang all the Law and the Prophets, and shows what that love, at its heart, truly is.
1.The Heart of It All Is Love
If Christian ethics rests, as we have seen, upon grace, then what does it actually look like when it is lived out? What is the true shape of the good life that God calls us into? Jesus gave the answer in the simplest and yet the most profound of terms. When He was asked which was the greatest commandment of all, He replied: "You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." Here, then, is the very heart of all Christian ethics, gathered up into a single word: love. Not cold and mechanical rule-keeping, not mere outward correctness of behavior, but love — love for God, and love for our neighbor. Absolutely everything else in Christian ethics is simply the unfolding and the applying of these two great commandments.
2.Love for God
The first and the greatest commandment of all is to love God — and to love Him with the whole of our being: with all our heart, and soul, and mind, and strength. This is the foundation of everything else, for God is the highest good there is, the very source and fountain of all that is lovely, and our own maker and redeemer besides. To love God supremely is simply right and fitting, because He is supremely worthy of it. And it is, at the very same time, our own highest joy and deepest good — for we were made from the beginning to know Him and to love Him, and, as one wise teacher of the church confessed long ago, our hearts remain restless within us until at last they find their rest in Him. Loving God, we must understand, is not merely a warm emotion; it is a whole-life devotion — treasuring Him above every other thing, gladly obeying Him, delighting in Him, and earnestly seeking Him. And it is the deep wellspring from which all our other loves must flow. When God is truly loved first, and loved most, then everything else in life falls at last into its proper place. This is what the first table of the law — the first four commandments — is all about: worship God alone, make no idols, honor His holy name, keep His day. Every bit of it is simply love for God, spelled out in practice.
3.Love for Neighbor
The second commandment, Jesus said, is truly like the first: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And in the parable of the Good Samaritan, He made unmistakably clear just who our "neighbor" really is: it is anyone at all in need whom we have it in our power to help — not merely our friends, or our own family, or our own people, but even the stranger, and even, astonishingly, the enemy. To love our neighbor is to seek their genuine good just as naturally and just as earnestly as we instinctively seek our own. This is what the whole second table of the law — commandments five through ten — is about: honor your parents, do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not lie, do not covet. Every one of them is simply love for neighbor, spelled out in practice. For love does no harm to a neighbor, and therefore, as Paul says, love is the fulfillment of the entire law. And this love is emphatically not limited only to those who happen to love us back. "Love your enemies," Jesus commanded, "and pray for those who persecute you." Christian love reaches out even to the undeserving, even to those who wrong us — because that is exactly how God, in His mercy, has first loved us.
4.What Love Actually Is
But what exactly is this love that stands at the center of everything? It is all too easy to speak the word "love" and to mean by it something rather shallow — a mere passing sentiment, a warm and pleasant feeling. Scripture, thankfully, gives us a much fuller and richer picture. In the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, the apostle Paul paints it for us in unforgettable detail: "Love is patient, love is kind; it does not envy; it does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." Here is love, not as a fleeting feeling that comes and goes, but as active, patient, self-giving goodwill — a settled and steady commitment to seek the true good of others, expressed in countless concrete acts of kindness, and patience, and sacrifice. And Paul goes on to say the most striking thing: that without this love, everything else — the finest eloquence, the deepest knowledge, the strongest faith, even the most extravagant sacrifice — amounts, in the end, to precisely nothing. Love is the greatest thing of all, greater even than faith and hope themselves. The truly ethical person, in the Christian meaning of the word, is not merely the one who keeps all the rules; it is the one who genuinely loves.
5.Love: the Sum and Fulfillment
Draw all of this together, and we come to see that the whole of Christian ethics can, in the end, be gathered up into this one great word: love. Love for God with the whole of our being, and love for our neighbor as we love ourselves. Every single commandment is simply love applied to one particular situation. Every virtue is but a facet of love. And every sin, when we trace it down to its root, turns out to be a failure to love — a turning inward upon our own selves, instead of outward toward God and toward others. Jonathan Edwards called love "the sum of all virtue," and he was exactly right to do so. And here is the great wonder at the bottom of it all: we are able to love at all only because God has first loved us. His own love, poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, becomes the living wellspring of our love, both for Him and for one another. We do not manufacture this love by our own effort and strain; we receive it, freely, from God, and we let it flow out through us to others. So if you would truly live the Christian life, do not stop at merely asking, "what are the rules I must keep?" Ask, rather, the deeper question: "how can I love — how can I love God more truly, and love my neighbor more genuinely?" For love is the fulfillment of the law, the sum of every virtue, and the very heart of the God whom we are called to reflect. "Let all that you do," says the apostle, "be done with love."
6.Taking It to Heart
For reflection. Is God truly first in your loves — treasured above every other thing? Who is the "neighbor" God is placing before you to love — and does your love reach even to the stranger, or the one who has wronged you? And is your love an active, patient, self-giving goodwill — or only a warm feeling that costs you nothing?
Christian Character · Holiness
3.The Christian Character: Holiness in Heart and Life
A CTS digest · ~2,000 words per language
Ethics reaching the heart, not only outward acts; holiness as conformity to Christ — wholeness and health of soul, not gloom; the two movements of putting off the old self and putting on the fruit of the Spirit; that transformation as the Spirit’s work received by faith, not willpower (“it is God who works in you”); and a strong word of grace when we fail — not self-punishment but turning again to Christ, patient with ourselves as God is patient.
CTS DIGESTRead the full digest — opens right here
The Chapala Theological Seminary digest — an original summary written by CTS, available in English, Spanish and French, readable offline. This is the CTS digest, not the full original source text.
The Christian Character: Holiness in Heart and Life
A Chapala Theological Seminary reading — Christian ethics as inward transformation: the goal of holiness, the Spirit's work, and grace when we fail
A CTS-authored survey, anchored in the classic public-domain works on holy living (Taylor, Ryle, and others), and in Scripture.
Christian Ethics
Holiness
The Spirit's Work
Anchored in classics
A word before you read. Christian ethics is not only about what we do, but who we are. This reading walks through the goal of holiness — being conformed to Christ — the two movements of putting off the old and putting on the new, the Spirit's transforming work received by faith, and the grace that meets us when we fail.
1.Ethics Reaches the Heart
We have seen that Christian ethics rests upon grace and is summed up in love. But there is a further and deeper dimension that we must not overlook. Christian ethics is not only concerned with what we do — with our outward actions — but also, and even more, with who we are — with our inward character. The gospel does not merely reform our outward behavior; it goes down and transforms our very hearts. Jesus taught that it is from the heart, in the end, that all our words and all our deeds truly flow: "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks," He said; and again, "from within, out of the heart of men, proceed" the evil thoughts and deeds that defile us. And so the great goal of Christian ethics is not merely a set of right actions bolted onto an unchanged heart, but a right heart itself — a whole character that is being slowly and surely remade into the very likeness of Christ. This is what the Bible calls holiness.
2.The Goal: To Be Like Christ
The great goal of the whole Christian life, and of Christian ethics along with it, is holiness — to be conformed to the image of Christ, and so to become like God Himself in character. "Be holy," God says, "for I am holy." And Paul writes that "we all are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory." Now we must be clear about what this holiness is, and what it is not. It is not a gloomy or a joyless thing, and it is certainly not a matter of mere religious external observance. Holiness, rightly understood, is wholeness — it is the true health of the soul; it is becoming, at last, the person that God actually made us to be: pure, and loving, and true, and good. J. C. Ryle described holiness beautifully as the settled habit of being of one mind with God — of hating the things He hates, and loving the things He loves. And it is the goal toward which God Himself is patiently and steadily working in every single believer. Not a flawless, sinless perfection in this present life — that awaits us in glory — but a real, and a genuinely growing, likeness to Christ.
3.Putting Off, Putting On
So how does this deep transformation actually come about in us? Scripture describes it as two distinct movements, working together: a putting off of the old, and a putting on of the new. "Put off," Paul writes, "concerning your former conduct, the old man, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness." On the one hand, then, we deliberately turn away from sin — putting to death the deeds of the flesh, laying aside our anger, our malice, our deceit, our impurity, and everything else that belongs to the old and dying self. And on the other hand, at the very same time, we actively put on a Christlike character — what Paul calls the fruit of the Spirit: "love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control." The Christian life is precisely this daily, ongoing, two-sided exchange — putting off the old self piece by piece, and putting on the Lord Jesus Christ. And both sides are truly needed. It is never enough merely to stop doing what is wrong; we must also grow, positively, in doing and in being what is good.
4.The Spirit's Work, Received by Faith
But now we come to the single most important thing of all in this matter — and if we miss it, we will go badly wrong. This deep transformation is not, at the bottom of it, our own achievement, wrung out by sheer force of willpower. It is, first and last, the work of the Holy Spirit within us. The very list of Christlike virtues is called "the fruit of the Spirit" — fruit that the Spirit patiently grows in us, and not a crop that we somehow produce by our own gritted and anxious effort. "It is God who works in you," Paul says plainly, "both to will and to do for His good pleasure." Our own part in it is real, and we must not neglect it — we are to yield ourselves to the Spirit, to walk in step with Him, and to keep putting ourselves deliberately in the way of His grace, through the Word, through prayer, through worship, and through the fellowship of God's people. But the power itself, and the growth itself, come from God, and not from us. And this is, at once, a very great relief and a very great hope. We are not left all alone to change ourselves by our own poor strength. God Himself is at work within us — and He who has begun a good work in us will surely bring it to completion. So we do earnestly pursue holiness — but we pursue it in humble dependence upon the Spirit, and by faith, and never by anxious, exhausting self-effort.
5.Holiness in the Whole of Life
And this holiness is meant to reach into every single corner of our lives — not merely into our religious moments, but into the whole of who we are. It reaches our words: are they true, and kind, and pure, and gracious? It reaches our very thoughts — for holiness begins in the mind, in what we choose to dwell upon and to desire: "whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely," Paul says, "meditate on these things." It reaches our use of time, our daily work, our relationships, and even our most private moments, when no other human being sees us at all. Nothing whatsoever lies outside its scope, because God sees everything, and He calls the whole of us to reflect Him. And yet — and here a tender word of grace is very much needed — the pursuit of holiness is never meant to be a grim, self-punishing crusade waged against ourselves. When we fail, as we surely will, we are not to wallow in despair, nor to sink into a bitter self-hatred. We simply turn again to Christ, receive afresh His full forgiveness, get back up, and walk on. Growth in real holiness is usually slow, and it is marked by many stumbles along the way. God is wonderfully patient with us — and so we may learn to be gently patient with ourselves as well, even as we keep pressing on. For the goal, remember, is not to prove ourselves, or to earn anything; the goal is simply to become like the One who already loves us. So pursue holiness — yes, earnestly, but always hopefully. Lean hard on the Spirit. Return quickly to grace whenever you fall. And keep your eyes fixed on Christ, into whose own likeness God is surely, and patiently, and lovingly remaking you — from one degree of glory to the next.
6.Taking It to Heart
For reflection. Is your Christian life aimed only at outward behavior, or at a heart being remade like Christ? Are you pursuing holiness by anxious willpower, or in dependence on the Spirit who grows His fruit in you? And when you fail, do you sink into self-hatred — or do you turn again to Christ, receive His grace, and walk on, patient with yourself as God is patient with you?
The Ordinary Round · Money, Home, Work
4.Ethics in the Everyday: Money, Home, and Daily Life
A CTS digest · ~2,000 words per language
The moral life lived mostly in the ordinary round; money as a trust held with an open hand, not a master (Wesley’s “gain, save, give all you can”; “you cannot serve God and mammon”); the home as the first school of love — faithful marriage, tender-and-wise parenting, a household where Christ’s love is seen; daily work done “as to the Lord,” with integrity and dignity toward every image-bearer; and faithfulness in the small, unseen things (Luke 16:10).
CTS DIGESTRead the full digest — opens right here
The Chapala Theological Seminary digest — an original summary written by CTS, available in English, Spanish and French, readable offline. This is the CTS digest, not the full original source text.
Ethics in the Everyday: Money, Home, and Daily Life
A Chapala Theological Seminary reading — Christian ethics lived out in the ordinary round: money, the home, and daily work
A CTS-authored survey, anchored in the classic public-domain works of Christian ethics (Wesley, Miller, and others), and in Scripture.
Christian Ethics
Money and Stewardship
Home and Work
Anchored in classics
A word before you read. Most of the Christian moral life is lived not in great crises but in the ordinary daily round. This reading brings the great principles down to the ground, into three everyday but crucial areas: how we handle money, how we love our families, and how we work and treat others day by day.
1.Ethics in the Ordinary
It is very easy to imagine that ethics is mainly a matter of great crises and dramatic, once-in-a-lifetime decisions. But the plain truth is that most of the Christian moral life is lived out, not in rare crises at all, but in the ordinary, repeating, daily round — in how we handle our money, in how we love the members of our own family, and in how we work and speak and treat other people, day after day after day. Christian ethics is not reserved only for the grand and public moment; it belongs just as much to the kitchen, the workplace, the marketplace, and the home. Indeed, it is very often precisely in these small, everyday, and largely unseen places that our true character is most honestly revealed, and most deeply formed. So let us now take the great principles we have been considering — grace, and love, and holiness — and bring them all the way down to the ground, into three ordinary but genuinely crucial areas of life: money, home, and daily work.
2.Money: a Trust from God
Money is one of the most searching and practical tests of a person's real character. Scripture does not anywhere condemn money itself as evil, but it warns us, soberly and repeatedly, that "the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil." Notice carefully: the danger is never simply in having money, but in loving it — in trusting it, in hoarding it, in letting it quietly become our master. The Christian is called to see money in a wholly different way: not as a possession to be served, but as a trust from God, to be used wisely for good. John Wesley's famous threefold rule sums the matter up wonderfully well: "Gain all you can, save all you can, give all you can." That is: work honestly and diligently to earn what you can; live simply and avoid needless waste, that you may have to give; and then give generously, both to the work of God and to those in need around you. Money that is held loosely, as a stewardship entrusted to us, becomes a useful servant for much good. But money that is clutched tightly, as our real treasure, becomes a hard and cruel master. "You cannot serve God and mammon," Jesus said plainly. So hold your money with an open hand, always remembering that it is God's in the first place, given into your care to steward for His glory and for the good of others.
3.The Home: the First School of Love
After money comes the home. For the family is the first, and in many ways the most important, school of love and of character that any of us ever attends — the place where, day by day and year by year, we both learn and teach patience, kindness, forgiveness, faithfulness, and genuine self-giving love. Christian ethics has a great deal to say about the ordering of the home: about marriage as a covenant of faithful, self-giving love between a husband and a wife; about parents raising their children in the nurture and the instruction of the Lord, with both tender love and wise, patient discipline; about children honoring their fathers and mothers; and about the whole household being ordered in love and in mutual, glad service to one another. J. R. Miller, in his gentle little book on home-making, showed how it is the ordinary, small acts of family life — a kind word spoken, a patient answer given, a meal shared together, a wrong quietly forgiven — that are in fact the very stuff out of which Christian character is woven. The home is the place where the gospel is first and most closely lived out, and where our love is most tested and most truly formed. So do not ever neglect the ethics of your own home. Love your spouse faithfully; raise your children tenderly and wisely; honor your parents; and, by God's grace, make your household a place where the love of Christ can be plainly seen and warmly felt.
4.Daily Work and Relationships
Third comes our daily work, and our everyday relationships with the people all around us. The Christian is called to serve God not only within the walls of the church, but just as truly in the ordinary work of our own hands, and in the way that we treat other people from one day to the next. "Whatever you do," Paul writes, "do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men." This means real integrity in our work — honesty, diligence, and doing good and careful work even when no one at all is watching us. It means simple fairness and kindness in how we treat everyone we deal with — those who work for us and those we work for, our customers, our neighbors, and even complete strangers. It means keeping our word once we have given it, telling the truth, and being reliable. And it means treating every single person we meet with the full dignity that is due to one who is made in the very image of God. There simply is no "secular" corner of life, walled off somewhere, where God's call to love and to holiness does not reach. The farmer out in the field, the mother at home with her children, the laborer at his bench, the shopkeeper behind the counter — every one of them can genuinely serve God, and truly glorify Him, in the faithful doing of ordinary work with integrity and with love. So do your daily work as unto the Lord Himself, and treat every person you meet as one for whom Christ was willing to die.
5.Faithful in the Small Things
Draw all of this together, and we come to see that the truest test of Christian ethics lies not mainly in the grand and public moments of life, but in the small, ordinary, daily faithfulness that perhaps no other person will ever even see. It lies in how we spend a single coin, in how we speak to our own husband or wife, in how we do one hour's honest work, in how we treat the one person standing right in front of us. "He who is faithful in what is least," Jesus said, "is faithful also in much." The character that is slowly formed in these countless small, daily choices is the real and honest measure of who we truly are. And here is a genuinely great encouragement in it: you do not need a grand platform, or a dramatic and public calling, in order to live a deeply and truly Christian life. You need only to take the grace that you have already received, and the love that God has already poured into your heart, and then to pour it out again — faithfully, and patiently, day after day after day — into your money, and your home, and your work, and your relationships. There, in the ordinary round of everyday life, holiness is quietly lived, love is genuinely shown, and God Himself is truly glorified. So be faithful in the small things. For it is there, more than anywhere else, that the Christian life is really lived — and there that God delights to meet with us, and to be honored by us.
6.Taking It to Heart
For reflection. Do you hold your money with an open hand, as God's trust — or has it quietly become a master? Is your home a place where the love of Christ is seen and felt in small, daily acts? And do you do your ordinary work, and treat each person you meet, "as unto the Lord" — faithful in the little things that no one else may see?
Pastor and World · Capstone
5.The Pastor’s Ethics, and the Christian in the World
A CTS digest · ~2,000 words per language
The capstone: the minister who leads by life, not only words — “take heed to yourselves,” an example to the flock, “imitate me as I imitate Christ” (Baxter, Bridges, Spurgeon), asking not for perfection but genuineness; the Christian as salt and light in the world, faith working out in justice and mercy because every person bears God’s image (Wilberforce); and a grace-saturated close — the moral life as grace to be lived, not a burden to be carried.
CTS DIGESTRead the full digest — opens right here
The Chapala Theological Seminary digest — an original summary written by CTS, available in English, Spanish and French, readable offline. This is the CTS digest, not the full original source text.
The Pastor's Ethics, and the Christian in the World
A Chapala Theological Seminary reading — two final circles: the minister whose life matches his message, and the Christian as salt and light in the world
A CTS-authored survey, anchored in the classic public-domain works of pastoral and social ethics (Baxter, Bridges, Spurgeon, Wilberforce, and others), and in Scripture.
Christian Ethics
The Pastor's Life
Salt and Light
Capstone
A word before you read. This final reading widens the circle twice more — to the ethics of the minister, whose life must match his message, and to the Christian in the wider world, as salt and light. And it brings the whole subject home to where it began: the grace of God, reflected through His people to His glory.
1.Two Final Circles
We have now traced Christian ethics a long way — from its foundation in the grace of God, through the two great commandments of love, on into the transformation of holy character, and then down into the ordinary daily round of money and home and work. Now, in order to close, we must widen the circle two more times. First, we will consider the ethics of the minister — the pastor, and indeed any leader among God's people, whose life must match his message. And second, we will consider the Christian out in the wider world — for Christian ethics is never a private and hidden thing only; it reaches out into the whole of society, as salt and as light. These two final and widening circles will bring the whole great subject to its proper completion.
2.The Pastor's Ethics: A Life That Matches the Message
Those who are called to lead the people of God carry a special and heavy weight of responsibility, for they lead not only by the words they speak, but also, and even more powerfully, by the lives they live. A minister may preach with the greatest beauty and eloquence; but if his own life plainly contradicts his message, then his preaching is drained of all its power. And so the great writers on pastoral ministry press upon the minister, above everything else, the urgent duty of watching over his own heart and life. Richard Baxter, in his searching book The Reformed Pastor, urged ministers first of all to "take heed to yourselves" — before ever taking heed to the flock — for the physician must first apply the medicine to his own soul. Charles Bridges and Charles Spurgeon likewise called the minister to a genuine personal holiness, to integrity, to humility, and to love, warning solemnly that the single greatest danger to any ministry is the minister's own unwatched and neglected heart. The pastor is to be a living example to the flock, so that he can say honestly, with the apostle Paul, "imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ." This is a high and sobering calling indeed — and yet notice: it is not a call to be flawless and perfect, but rather to be genuine; to actually practice what one preaches; to lead others out of a life that is itself being steadily shaped by the very grace that one proclaims to them. And this applies, in its own measure, to every Christian who leads or influences others at all — the elder, the teacher, the parent, the older and more mature believer. All of us lead most powerfully, in the end, not by our words, but by our example.
3.The Christian in the World: Salt and Light
But Christian ethics does not stop at the door of the church, nor even at the door of the home; it reaches out, rather, into the whole of the surrounding society. Jesus called His people "the salt of the earth" and "the light of the world" — salt that preserves and gives flavor, and light that shines out into the darkness. The Christian is not called to withdraw and hide away from the world, but to live within it as a genuine force for good — seeking justice, showing mercy, loving the poor and the vulnerable, and standing firmly for what is right. William Wilberforce stands as a shining example of exactly this. A man of deep and living Christian conviction, he gave his whole life, at very great personal cost and over many long decades, to the ending of the slave trade — and his tireless labor flowed directly out of his Christian faith, out of his settled conviction that every single human being bears the image of God and is therefore precious in His sight. His book, A Practical View of Real Christianity, called the Christians of his own day to a faith that was truly real and living, and not merely nominal and outward — a faith that genuinely changed how they lived, and how they treated the people around them. Wilberforce shows us clearly that Christian ethics has a public dimension: it is faith working itself out in love for our neighbor — and even for our whole society — seeking the true good of all. "Let your light so shine before men," said Jesus, "that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven."
4.The Whole Circle: God's Character, Reflected
And so Christian ethics comes at last full circle. It begins with the grace of God, freely received down into a human heart. It grows outward into love — love for God, and love for neighbor. It deepens inward into holy character, the fruit of the Spirit. It is lived out faithfully in the ordinary daily round of money, and home, and work. It shapes the leader, whose life must match his message. And it reaches out into the wider world, as salt and as light, seeking the good of all people. And through the whole of it, from beginning to end, one single thing holds it all together: Christian ethics is, at its very heart, nothing other than the outworking, within a human life, of the character of God Himself. God is holy, and loving, and just, and faithful, and merciful, and good — and He graciously calls, and then by His own Spirit actually enables, His people to reflect that same character out into every last corner of the world. "You shall be holy," He says, "for I am holy." And, "let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven." Christian ethics, in the very end, is not really about us at all — it is about God, and about His own character shining out through His people, to His glory.
5.Live the Grace You Have Received
And so we come to the end of our whole walk through Christian ethics; and the final word turns out to be exactly the same as the very first word was: grace. You were not saved by your own good living, and you cannot make yourself truly good by your own strength; but you were saved by grace, in order that you might now live a wholly new life. And the same God who saved you is now at work within you, by His Spirit, to make you like His own Son — to fill you with His love, to grow real holiness in you, to shape your ordinary daily life, and to send you out as salt and light into the world. So do not try and try to be good in your own poor strength; and do not sink into despair when you stumble and fall. Instead, receive freshly every day the grace of God; let His love steadily reshape your heart; lean hard upon His Spirit; return quickly to Christ whenever you fall; and pour out into the world the very love that you have first received. Be holy, for He is holy. Love, because He first loved you. Let your light shine, that others may glorify your Father. This, in the end, is the whole of the Christian moral life — not a heavy burden to be carried, but a grace to be lived; not our own achievement at all, but God's free gift and God's own work within us, from first to last, to the praise of the glory of His grace. "Let all that you do be done with love."
6.Taking It to Heart
For reflection. If you lead or influence others, does your life match your message — are you genuine, even where you are not perfect? Are you salt and light where God has placed you, seeking the good of those around you? And as this study closes, will you take up the Christian life not as a burden to carry in your own strength, but as a grace to be lived — receiving daily, and pouring out freely?
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Further Study: Ten Public-Domain Works
These ten works are for further study, for the student who wants to go on reading. They are not part of the honors reading above: that stays as it is — the five CTS digests, any three read in full and recorded on your honor. All ten are in the public domain; each link opens the work online, and most can also be found in the Internet Archive or Project Gutenberg. Most are in English: the Chrome browser can translate a page (right-click, “Translate to…”; on a phone, the browser menu).
The Moral Law · The Rule of Life
1.The Ten Commandments
Thomas Watson · 1692
Watson's beloved Puritan exposition takes the Ten Commandments one by one and shows the full reach of each — not only the act forbidden but the heart behind it, and the positive duty each command requires. It is the natural backbone for a course on Christian ethics, for the commandments map onto its very units: the sanctity of life, purity, honest property, and truthful speech all find their root and their rule here.
Taylor's classic manual sets out, chapter by chapter, how to live a holy life in the ordinary business of every day — in the care of our time, our appetites, our speech, our purity, and our dealings with others. Few books are so complete a guide to Christian conduct; it speaks to the course's foundations and to its units on personal integrity and purity, teaching that holiness is not for the cloister but for the whole of life.
Baxter's searching classic calls the minister first to watch over himself, and then over the flock — for a pastor's life must match his message. It goes to the heart of our units on pastoral vocation, boundaries, and leadership, pressing home that the work of the ministry is holy, and that the man who does it must be holy too. Every pastor who reads it comes away sobered and stirred.
Bridges gives a thorough study of the ministry, and devotes much of it to the hardest subject of all — the personal and moral causes of a minister's failure. It fits our units on pastoral vocation and professional boundaries with unusual honesty, naming the sins and neglects that ruin a ministry, so that the reader may guard his own soul and calling before the danger comes.
Spurgeon's lectures to the young men in his college are full of warmth, humor, and shrewd wisdom about the minister's inner life and the many traps of the calling. It speaks to our units on pastoral character and on speech and leadership, treating everything from the preacher's private walk with God to his conduct before the people — ethics taught by a master pastor with a twinkle in his eye.
Ryle writes plainly and powerfully on practical holiness — the daily fight against sin, and the growth in Christ that must mark a true believer. It underlies our units on pastoral character and personal integrity, for no ethics can rise higher than the state of the heart; Ryle keeps the reader from every hollow substitute and points to holiness of life as the real thing.
Miller writes tenderly and wisely on the Christian home — the duties of husband and wife, parent and child, and the making of a household that honors God. It matches our fourth unit on family responsibilities exactly, reminding the reader, and the busy pastor most of all, that a well-ordered home is the first field of Christian ethics, and that no man's ministry can outrun the care of his own house.
Wesley's famous sermon reduces the whole Christian ethic of money to three plain rules: gain all you can, save all you can, give all you can — honestly, soberly, and generously. It is the ideal companion to our ninth unit on money, stewardship, and the poor, cutting through every excuse to the simple, searching question of what we do with what God has entrusted to us.
Love, the Sum of the Law · Foundation and Capstone
9.Charity and Its Fruits
Jonathan Edwards · 1738
Edwards unfolds First Corinthians thirteen at length, showing that love is the sum and spirit of the whole Christian life — patient, kind, not easily provoked, bearing all things. It grounds the foundations of the course and crowns its capstone on judgment and restoration, for the love Edwards describes is precisely what makes a Christian judge rightly, forbear gently, and seek to restore the fallen rather than to destroy.
Wilberforce — the statesman who spent his life to end the slave trade — wrote this book to contrast real Christianity with the comfortable, nominal religion of his day, and to show that true faith bears real moral fruit in the world. It speaks straight to our first unit, drawing the sharp line between a genuine Christian ethic and a merely respectable one, from a man whose own faith reshaped a nation.
Chapala Theological Seminary · Seminario Teológico de Chapala · free self-study in English, Spanish and French
Chapala Theological Seminary · Further Study
Further Study — Online
Optional resources for students with internet access — Ethics
ONLINE
Requires an internet connection. These resources are hosted on the web and do not open offline. They supplement the course; they do not replace its units or exams.
Free animated Bible videos
BibleProject — Proyecto Biblia
Video EnglishEspañol
Short, well-crafted animated videos. In the video library, explore the videos on biblical wisdom for daily living. Non-partisan and freely available.
Thirdmill’s Making Biblical Decisions — a video course on how Scripture guides us in wise, God-honoring ethical decisions. This link opens the full video series (video, audio, and text).
Note on position: Thirdmill teaches from a Reformed perspective; on a few disputed doctrines it reflects Calvinist conclusions. Compare those particular points with Scripture and with this course's own units.
These optional supplements link to third-party websites that Chapala Theological Seminary does not control; weigh their content against Scripture and this course.