p. 563 | Is Honesty All? by Christian Standard

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 16, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 36.

Is Honesty All?

By Christian Standard

In nature, honesty counts for something, but not for everything. The child that honestly puts its hand in the fire will nevertheless be burned. While there is not, in such a case, the same moral obliquity as in the case of the one who, knowing the nature of fire, deliberately throws himself into it with suicidal intent, it is nevertheless true that the fire will equally burn the suicide and him who innocently falls into its embrace. A man may drink poison, honestly believing it to be a harmless medicine,—but it will as surely kill him as if he had swallowed it on purpose to destroy life. Honesty is not all. Illustrations of this may be made almost endless.

And in spiritual things, is honesty the panacea for all error and sin? Was not Saul honest in persecuting Christians, and in blaspheming the name of Jesus? He declared that he had lived before God in all good conscience (Acts 23 : 1), and that what he did was done “ignorantly in unbelief” (1 Tim. 1 : 13); yet he never ceased mourning over this great sin, or rejoicing in his deliverance from it. Why could not Saul have been let alone in his honest persecution of the saints?

Jesus said the time would come when they who killed his disciples would think they were doing God service (John 16 : 2). And there have been millions of honest persecutors, who have subjected Christians to every kind of shame and torture. Will their honesty shield them from divine retribution? If honesty is to be the cure-all for all the hideous outrages that have been committed in its name, we must obliterate all other distinctions between right and wrong, and recognize everything as virtuous and praiseworthy to which the stamp of honesty can be affixed.

There is another consideration which renders such teaching altogether pernicious. Men have false ideas of honesty itself, and many will be apt to derive from such teaching a sense of security to which they are not entitled. What people call honesty, may be, in many cases a guilty thing. Those who put to death the Lord Jesus were honest as the world goes. Of the wisdom of God, Paul says: “Which none of the princes of this world knew; for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” 1 Cor. 2 : 8. Peter says: “Through ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers.” Acts 3 : 17. They were therefore honest—ignorantly honest—in condemning and crucifying Jesus. But was not their ignorance culpable? What merit, therefore, can be pleaded for an honesty based on an ignorance which is itself a crime? “If I had not done among them,” said Jesus, “the works which none other man did, they had not had sin; but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father.” John 15 : 24.

And there are many to-day who willingly and willfully remain ignorant of the gospel, and who teach for doctrines the commandments of men, and make the word of God void by their traditions, who plead honesty as a justification of their false teaching and their rejection of the truth,—when their so-called honesty is simply a result of their ignorance, and their ignorance is itself a sin. The cry of honesty is simply a cry of self-deception.—Christian Standard.