Can You Do the Right Thing for the Wrong Reasons?

December 30th, 2024
by John Erickson

By Pastor John Erickson

Have you ever been in one of those situations where somebody is trying to fix a problem, and somehow the solution creates an entirely new problem?

You know the kind.

The person has good intentions. They want to do what's right. But as everything unfolds, you're standing there thinking, Wait a second. Is this actually making things better?

Ezra 9-10 is a difficult passage, and I think it's difficult for a reason. It forces us to ask what faithfulness to God really means when life has become complicated by sin, broken relationships, and decisions that affect other people.

There's no tidy little bow at the end of this story.

When I was working through Ezra, I looked at a resource where pastors share their teaching on different passages. Usually a search turns up plenty to read. Ezra 10 produced very little. I understood why. This is not the chapter you choose when you want an easy answer.

But avoiding the difficult parts of Scripture does not make them disappear. We need to read them carefully, with humility about what the text says and what we are bringing to it.

The Problem in Ezra's Community

God's people have returned from exile. Their worship practices have been restored. Ezra has come to teach the Law and help them live faithfully.

Then Ezra learns that some among the returned exiles have married people from surrounding nations and become involved in practices associated with other gods.

The wider biblical concern is covenant faithfulness: whether Israel will continue worshiping the Lord or return to the very patterns that contributed to exile.

But the account becomes far more troubling when the response involves separating families.

Ezra grieves. The community confesses. And chapter 10 describes a plan, proposed by Shecaniah and taken up by the community under Ezra, to send away foreign wives and their children.

We need to be careful here.

The text reports what the community did. It does not give Christians a simple instruction to imitate the mass separation of families. And we certainly shouldn't use this passage to justify mistreating people because of their ethnicity or nationality.

In fact, one of the reasons the passage unsettles us is that real people would bear the consequences of these decisions.

Sin Makes Life Complicated

One lesson in this story is that sin rarely stays neatly contained.

We like to imagine that we can make a bad choice, realize it was wrong, apologize, and put everything back exactly the way it was.

Sometimes that's possible. Often it isn't.

Choices affect spouses, children, friends, congregations, and communities. And when other people's lives are involved, an apparently quick solution may cause real harm.

That doesn't mean confession is pointless. Quite the opposite.

It means we should take sin seriously before it grows roots in the lives of people around us.

I know that some of my own growth has come when God met me with grace after I had sinned. That does not make the sin good. It means his mercy can work even in the mess I have helped create. Forgiveness is real, and so are consequences. We need to hold both truths together.

And when we're trying to repair what has been broken, we need wisdom, humility, and concern for the people affected-not merely a desire to tidy up our own record.

We Can Be Righteously Wrong

This is the phrase I keep coming back to: We can be righteously wrong.

We can have a rule in our hand, feel completely justified, and still miss something essential about the heart of God.

I know that's uncomfortable. Rules can feel reassuring because they make hard situations sound easy.

Here is the problem. Here is the rule. Apply the rule. Done.

But following Jesus isn't simply about having the right answer on paper. It's about becoming the kind of people who reflect his truth and character in the way we act.

The New Testament calls us to holiness and also to mercy, faithfulness, and love. Those are not competing products on a shelf where we get to pick one and ignore the rest.

If a supposedly righteous response makes us indifferent to the suffering it creates, we need to examine ourselves very carefully.

Christians have read Ezra's response in different ways. Some understand it as a necessary response to a covenant crisis. I find myself troubled by the cost to the families and cautious about treating it as a model to repeat. That is an interpretation to weigh, not a reason to pretend the passage is simple.

For Christian marriages, 1 Corinthians 7:12-16 is especially relevant. Paul does not tell a believer to leave a spouse simply because that spouse is not a Christian. If the unbelieving spouse is willing to remain, Paul counsels them to stay together. Ezra is not a command for Christians to break up such families.