t's not the money . . . it's the principle of the thing. Have you ever heard that phrase? Most of us have. On at least a few of those occasions you have probably suspected that the speaker's allegiance to personal principle was really just a covering for covetousness or some other sin. It's an old game, at least as old as Tudor England and probably older. Let's evesdrop on Mr. and Mrs. Henry Tudor, otherwise known as Henry VIII and his second wife, as they play it:
Henry: What I do is God's will.
Anne: Now, if a man or monarch could be sure of that —
Henry: I've worked it out in my mind. I pray to God. I tell you this first, Boleyn. God answers prayer. That's known. Every morning I go on my knees and pray that what I do may be God's will. I pray Him to direct me — that whatever comes to my mind — whatever notion floods my heart — shall be God's will — and I only His instrument. Wherever I turn, whatever I do — whether to reach for food, or thread my way among the coursed paths of the law, or interpret the holy word, or judge men innocent — or guilty — every morning I pray Him on my knees nothing shall rise in my brain or heart but He has wished it first. And since He answers prayer, and since He's given me such heavy power to act, power for good and evil, He must answer this. He does answer. I find such peace in this, that not one morning my whole life long shall I fail these devotions . . .
Anne: This is noble of you, of course, but your Majesty realizes that it might possibly be used as an excuse for —
Henry: For what?
Anne: For doing as you please.
When Anne saw through Henry's game what did she see? She saw that his integrity as a king was defined not by an external standard of conduct but by his own whims. She saw that Henry was a fool who trusted in his own heart.
Fine, we all agree that Henry Tudor will probably not make it into the Evangelical Hall of Fame, but what does this have to do with integrity? The popular understanding of integrity is devotion to a personal code of behavior. Integrity, biblically understood, is nothing of the kind. Christian integrity is comprehensive and consistent faithfulness to biblical standards of thought, speech, and conduct. It is comprehensive, that is, no area of life is exempt. It is consistent, that is, it is a faithfulness over time, stretching through days, weeks, months, and years. It is faithfulness to biblical standards, not ideas of your own making. Integrity is a Christian virtue; you cannot obey God's Word in God's way unless you are a maturing Christian.
So what does this sort of integrity look like? To be honest, sometimes it is invisible, but more on that later. The appearance of this virtue varies with the context. Let's consider a few from the pages of history. A fearless integrity is easy to find in the record of the Christian church. You see it wherever men have been willing to stand alone, and to fear God rather than men. You can see it in the Apostle Paul after the incident on the Jerusalem-to-Damascus turnpike. He left family, career, academic ambition, and religious respectability in order to be obedient to the heavenly vision. You see it in Athanasius, the Egyptian church leader of the fourth century (d. 373 AD) who battled the Arian heresy for forty years, and died before seeing the triumph of the biblical understanding of the deity of Christ. He was exiled five times by the Roman Emperor and was at times the only effective critic of the Arian heresy. You see it in the life of John Knox (1505-1572), a leader of the Scottish church and of the Protestant Reformation in Scotland. His fearless preaching and personal rebukes to the Scottish royalty were particularly effective. The mother of Queen Mary said that she was more afraid of Knox's prayers than of an army of ten-thousand men. At Knox's death in 1572 the Regent of the Kingdom said this of Knox, "There lies one who in his life never feared the face of man, who hath been often threatened with dag and dagger, but hath ended his days in peace and honour."
But a fearless integrity is not the only sort we find. There is another variety seen at times in the lives of men who have taught in the church. When once you have embraced the Scriptures as a comprehensive standard and endeavor to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ you begin to discover that some of your former opinions are out to lunch. Now what do you do? It is much worse if you have been teaching these opinions in a church or publishing them in books. If you change your opinion in submission to the text of Scripture you may find yourself out of a Sunday School class, out of a nice book contract, or out of a job.
Or, you may already have had a reputation for being unorthodox, and then God takes the scales from your eyes. Do you turn away from your fashionable eccentricity and return to being just one among many? Are you willing to be one of the herd, if the herd is faithful to Scripture? Either way, a teachable integrity is willing to mature in public, if need be. You see this sort of faithfulness to scriptural standards in the apostle Peter. In Galatians 2, Paul tells us about a situation at Antioch in which Peter gets a little confused about the Gospel. Paul calls Peter on his hypocrisy, and Peter apparently repents, because at the next church business meeting in Acts 15 Peter is leading the charge against the error which he once held. Peter feared God, not the snickering in the back pews.
I mentioned a little earlier that sometimes Christian integrity is invisible. It is invisible for two reasons. First, most of us do not have the high profile of an Athanasius or a Knox, and most of us do not have to do our learning in a broad public setting (unless you are the father of a large family). The second reason for the invisibility of integrity is that so many of the battles are fought when no one but the Lord is around. You know the times. So does the Lord, and it's only at the Last Day that this persevering integrity will be made visible.
