The wicked accepts a bribe in secret to pervert the ways of justice.
The wicked man sets personal gain- whether in money or favors or promises of both- above integrity and above justice. Justice may be pleasant, to him, though often it is not (Gen. 8:21), but he prefers his own worldly advancement, his own desires. Here he is at once wrong-hearted and wrong-headed. The Christian, when tempted, must remember both the moral and the practical sides of bribery, of sin in general.
Bribery, at its core, is an economic transaction. I promise my companion so-and-so amount of money or such-and-such favors, and he condemns the innocent or lets the guilty go free (Is. 5:23). He does evil for pay; I pay for evil. Both of us sin. I have conspired to do evil (2 Sam. 11), and I have tempted my companion to engage in that evil, successfully (Matt. 18:6). He has committed an evil, in perverting justice, and has aided me in sinning, encouraging rather than chastising my vice. Bribery can come in other contexts, too, in bribing a friend to take my side when I am wrong in an argument, in colluding to embarrass or humiliate or degrade a workplace rival, in quid pro quo favors (unspoken) of slandering my companion’s enemies in order to get them to slander mine.
The payment scheme of bribery, however, has a massive flaw. In an ideal economic transaction, both sides come out the better because both value what they receive more than what they gave, in truthful understanding of both (if I receive a lump of iron pyrite, my valuation of it, on the assumption that it is gold, is false and fleeting). In a bribe, however, consider what each side gets. I, the briber, get my worldly advancement; he, the one I bribed, gets his money or favor or promise. So far so good. We also both damn our souls to Hell; we each, if we know God, take an axe to our relationship with Him, inflicting untold damage on the only part of it we can reach, ourselves.
Is this a worthwhile transaction? Perhaps I value what I have- the goal of the bribe and my sin- more than what he has- the money I gave and his sin. If I am sane and clear-eyed, though, I will value both immensely less than I value a clear conscience such as Paul speaks of in 1 Timothy 1:5. Certainly even the man who despises God will generally admit that eternal life (considered apart from necessary relationship with God) is a truly mammoth asset to lose. Consider it from the Christian perspective, however. Of what value is righteousness! More to be desired than gold, even fine gold, and more rare than the gold of Ophir (Ps. 19:10; Job 28:16). I have traded an evil deed for an evil deed, and in process lost that which was worth more than either.
So I don’t even need to note that bribery often backfires in the worldly sense to make bribery a losing proposition on the economic front. The danger that bribery comes out or motivates revenge or simply doesn’t have the effect I wanted, that danger is miniscule next to the damage already inflicted in the first act of bribery.
All this, despite its gravity, should be nearly irrelevant to the Christian next to what is its base: our relationship with God (and His image). Our highest duty is to love Him and in Him His reflection, our neighbors (Matthew. 22:36-40). Our highest love is to be the same (John 12:25, 14:21). To give a bribe towards unrighteousness (for I do not think a bribe to do righteousness is evil, though certainly it speaks to a rot in the society necessitating it) is to declare all His love and all our joy in Him merely a pittance before the fleeting pleasures of the world, of revenge or greed or prejudice.
The allure of worldly advancement, of harming the innocent or getting the guilty (perhaps myself) off of the hook, it cannot outweigh, must not outweigh, my love for God. All too often, of course, such desires do precisely that, for a time. Paul lamented that weakness in himself all through Romans 7:7-25. We are all sinners, on this earth (1 John 1:10). Yet it is a vomitous evil, when we face it, a monstrosity: we spurn the love of our Father, whose love is eternal, whose compassion is unbounded, who has said, “My steadfast love shall not depart,” and “My covenant of peace shall not be removed” (Is. 54:10). We do this for the sake of a little while of pleasure, a little less pain. In a way, no traitor, no coward, no caitiff in all the history of literature has managed to outmatch this.
For all this, we are not without hope; we are indeed awash with it. Paul answered to his weakness with Christ (Rom. 7:25); he declared all that which could separate him from Christ: nothing (Rom. 8:35). What overpowering joy is this! The Creator of this world came to His people and died for us (John 1:1-3). He died and was raised, and so this horror we perpetrate He bore and bore for us (Is. 53:11-12). Thus we can see Him; thus we can be to His eye a satisfaction and a glory (Is. 53:10). We can know that all this increases the enormity of our bribes to unrighteousness; we can rejoice, for even this great vileness is subdued in His hand.
God bless.
Written by Colson Potter
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
