Not Who But What
by Albert Gardner
“It is not who is right—but what is right, that counts.” The crowd does not make a thing right or wrong. If something is wrong, it remains wrong even if everybody does it. If it is right, it is still right even if nobody does it. Moses said, “Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil” (Exodus 23:2). Moses was saying, “It is not who is right but what is right that will count.”
In this collective age, many in the church have surrendered their right of choice and have gone with the multitude. In matters of immodest dress, unchristian recreation, improper speech, they have said, “everybody else is doing it.” What does that have to do with the proposition? It is not who is right but what is right. If everybody turned their back on God, would that make it right? Paul asks the question: “For what if some did not believe? shall their unbelief make the faith of God without effect? God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is writ-ten, That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged” (Romans 3:3-4).
It is right to accept the gospel of Christ. It is right even if it makes every man a liar. Moses once sent twelve men to search the land of Canaan. On the return of the spies, ten of them gave a bad report. Like many brethren, they said it could not be done. They said “we saw the giants...and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight” (Numbers 13:33). “And Caleb stilled the people before Moses, and said, Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it” (Numbers 13:30). There are two against ten! Who is right?
What difference does it make who is right? It is what is right that makes the difference. The majority did not make it right. Joshua and Caleb entered into the Promised Land not because they were who they were but because they believed and obeyed what was right. When I talk to people about the Bible’s teaching of one church, they sometimes say, “Well, you people think that you are the only ones that are right and everybody else is lost.” Again, I insist that it is not a question of who is right but what is right. What does the Bible teach on this subject? “And he is the head of the body, the church” (Colossians 1:18). “There is one body” (Ephesians 4:4); “but one body” (I Corinthians 12:20). “And that he might reconcile both unto God in one body” (Ephesians 2:16).
Is it so hard to see what is right? It has always been that those who obey the will of God are right, and then only because they did what God told them to do. Why was Noah blessed? Surely not because of who he was. It was because Noah did “according to all that God commanded him, so did he” (Genesis 6:22). A good man sometimes does bad things, Barnabas was a good man (Acts 11:24). He was good not because of who he was but because of what he did. He was “full of the Holy Ghost and of faith.” But up at Antioch one time (Galatians 2), Peter refused to eat with the Gentiles after the Jews came around. “And the other Jews dissembled likewise with him; insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation” (Galatians 2:13).
When I tell people what Jesus said is required for salvation, they sometimes question it. Jesus said: “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned” (Mark 16:16). They begin to look around and see who doesn’t believe it that way. Many have rejected it on that basis. People who are more concerned about what is right than who is right can’t misunderstand the verse. They have no trouble understanding that baptism is necessary to salvation. “Baptism saves” (I Peter 3:21).
My sincere prayer is that you will always strive to do what is right, and then let the Lord take care of who is right. Jesus said: “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32).
