The ethics consist in the study of good and evil, and the Apostle Paul make a reference to ethics in terms of how to choose: All things are lawful, but not all things are expedient. All things are lawful; but not all things edify. 1 Corinthians 10:23-24.
We can see a similar assertion in Ecclesiastes 15:14: "God created man from the beginning and leave him in the hands of his council. This is the freedom of his will.." We have the freedom to choose between sin and righteousness, between good and evil. This is the most fundamental choice of man. Not all things are expedient means that not everything is profitable, that not all things are edify means that not everything is good. There are successful choices that are profitable and benevolent and wrong decisions that are destructive, being all allowed. This teaching must be understood also in the context that ethics in the ancient world was defined by the fulfillment of certain exhortations, that is, the fulfillment of the commandments.
The Christian faith teaches to us that the law of Moses is impossible to fulfill, what occurs when the truth and life are opposed, what occurs when to save a life you have to lie or miss the day of Saturday or Sunday, you have to look for the profitable and edifying in these cases.
We are progressive or chaotic, just or unjust, edifying or destructive. Values or virtue in terms of ethics are equivalent to the concept of mask in psychology. When we are transparent we build in the law of God, the love for the good, however when people are opaque, virtue becomes our mask. We follow the divine, the most excellent or we are guided by the love for money and the pursuit for wealth. The other, our neighbor matters or not. We choose.