Aligned With God’s Standards!
Every human being has an in-built system of values which is consulted, or not, in one’s process of making moral choices. Christians, more specifically, are not left to themselves in such decisions, but derive their ethics from God’s written revelation - the Bible.
For any individual, any time, and anywhere in the globe, a standard is necessary; a set of prescriptions is important to orient one into doing what is right, proper, and beneficial to all concerned. For the Christian, such standard remains the Word of God!
From those eternal, ever-relevant values, outlined in Scripture, the Christian learns how to actualize and contextualize its principles at each new age and generation. From all we learn in and from the Bible, we need to realize that our ethical choices are not a matter of preference. They have been eternally set in heaven by the Almighty!
A Christian person is indeed free, but only within the boundaries God Himself established for her or him. One is bound to do the will of God, as revealed in His Word, the Bible. Scripture condemns a “selective morality;” the Bible does not allow a “pick and choose” type of behavior. There’s no multiple choice morality!
God’s children are to walk as His redeemed even when no one is watching, for “all things are open and naked before the eyes of Him with Whom we have to do” (Hebrews 4:13). Realistically, though, there are more people watching than one may realize. Thus, God’s standards are to be taught and lived, even amid derision, opposition, or mere lack of understanding.
Christians should never expect the world to act in accordance with the guidelines the Bible offers to all humanity. One needs patiently to teach them, dealing with objections and disfavor toward divine prescriptions, in a godly, Christian, loving manner. Society needs to recognize that “morality is what God expects, not just of saints and heroes, but of all common folk,” as the late Lewis B. Smedes commented.
Right conduct won’t ever be possible if people are left to themselves to figure things out, to choose on their own how they are to act in varied situations. Yet, blinded by sin, large segments of the human race travel without a goal, a moral goal, with each individual doing what appears right in his or her own eyes. Humans, however, are not morally neutral; their natural proclivity is always to make decisions contrary to God and often harmful to themselves and to their neighbor.
There is a divine verdict recorded in Psalm 1, which every child of God must heed: “For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall perish” (v.6). The great London preacher of the 19th century, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, expressed it this way: “Righteousness is often costly to the man who keeps to it at all hazards, but in the end it will bear its own expenses, and return an infinite profit.”
