Monday, October 17, 2016
With the
Lord’s authority I say this: Live no
longer as the Gentiles do, for they are hopelessly confused. Their
minds are full of darkness; they wander far from the life God gives because
they have closed their minds and hardened their hearts against him. They
have no sense of shame. They live for
lustful pleasure and eagerly practice every kind of impurity. But that isn’t what you learned about Christ. Since
you have heard about Jesus and have learned the truth that comes from him, throw
off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by
lust and deception. Instead, let the Spirit renew your
thoughts and attitudes. Put on your new nature, created
to be like God—truly righteous and holy.
So stop telling lies. Let us tell
our neighbors the truth, for we are all parts of the same body. And
“don’t sin by letting anger control you.”
Don’t let the sun go down while you are still angry, for anger
gives a foothold to the devil. If you
are a thief, quit stealing. Instead, use
your hands for good hard work, and then give generously to others in need. Don’t
use foul or abusive language. Let
everything you say be good and helpful, so that your words will be an
encouragement to those who hear them. Ephesians
4:17-29(NLT)
The
Challenge to Live Differently
The Christian
church is a called-out body. Paul urges us to choose to live with moral
absolutes, as opposed to the absence of morality he sees in the world. Today the problem is a relative morality. But we are to live differently than the
world. That means the bedrock conviction
of moral absolutes.
William
Barclay wrote about the difference Paul described:
In the
heathen world, Paul saw three terrible things.
He saw men's hearts so petrified that they were not even aware that they
were sinning; he saw men so dominated by sin that shame was lost and decency
forgotten; he saw men so much at the mercy of their desires that they did not
care whose life they injured and whose innocence they destroyed so long as
these desires were satisfied.
What Paul
described was petrified hearts. I have
seen wood
retrieved from the Petrified Forest; trees that have long ago given up
living. The tree dies on the inside
first, and then petrifies rock-hard over time.
You never know of the deadness, because the outside still looks like a
live tree. However, they are only images
of what used to be. Without moral
absolutes we run the risk of becoming dead from the inside out.
What does it
mean to have a moral absolute? Consider
the survey taken in the U.S. several decades ago. The question asked American men and women was: How much money would it take for you to
agree to sleep with a stranger? For men, the average price was $10; for
women, $10,000. Some said no,
but when the price got to a million dollars almost everyone said: Yes, I would sleep with a stranger. The human problem was unmasked by the question. The conclusion is the old punch line, we
already know what you are; we're just haggling about price.
Are you for
sale at any price? Or are you committed
to the moral absolute that you are bought with God's price, and not for sale to
the things of this world? That’s what a
Christian value is all about! Christians
are committed to live differently. Moral
absolutes mean that we will make changes when our actions violate God's
Word.
Paul said: Put off the old self – put on the new. This is not faking it until you make it theology. This is a conscious decision to let Christ
determine how you will act, in spite of the consequences, or the conditions, or
the relative values of the world.
For You Today
Living
differently means a willingness to change.
Moral absolutes will force you to make changes. You live differently as a Christian!
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