In The Image Of God IV - Morality

1. Personality – The Awareness of God

· We are specially created by God

2. Individuality – The Authority to Choose

· Personal choice out of a free-will

3. Community – The Ability to Love

· Having meaningful relationships.

4. Creativity – The Appreciation of Beauty

· Glorifying God through an appreciation of His order in creation

Morality – The Acknowledgement of Values

· Understanding right and wrong, truth and error

Ge 2:16-17, 24-25, 3:1-7

The well-known “new atheist” Richard Dawkins has stated:

The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.

Now, the only reason Richard Dawkins can’t see purpose in the universe and denies the existence of good and evil is simply because he refuses to acknowledge the truth of the existence and action of God.

To those who live in denial of God, there seems to be no rhyme nor reason to life, and no true, objective right or wrong.

That’s why Dawkins can make a statement like:

What’s to prevent us from saying Hitler wasn’t right? I mean, that is a genuinely difficult question.

Without the acknowledge of the God of the bible, there can be no basis for objective morality, so for atheists like Richard Dawkins it is a difficult question.

But when we acknowledge God, the question becomes a simple one because with God comes moral absolutes.

And since we are made in the image of God, that means we have been created as moral beings – we acknowledge that there is right and wrong.

1. The Test of Morality

The tree of the knowledge of good and evil (2:17)

Personality, individuality, community, & creativity

Eve appreciated the beauty of the forbidden tree (NB not the only beautiful tree – just the only beautiful tree among many that God had put a restriction upon) – CREATIVITY.

She imagined what she might personally gain from it – PERSONALITY

She made a choice to take and eat – INDIVIDUALITY

She gave to her husband with her so he could experience what she had experienced – COMMUNITY

Result: their eyes were opened – in what way?

V2 “We”; v7 “themselves” – “we” became “I”

Cp 2:25 with 3:7: in 2:25, no shame because no thought of themselves; in 3:7, ashamed because they saw themselves.

Their PERSONALITY was violated – they now saw themselves, not as a person created for God’s glory, but as a person who needed to keep some part of their being for themselves – they no longer felt comfortable being so open with another person.

Their INDIVIDUALITY was violated – they now realised just how real, lasting, and unpleasant the consequences of their choices would be.

Their sense of COMMUNITY was violated – they could no longer be as open with each other as they had been, and they began to blame others for the choices they had made – the oneness of their relationship was not as harmonious as when God had first made it.

Their CREATIVITY was violated – they used their skills to cover themselves up; their innocence was now gone, and they began to care for themselves.

It needs to be noted that Adam and Eve were moral beings before they ever sinned. The act of sinning didn’t make them aware that there was such things as good and evil. Eve knew there were things God permitted and one thing God had prohibited:

Ge 3:2–3

[2] "And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:

[3] "But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.”

Notice the language - “We may eat” and “God hath said, Ye shall not eat”. This shows us that Eve had a sense of absolute morality - she knew what was permitted, and what was prohibited. She even knew there were unpleasant consequences for doing what was prohibited - “lest ye die”. Morality is the acknowledgement of God’s values, a realisation that there are things God allows and others that He doesn’t.

Until Eve took of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, all she and Adam had experienced was good, but when they took of that fruit, they then experienced evil. Until then, evil was “theoretical”, meaning it was something they knew about but had never experienced. Now evil was practical - it was something they knew through experience.

They now knew good and evil, but it didn’t make them as gods. It made them into a shadow of the glory God had given them when they were created.

The test of morality for all of us is this: how much do we agree with God’s standards of right and wrong?

There are two common failings among God’s people when it comes to God’s morality.

First, there is the cultural failing.

Too often, God’s commands and instructions to us are diluted and trivialised by claiming they aren’t relevant to the 21st century.

The issue of Bible translations are sometimes reduced to cultural arguments. How many people have you heard defending a particular translation, whatever that may be, using biblical doctrine as their main defence?

The reasons I have for using the authorised version are doctrinal.

The first reason is the method of interpretation - as close to word-for-word as we can get, rather than thought-by-thought.

The Lord Jesus said in:

Mt 5:18

[18] "... verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.”

SLIDE - YOD; TITTLE

The second reason is the manuscripts that are used - Majority scripts (Byzantine) or Minority scripts (Alexandrian).

Ro 3:1–2

[1] "What advantage then hath the Jew? or what profit is there of circumcision?

[2] "Much every way: chiefly, because that unto them were committed the oracles of God.”

Acts - Focus on Peter and Paul in particular

Epistles - places to which epistles were sent

SLIDE - Meditteranean - focus of missionary endeavour and early spread of the church

If I take those two Scriptural reasons together, I have to conclude that the best English translation we have is the Authorised Version. The responsibility I have then is to learn to understand it and do my best to explain it as God gives me opportunity.

Preachers are sometimes encouraged to dumb down their preaching to make it more accessible to people. What they are really being asked to do is preach nice things all the time.

Preach about the love of God, the kindness of God, the baby Jesus, the miracles. Preach about “bible stories”. Preach about how wonderful Heaven is, but don’t mention Hell.

Don’t challenge blinkered thinking. Don’t raise issues that are controversial or that some people may find offensive. Yeah, we know they’re in the bible, but let’s just pass over those parts – sure there’s plenty more place you can preach from.

Ac 20:27

[27] "For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God.”

Secondly, there is the circumstantial failing.

This happens when we change our opinion based on what we have experienced or what a family member or friend has experienced.

This happens with issues like divorce and remarriage, mixed relationships between saved and unsaved, the adoption of meaningless so-called worship songs, even issues such as abortion or euthanasia.

Too often we let our children and young people set the agenda and dictate change when we should be instructing them in the scriptures and give them biblical arguments and reasons for what we believe.

We should be encouraging young people and giving them teaching that is pitched at their level, and giving them opportunities to have fun and fellowship with other Christian young people, but it is never our duty to compromise the truth so that we can keep our numbers up.

2 Pe 1:20–21

[20] "Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.

[21] "For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.”

Our responsibility is to stand firm on the truth and teach it to our children, our young people, and every other person we have the privilege of ministering to.

How are we doing in the test of morality?

2. The Testimony of Morality

We all have an inherent knowledge of morality.

God has placed a conscience within all of us. That conscience is the essence of our morality. The very word “conscience” is a construction of two Latin words.

I went to Cookstown High School whose motto is Virtus cum Scientia – “strength with knowledge”.

“Con-” means “with”; “Scientia” means knowledge”, and so “conscience” means “with knowledge”. We live with a knowledge of right and wrong. Our conscience informs us when we have done wrong and it is at peace when we have done right.

But while our conscience is a general guide to morality, we cannot know why some things are wrong and other things are right unless we have some form of testimony, some witness to instruct us.

Ro 7:5-7

Sin is always sin, but what the law does is expose the sin as sin. It puts a name to it, identifies it so that we know what sin we have committed and so we know objectively what the boundaries of right and wrong are.

Conscience is an okay starting point, but the fact is that we can make our conscience less effective.

We can have an over-sensitive conscience, which can view some things as being sinful when there is actually nothing inherently wrong with them.

1Co 8:4-7

We can have a seared conscience. When we sin, it’s like walking too close to the flames of Hell. And if we continue to sin, especially in a specific way, our conscience becomes desensitised to that sin and we don’t see it as sin anymore.

1Ti 4:1-4

This is a mixture of heresy and Pharisaism, heresy being the propagation of lies and Pharisaism being the sins of pride and legalism.

The heretic no longer sees the truth, because their spiritual sensitivity to the teaching of the Holy Spirit has been seared. And so we end up with professing Christians who teach:

· That homosexuality is justifiable from the scriptures

· That God used evolution to create everything

· That uncontrollable laughing and making animal noises is a sign of the Holy Spirit at work

· That Christians have every right to name it and claim it and have health, wealth, and happiness in this life.

What concerns me is that many of the speakers on Christian TV channels hold to one or more of these views, yet some of us can’t discern the dross from the silver.

I get so frustrated with some Christians when I see them advocate some charismatic preacher of thinly disguised new-ageism, or some personality who gives a convincing soundbite, but their beliefs are unbiblical at best, blasphemous at worst. Yet some of God’s people are advocating them with no discernment whatsoever.

For example, some time ago a friend posted on Facebook about a man by the name of Todd White, and she began her post with the words:

WOW! I've just been introduced to this guy…

After checking up on him to see where he stands compared to scripture I found out that he is involved in street evangelism and claims to see dozens of people get healed every time he goes out.

His “most recent project is as a cast member for God Squad. God Squad is a half-hour reality show. The show follows the cast members as they encounter random individuals in daily life and bring them into a supernatural experience. In their travels, the audience will see vision restored, aches and pain relieved, people healed by art drawn for them and about them, even before the cast ever met them.”

That’s taken from the CBN website, which is the Christian TV channel that showed the programme.

Now, is it just me, or am I right in saying that not every supernatural experience is from God? Did John not write that we are to test the spirits whether they from God? Since when can we bring someone into a supernatural experience? Even if it is from God it is God who does the supernatural work, not us. And since when did God use art to heal people? We don’t believe the gift of healing as seen among the apostles has lasted to the present day, but even if it had, would the healing not take place according to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ?

Morality is more than just life, death, and the 10 commandments. Morality is a matter of recognising the truth from error.

The first moral failure was when Eve believed false doctrine. She ignored the testimony of morality she had received from God and believed the lie of the Deceiver.

The moral failure of the evangelical church today is that we are raising a generation that barely even knows what the word doctrine means.

The average evangelical Christian in Northern Ireland has no desire or appetite for studying doctrine, for putting effort into understanding the difficult parts of scripture, for getting a biblical answer on current controversial issues.

As such the church is allowing the world to influence its teachings and standing on these issues. Some people accuse the church of being irrelevant, but the way for us to keep relevant is not by absorbing the culture around us – it is by adhering to the word of God and provide a clear moral voice amidst the amoral and immoral noise.

The way we do that is by sticking to the moral testimony that is the Word of God.

3. The Trial of Morality

The sad truth is that biblical morality is on trial today.

It has been reduced to the title “Judeo-Christian Morality”. By giving it a vaguely religious title it suggests that this is just one of many moralities that can be accepted or rejected at will. The intent is to secularise moral thinking away from the scriptures and to make secular amorality appear logical and reasonable.

One attack is against the nature of God Himself.

The secularist will make a statement that says something like, “The bible advocates slavery, genocide, the subjugation of women, and capital punishment for thought crimes.”

First, the bible never advocated slavery. It merely recognised the institution that was in existence and gave instructions for how God’s people should work within that system. On the contrary, God’s view on slavery is seen in the New Testament when He inspired Paul to write:

Ga 3:28

"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus."

As far as the teaching concerning women is concerned, God empowers women to fulfil their created role and to uniquely glorify God in ways that men can’t. He consistently affirms the equal value of men and women while maintaining the differences in their created functions.

The other accusations concerning capital punishment for thought crimes and genocide ignore the fact the God has operated in different ways at different points in history. Before Christ died on Calvary, before the completion of the scriptures, and before the establishment of the church, the work of the Holy Spirit among men was limited to the faithful of God’s chosen people. The heathen of Moses’ day and Joshua’s day were fully given over to wickedness and all kinds of vile immorality. The world today is nothing compared to the rampant violence for entertainment, the religious bloodlust, and the open sexual immorality that was so prevalent, especially in OT times, although it must be said that we are coming very close to it.

Today the Holy Spirit indwells God’s people. The scriptures are available in print and by word of mouth in many languages. The church is presently acting as salt and light in the world and through the church the Holy Spirit is restraining (“letting”) wickedness.

2Th 2:7

"For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth [will let], until he be taken out of the way."

This is a time of grace – a time when sin was shown to be serious and vile because it cost the Son of God His life. We look back to the cross and preach the cross and immediately we have a reference point for the wickedness of sin.

The time of law (OT times) was a times when God had to show the world the seriousness and vileness of sin in other ways. Whether the heathen died of old age or in battle they were headed for the same eternal destiny, and the length of time they spent on earth would be as nothing in comparison to eternity.

The destruction of the heathen shows the absolute morality of God, even in areas that aren’t considered serious today.

Today, the name of God and of the Lord Jesus are casually used for emphasis or as curse words, so-much-so that even some Christians throw God’s name into their speech very casually and with no meaning.

Is it any wonder the world thinks God was cruel when He instituted laws among His people that protected the sanctity of His name and worship! They themselves have no appreciation for the nature of God and their natural sinful selves are repulsed by the idea of God being so protective of His honour.

The other attack is against the idea of absolute morality.

We are told we can have our views but that we can’t impose them on others. What they mean by that is you can have your view but you can’t express it outside your own home. There are even laws that some are trying to introduce that would dictate how you live your faith at home.

The banning of smacking.

The current attempt to introduce a law banning all forms of “conversion therapy”!

This is Satan’s attempt to silence the teaching of biblical morality so that many more buy into his deceptions and end up in a Christless eternity.

The world, that is, the satanic, supernatural systems of the world, are opposed to the truth. Satan is the father of lies and the truth is an offence to him and to those who unknowingly are doing his bidding.

That is why we need to be more sure than ever about what we believe and we need to be knowledgeable about the biblical reasons for what we believe.

When we are told we can’t bring the bible into our public lives, our response ought to be that we can’t leave the bible out of our public lives.

When we are told that our opinions are outdated and not in keeping with British values, our response is that our opinions are in keeping with biblical values, and those values are timeless because they are given by the eternal God.

Morality is on trial, which means that we are on trial.

Like Paul we need to be “set for the defence of the gospel”.

We need to “hold forth the word of life”.

Paul’s words to Timothy ought to be echoing in our ears all the time in this day and age:

2Ti 4:1-5

That’s not just a challenge for preachers. It’s a challenge to parents, to Sunday School teachers, to the older saints as they be an example to the younger, to the younger as they learn how to teach others.

I wonder when we come to the end of our lives will we be able to say with Paul:

2Ti 4:7

"I have fought a good fight, I have finished [my] course, I have kept the faith:"

We are made in the image of God, and like God, we have:

PERSONALITY – we have the awareness of God, our Creator

INDIVIDUALITY – we have the authority to choose according to the free-will God has given us

COMMUNITY – we have been given the ability to love and have meaningful relationships

CREATIVITY – we can appreciate beauty as we recognise and acknowledge God’s order

MORALITY – we can acknowledge the existence of absolutes of right and wrong, and of truth and error

And although the image of God in mankind was spoiled by sin, it is our duty as the children of God to reflect the image of our Father in Heaven, until He takes us home and that image is perfectly restored.