Live In God’s Morality & Approval

Word-Of-The-Day: ‘(9) As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse! (10) Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.’ (Galatians 1:9-10)

I read a couple of articles recently about young men, in differing fashion, trying to follow God and be obedient to Him in today’s secular society despite the threat of arrest and/or harassment. The essence is both focus on following what God is wanting them to do despite opposition from society and/or authorities.  What if the young men figured, ‘well, I guess it’s not that important to share God’s Word, and besides the authorities will arrest me.’?  This would make people happy, and the laws would be followed, but is God being served?  What of those who want God’s Word, but now have no one to provide it to them because ‘it’s racist/biased/bigoted and not following our new national/societal standards’? 

On the flip side, we should not expect the legislating of morality to work, either – it never has.  The ‘world’s oldest profession’ is regarded to be prostitution; we find it existed in Genesis (particularly in 38:24, when Judah thought his daughter-in-law Tamar (unknown to Judah at the time) was a ‘harlot’ when he ‘watched late night TV’ with her), even though pre-Levitical law had the practice as unsavory, antithetical to God, and carried a penalty of death. 

Prostitution still exists today as while it is illegal in most states, it is not considered so immoral from a secular standpoint as to stop people from being a prostitute or a ‘john’.  Though we Christians want the ‘sex’ services to stop, as we do abortions, it will not stop due to legal intervention.  The more laws on the books to enforce Christian morals, the more likely laws will be made to curtail Christian activities.  Legislating ‘morality’ seems to be an easy way to get people to do what you want them to do, but eventually people rebel and the law fails.

We cannot curtail ourselves from serving the Lord or providing the Gospel; we also must not push excessively hard to curtail activities we find ‘immoral’ legalistically.  The way to stop immoral behaviors is to demonstrate through your actions and your talk how to be moral, by acting moral and doing moral things (and not immoral things).  By telling people the Gospel message, inviting them to church to (hopefully) see moral lives interact under God’s purview, is the way people stop immoral actions.  When people are introduced to the Lord and (hopefully) see the enrichment that God provides, they don’t want to do immoral things by adopting the moral code that God provides.

Be God’s messenger, even if society says ‘no’; don’t live by secular standards, even if society says ‘yes’.  Live God’s way, do Godly things and be righteous!  Regardless of what the law says, do what God says…