EXPLORING CHRISTIANITY: Biblical Guidlines for morality

EXPLORING CHRISTIANITY - MORALITY

THE BIBLE
Can we trust a book written 2000 years ago?

EYEWITNESS
Did the writers of the New Testament get their picture of Jesus right?

GOD - MAN
Is Jesus really God?

RESURRECTION
Did Jesus really rise from the dead?

RELIGIONS
With so many religions, why Christianity?

SUFFERING
If there is a God, why is there so much suffering?

TRINITY
Understanding the Trinity.

SCIENCE
The complementary nature of Science & Christianity.

FORGIVENESS
What it is and why it matters?

GUIDANCE
How does God guide?

REPENTANCE
What it is and why you can't get to heaven without it.

BORN AGAIN
What does it mean to be converted and born again?

SAVING FAITH
The kind of faith that will get you to heaven

ASSURANCE
Can I know for sure that I am going to heaven?

TRUTH
What is truth and does it matter?

MORALITY
Does it matter how we live? A Christian view of morality.

THE CHURCH
God's vision for his family, the Church. A call to the churches of the new millennium.

PURPOSE
How can I find a great purpose for living?

IDENTITY
Who am I; Finding my true identity as a human being and as a child of God.

SELF-ESTEEM
How can I feel good about my self? The Christian basis for proper sel-esteem.

LIFE AFTER DEATHChristianity's Hope & Challenge.

THE CROSS
Why did Jesus Die? What the Bible says about the Cross.

Grace
The importance of grace in the New Testament.

Biblical guidelines

The Old Testament - the millennium before Jesus

As the Old Testament is a much misunderstood book and as all the moral principles that are found in the New Testament find their beginnings in the Old, I will start there.

1. The Compassion of God

The Old Testament gives us the story of God's dealings with the human race from the beginning of human history till the fifth century BCE. Particularly, it tells how God progressively made himself known to one man, Abraham, and then his descendants, the Israelites, in preparation for the coming of Jesus Christ. His usual method of communicating with his people was through inspired prophets. This God they had come to know was faithful (Jeremiah), just (Amos), loving (Hosea), holy (Isaiah) and merciful (Micah). Drawing these characteristics together, the Old Testament writers presented this God as, above all, compassionate. It was right at the beginning of their relationship with God as his chosen people that he revealed himself to Moses as "the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness"(Exodus 34:6). The declaration that God abounds with love and is filled with compassion is found repeatedly throughout the Old Testament*, being as it were its central theological statement. Concerning this, Williston Walker, in an article in The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, concluded:

Nothing therefore is more prominent in the Old Testament than the ascription of compassion, pity, mercy, etc. to God. The people may be said to have gloried in it.

*For example, Nehemiah 9:17; Psalm 86:15; 103:8; 111:4; 116:5; 145:8; Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2; Isaiah 54:10.

2. Grace

The idea of grace is also prominent at the beginning of the Old Testament story. The declaration "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery" repeatedly serves to introduce commands as to how God's people were to live in the covenant community (e.g. Exodus 20:2). God had taken the initiative (as he always does) to rescue the people from their predicament and to bring them into a special covenant relationship with himself, a covenant based on his own love and faithfulness towards them. Now that they are in that relationship, which is all of his doing, he expects them to behave in a certain kind of way. Because he is holy, they are to be holy. "You are to be holy to me because I, the Lord, am holy, and I have set you apart from the nations to be my own" (Leviticus 20:26). Holiness involved obedience to the covenanting God as motivated by love and gratitude (Deuteronomy 6:5, 20-25). The purpose of the covenant was to build a personal relationship, built on love and trust. As Walter Kaiser notes in Toward Old Testament Ethics:

The covenant aims to establish a personal relationship, not a code of conduct in the abstract.

3. The social nature of the moral code

A third noteworthy emphasis of the Old Testament is the strong social nature of moral code. "Lord, who may dwell in your sanctuary? Who may live on your holy hill? He whose walk is blameless and who does what is righteous, who speaks the truth from his heart and has no slander on his tongue, who does his neighbour no wrong and casts no slur on his fellow man...who keeps his oath even when it hurts, who lends his money without usury and does not accept a bribe against the innocent" (Psalm 15). The commands to love God with all our heart and to love our neighbour as ourselves are both Old Testament commands (Deuteronomy 6:5; Leviticus 19:18). The first four of the ten commandments deal with our relationship with God, but the last six deal with our relationships with others.

4. God's people as an example

God wanted his people to be seen as a people who exhibited something of his own character, who could be an example to the rest of the nations. "Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (Exodus 19:5, 6). However, in their concern for one another, the stranger and the foreigner were not to be excluded (e.g. Deuteronomy 5:13-15). It is noteworthy also from this last reference that the care of animals was also part of their responsibility, as in Proverbs 12:10: "A righteous man cares for the needs of his animal."

This strong emphasis on community, which Kaiser calls "corporate solidarity" means that God's covenant people do not find their true being just as individuals but as members of the community. Thomas Ogletree draws out the implications of this in The Use of the Bible in Christian Ethics:

Our wholeness as moral beings cannot be abstracted from the moral soundness of the community to which we belong.

The inward nature of morality

A fifth point that, as we have seen, Jesus underlined in his teaching, is the inward nature of morality. "Do not hate your brother in your heart" (Leviticus 19:17). "Surely you desire truth in the inner parts" (Psalm 51:6). "If I had cherished sin in my heart the Lord would not have listened" (Psalm 66:18).

Justice for the poor

Sixthly, there is a very strong emphasis on the justice of God and his bias towards the poor and oppressed. This comes through especially in the teaching of the prophets, though it has its roots in the earlier books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy that tell the story of the Israelites' delivery from slavery in Egypt and the lessons they were to learn from that. A typical example is the eighth century BC prophet, Amos, who spared no words in warning of God's judgement on those who rule without regard to justice for those who are at the bottom of the social scale. "This is what the Lord says: 'For three sins of Israel, even for four, I will not turn back my wrath. They sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals. They trample on the heads of the poor as upon the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed'" (Amos 2:6, 7). Their religious observances are hateful to God while they allow such practices to continue. "I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot stand your assemblies. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings I will not accept them (5:21, 22). Instead they are to "let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!" (5:24). Such teaching by the prophets is graphically illustrated in the stories of the Old Testament, such as Nathan's rebuke of David for his adultery and murder (2 Samuel 12) and Elijah's rebuke of King Ahab for his murder of Naboth (1 Kings 21). God's love for his people in the Old Testament is clearly balanced by his passion for justice and righteousness.

This theme was taken up by Jesus at the very beginning of his ministry when, reading from the Old Testament book of Isaiah, he declared in the synagogue, "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour" (Luke 4:18, 19). His ministry that followed wonderfully demonstrated those words. His heart was for the poor and disadvantaged.

7. Hope

A seventh emphasis, that comes through very strongly in the later prophets, is that their present moral concerns were very much related to their future hope. The prophets directed their hope towards the dawning of the reign of the sovereign God over all the earth and the role of his people in that reign. The day would come when "the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea" (Isaiah 11:9), and "His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth" (Zechariah 9:10). This hope, which focused on the coming of the Messiah, provided a future perspective on their present behaviour. The hope of future participation in God's kingdom had serious moral implications. Moral decisions carried consequences for the future. Only the righteous could look foreward to sharing in the messianic era. "Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever" (Daniel 12:3). Though there is not a strong emphasis on life after death in the Old Testament, the hints are there. It was recognised that many of the "good" would not be rewarded in this life, but the prophets held out the hope that God would surely act on behalf of his covenant people at the end of the age.

8. Wisdom

Another point worth mentioning is the importance of "wisdom" in the Old Testament. For the Israelites, true wisdom began with a proper reverence for God. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline" (Proverbs 1:7). But wisdom did not stop there, it extended to every aspect of day to day living. The Book of Proverbs, particularly, is packed with wisdom for character building and sorting out one's priorities in life. (It is a great book for teenagers!) All this is important for being a member of God's covenant community.

9.Teaching through story telling

A final matter of importance is that many of the moral and spiritual principles of Old Testament are found in the stories of God's dealings with real people that are found there. Telling stories is one of the most effective ways of teaching moral principles, particularly for children, and at this the Old Testament excels. It is the world's greatest storybook, as well as being the one that gives the most accurate picture of this world of humans as it really is.