Leviticus 18:2-5 English Standard Version

2 “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, I am the Lord your God. 3 You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you. You shall not walk in their statutes. 4 You shall follow my rules and keep my statutes and walk in them. I am the Lord your God. 5 You shall therefore keep my statutes and my rules; if a person does them, he shall live by them: I am the Lord.

I have said that we need to guard our hearts with all integrity as it pertains to being moral people. Nowhere in the original language of the bile can I find the word moral or morality.

This passage in Leviticus was as close as I could come to demonstrating what the bible has to say about being moral.

Do not allow the legal systems of the lands in which we inhabit dictate how we should live.  The bottom line for me in this is that morality cannot be legislated. 

God has given us statutes that outline how to live a life that is pleasing to Him.

My parents did not teach me how to be moral. They only punished me if I did something that displeased them. That did not lead me to be a moral person, it only taught me to be more careful in what I wanted to do so that I wouldn’t get caught.

Israel was punished over and over again for failing to keep God’s commands. After God bailed them out over and over again they returned to failing to keep His commands. Bailment does not work.

Then God proclaimed “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

They killed Him for it.

The religious leaders of His time said they could not put Him to death and they begged the immoral courts of Rome to do it in violation of Leviticus 18:3.

Laws of men justify sin by making the immoral legal which is contrary to what pleases God.

Soon they will make a law that says it is illegal to please God, or have they done so already?

Morality is found in seeking to please God rather than the world we live in.

 ‘This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.’ Wm Shakespeare

So often the only line remembered and quoted by so many is “To thine own self be true.” What is left out is the context in which the father’s advice to the son was not to be a fake, spewing falsehoods. What is the spiritual equivalent?

1 John 1:10

If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

My personal saying is “If you did it, own it.” Confession is good for the soul. What I would not advise is to confess every sin to people who don’t need to hear it. That is not a self-protecting word but rather understanding that we have a ministry to protect and we should not air our dirty laundry to the enemy of Christ who will use it to try and make God the liar.

I have confessed my sins to God and to those whom God has asked me to confess in front of for the sake of my relationship with individuals, not all of mankind.

The enemy of Christ will say, “He hasn’t changed, he is a fraud.” Human nature has a tendency to condemn quickly and hold on to personal animosities rather than believing God is the final judge. If we understand that, then we should only speak to those things God has made it clear in what needs to be said.

Believers need to see who we are in Christ without knowing the full extent of just how much God has changed us. Some people have a problem with the phrase “All things are possible with God.” We can only protect our ministry to God by listening to God and be true to Him and not protect the old self which is dead in Christ.

In this world we have many unguarded moments. We toss around momentary emotions that are meaningless. We might even overhear things that are contrary to the truth as we know it. In some of those cases we were not party to the context of the conversation between others and context is missing. If we join the conversation we must be careful to remember we are admitting we are nosey and eavesdropping. What kind of approach we take doing that says more about our ministry to God and we need to follow God’s lead and not our personal feelings.

Where I live now has been a real eye opener because strangers use every opportunity to join you in a conversation you are having, or just talk to you out of the blue. Those are opportunities to be a minister to God’s grace if we remember who we serve.

Kingdom living begins at the moment of rebirth. Life begins at conception.