Barnes: Faith, and the big commandments in our daily lives – Elizabethtown Bladen Journal

Gods standard of measurement is different. Comfortable or not, His statutes are Gods merciful, loving and absolute commandments, for our obedience to Him, and for the enjoyment of our salvation.

Many modern Christians distill the commandments of God, His statutes, down to one or two which leave them in their so-called comfort zones and with room to set their own course.

Maybe we have all done that.

I have known some whose primary obedience was no cussing and use of filthy language. Still, racial epithets were acceptably spoken in their presence, and by themselves.

One good father I knew warned his children not to lie or steal, but other pitfalls of conduct were seldom mentioned in his instruction. Many fathers of a former generation winked at and tacitly, if not openly, approved their growing sons sowing their wild oats.

That doubtless continues.

Mothers have taught their little daughters to sit modestly and keep their dresses pulled down. In their adolescence, those girls have been allowed to dress immodestly, seductively, even in church.

And mothers, too, have set the example for them, calling it the style.

Where does our faith come into all of this? What about the big commandments?

Thats where we dont want to go, most of us. Some justify killing on the devils grounds of white supremacy. Some excuse and practice adultery by another name: polyamorous relationship is a newer one. Others condemn telling lies, but eagerly spread the juiciest Facebook gossip. Some endorse the statute against covetousness, and envy their neighbors job promotion and earned achievements.

And, most serious of all, who among us can declare, with a straight face, that we have loved the Lord God with all our heart, all our mind, all our strength, all our soul? Who?

Furthermore, but of second importance, has any one of us loved our neighbor as much as we love our own lives?

The Hebrew word which the King James Version of our Bible translates as transgression literally means rebellion. Through the words of the prophets, God calls our sins with their excuses, pesha, rebellion. Hebrew has three main words for sin and this one, pesha, literally means rebellion. Hebrew Bible scholar, Dr. Ralph L. Smith, says in the Broadman Bible Commentary, The essence of sin in the Old Testament is rebellion.

This nihilistic culture, which we are immersed in, has no qualms with rebellion. It measures everything by whether it fits inside our comfort zone. All of us living now were born into a nihilistic world and worldview, ever gaining momentum.

This view of life and behavior affirms nothing of value, except our own pleasure or the pleasure of those who have consented together. Moral and religious values, still held by a diminishing few, are seen as antiquated and ignorant, old-fashioned and hyper-conservative, and therefore irrelevant and outdated.

But Gods standard of measurement is different. Comfortable or not, His statutes are Gods merciful, loving and absolute commandments, for our obedience to Him, and for the enjoyment of our salvation. More, they are Gods divine order of the creation He has made. That divine order still stands. We defy it at our peril and loss; loss of meaning, loss of purpose, even of our humanity. What we get in place of Gods divine order is nothing, the content of nihilism. Nothing. Capitalized.

Psalm 119 is filled with this wisdom and truth: from verse 54, Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage; from verse 16, I will delight myself in thy statutes; I will not forget thy word.; from verses 5, 6, 0 that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes! Then shall I not be ashamed, when I have respect unto all thy commandments.; and from verse 71, It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might !earn thy statutes.

So be it, our Father, to Thy Glory and Thy Honor. Amen.

Thanks be to God.

Dr. Elizabeth Barnes is a retired professor emerita of Christian Theology and Ethics at the Baptist Theological Seminary in Richmond, Virginia, and a resident of White Lake.

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Barnes: Faith, and the big commandments in our daily lives - Elizabethtown Bladen Journal