Let’s do a thought experiment. Is there someone in your life whom you trust so absolutely that you would do anything this person tells you to? Even if this person tells you to do something apparently wrong? Such as killing someone?

If there is no one like that in your life, then you are the ultimate decision maker on what is right and wrong. In other words, you are the god of your own life. Whatever you are instructed to do, you are running it through your own grid of what is right and wrong and doing it only when it agrees with your grid. But having God as your God means that God is the ultimate decision maker on what is right and wrong. Therefore, even if He tells you to do something apparently wrong, it’s trusting Him rather than trusting your senses. Otherwise, you are not trusting Him at all. You are trusting yourself and God is simply an advisor and not an absolute Lord over your life.

But would God ask us to something wrong? What about when God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac? God told Abraham to kill his son! Even though the law wasn’t given until Moses’s time, everyone knew it was wrong to kill someone – let alone your own son! But that is what God asked Abraham to do. In other words, God was testing Abraham to see where his allegiance lied. His own sense of right and wrong or God’s? Was Abraham at a point where he thought, “God is more loving and powerful than me, therefore if He asks me to do something apparently wrong, it’s my sense of right and wrong that needs to be fixed and not God’s!”

There are instances in the Bible that I read about that do not sit well with my 21st century sensibility. When it tells me to treat a brother like an unbeliever if he refuses repent and be reconciled (Matt 18:17). When it tells me to have nothing to do with sexually immoral, greedy, idolater, etc. (1 Cor. 5:11) If I go beyond the Bible and receive them still even though they would not repent, then I’m not more loving than God. I’m less loving. I have to suppress my 21 century sensibility and put on God’s sensibility.

Oh, may God be gracious to us and transform us so that we would be more acceptable to God than to the world!

PH