Our Morality
Moral Awareness at the Beginning
Adam and Eve surely knew right from wrong as they were ashamed of their nakedness when they disobeyed God and ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. God said they would die spiritually and physically if they disobeyed Him. They sinned after being tempted by Satan when he asked, “Did God really say … ?”
god gave us choices and a conscience to guide us
After that first choice to sin, we are given many examples of some obeying God with a repentant heart while others chose not to. God clearly presented Cain with a choice and warned him of the consequences if he chose wrongly. He rejected Cain’s vegetable sacrifice but told him in Genesis chapter 4: “If you do what is right, won’t you be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.” Just like with Adam, Eve and Cain, God gave us a conscience and a lot of freedom to make choices. His sacrificing of animals and covering the shame of Adam and Eve with their skins was the first act of blood sacrifice atoning for sin.
Long after Creation, the world “was filled with violence” and God decided to destroy all living creatures on the land. However, Noah “walked with God” and God saved him and his family and started over. Other examples of God-fearing men include Abraham, Job, Joseph, Moses, Caleb, Joshua and Daniel. Godly women include Sarah, Ruth, Deborah, Esther, Hannah, Elizabeth and Mary, the mother of Jesus. These are just some of many.
God Looks at the Heart
God prophesied about Christ in Genesis and revealed what He truly required — trust in blood sacrifice and a clean heart and not just good “works.” He said that outward appearance and human effort do not earn righteousness and told Jesse before choosing David:
1 Samuel 16:7
“Do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature, because I have refused him (David’s brother). For the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”
The Law Reveals Our Need
The Ten Commandments reveal the “ideal” lifestyle that we are incapable of living because of our inherent sinful nature. From the beginning, salvation was never achieved by perfectly keeping the Law, but by faith and blood sacrifice as written here:
Genesis 15:6
“And he (Abram/Abraham) believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness.”
Life is in the Blood
God explained the basis of atonement when He said that life itself is found in the blood and that blood sacrifice was required to reconcile mankind to Him. This principle remained central to His salvation plan and was “completed” by Jesus.
Leviticus 17:11
“For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul.”
We're Saved by Grace through Faith
The Bible clarifies that salvation is a gift from God that we must accept through faith.
Ephesians 2:8–9
“For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift; not from works, so no one can boast.”
Hebrews 11:1
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good testimony.”
Our Conscience and Holy Spirit
God gave us a conscience to discern good from evil and the Holy Spirit to “nudge” us toward good choices but our consciences can be seared through sin, bitterness or the belief that “God is a myth.” As society continually rejects God as the Lawgiver to Whom we must answer, choices are no longer grounded in truth but in personal experience, feelings or baseless subjectivity.
The Cost of Moral Relativism
Our steady digression into moral ambiguity is having detrimental effects on the social condition of the world. As God is increasingly rejected, there is a noticeable decline in church attendance and in the sharing of the Gospel. As a result, we see a sharp rise in sexually transmitted diseases, slavery of all kinds, corruption and fraud, ethnic cleansing, global conflicts, selfishness and multiple addictions. When moral standards are removed and replaced with personal preference, society decays.
God Gives Us Choices
From the very beginning, God offered choices to individuals and to society as a whole. People were free to obey Him or to reject Him, and they were also responsible for the consequences of those choices. The concept of contingency – results or consequences occurring due to one’s actions – appears throughout the Old and New Testaments with God and Jesus using “if, but and because” numerous times.
As we now see, humanity has largely chosen “the broad way that leads to destruction” rather than “the narrow way” of worshipping and obeying God. This has led us to despair and confusion.
Restoration Through Jesus
Jesus not only taught us how to live moral lives, but He also did what we couldn’t do for ourselves – He willingly died to pay the penalty for our sins and to restore us to our Creator God.
As shown in Changed Lives, many who walked the “broad road” eventually humbled themselves before their Creator, accepted Jesus as their Savior and experienced lives that were dramatically changed.