God is What He Wills, and you are what you eat…

Stanley Grenz in Theology for the Community of God speaks of God as the moral standard.  He says:

“Not only is God morally perfect, he is the standard of morality.  Rather than he himself being ruled by some moral concept, external to himself, God’s disposition toward creation is the standard by which we will be judged, and we are to judge all human conduct. John brings together the connection between God’s character and our conduct: ‘This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.  And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers’ (1 John 3:16).

  Ultimately the divine disposition and the divine being coalesce…God’s essence and God’s character are both love.  Consequently, there is no dichotomy between God’s own being and God’s will, for God wills what God is.  God wills what is right, and the “right” that God wills is nothing else but what characterizes God’s own being as the Triune One.”(Grenz, 95)

  This has challenged me to think through a couple of things.

1, God is not just the creator of a moral code, and he is not governed by a created moral code, but he himself is the moral code.  That means he cannot just be a god that exists outside his creation, but that he by nature is constantly interacting with and giving direction to it.

2, I have been thinking quite a bit lately about progressive sanctification.  I hold to the truth of Ephesians 2:8-9 that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone.  That said, I believe that verse 10 is extremely important in our process of salvation.  “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”  While we are here, the way that we walk is of great importance.  God, being the standard for morality, and being active in the life of his creation, gives us direction in our lives.  I would say he does this for multiple reasons. First and foremost it is for his glory, that he might show the surpassing riches of his grace.  I also believe that God, in his power, sees that a life lived in Christ brings him glory, but it is also the best life we can live.

People who don’t have Christ’s salvation in their lives often see the good works prepared by God as a burdensome load given to tie Christians down and keep them from fun.  I submit that the good works God created for us are not just to bring him glory, but to allow us passageway into the most fulfilled life available while in the flesh. 

That said, maybe the old adage “You are what you eat” has more truth to it than we realize.  Not only is God morally perfect, but he is the standard of morality. As he told Moses, “I am, that I am.”  And we too, while being saved through Christ’s sacrifice, are very much defined by the way we walk, the character we display, and the good works we do. We can’t just put on Christ like those embarrasing Christian t-shirts and expect to be changed.  We must be transformed.

 

Believing, Hoping, Loving

Matt

 

 

 

 

 

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