The Life Everyone Ought To Choose
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Brother Bob Pellien: What kind of life do you want to live? Have you explored new adventures to figure it out? While there’s nothing wrong with exploring foreign countries or going outside of your comfort zone, it shouldn’t be the purpose we live for. We should live to serve God. But how? Keep listening. You’re listening to the podcast version of God’s Message Magazine, and today’s topic is The Life Everyone Ought To Choose.
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Brother Bob Pellien: Immeasurable is His great love for mankind, God not only created man, but also gave him life and everything to sustain it for a well-defined purpose (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14; Ephesians 2:10). And to guide everyone towards this purpose for which he is accountable, the Almighty Father commanded that His words be written in a book universally known as the Bible. Apostle Paul, one of those sent to preach in his time, declared:
and you remember that ever since you were a child you have known the Holy Scriptures which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching the truth, rebuking error, correcting faults, and giving instruction for right living, so that the man who serves God may be fully qualified and equipped to do every kind of good work.
[II Timothy 3:15-17 Good News Bible]
Brother Bob Pellien: And for man to be able to live righteously, Paul gave the first century Christians this instruction which applies more today:
In the Lord’s name, then, I say this and warn you: do not live any longer like the heathen, whose thoughts are worthless and whose minds are in the dark. They have lost all feeling of shame; they give themselves over to vice and do all sorts of indecent things without restraint.
[Ephesians 4:17-19 Good News Bible]
Brother Bob Pellien: Through God’s wisdom, man will be able to live in accordance with the well-defined purpose: serve God, live righteously, and do good works. Likewise, he should not live the way the pagan does—having worthless and dark thoughts, vicious, and grossly indecent neither he lives being governed by human nature. Apostle Paul describes one who lives so, and the evil of doing such:
What human nature does is quite plain. It shows itself in immoral, filthy, and indecent actions; in worship of idols and witchcraft. People become enemies and they fight; become jealous, angry, and ambitious. They separate into parties and groups; they are envious, get drunk, have orgies, and do other things like these. I warn you now as I have before: those who do these things will not receive the Kingdom of God.
[Galatians 5:19-21 Good News Bible]
Brother Bob Pellien: With the passage of time, this divine purpose has not been respected, and God’s instruction on right living has been violated by those who live the pagan or ungodly way. This way of life is globally observable today, when moral decadence is among the crises disturbing the world. Many even culturally conditioned that God’s wisdom, which is written in the Holy Scriptures, is now obsolete, no longer relevant and responsive to the needs of the time.
Veering away from God’s commandments, they have turned to philosophical thoughts, prioritizing their worldly or secular concerns such as satisfying first their changing physical, emotional and social needs, as well as other cravings. They also have turned from religion to science, technology, medical science, media, academia, and so on, for answers to life’s fundamental questions concerning sexuality, marriage, morality, and the like. Specifically, modern society through secularization, the prevailing social change, has pervasively influenced the world.
According to James M. Henslin, a sociologist in 1993, secularization occurs when religious influence over life is lessened, both on a society’s institutions and on individuals. It works massively using cultural mechanisms such as media and schools, among many others, to engineer the promotion of the agenda of social change. Its impact on mankind is reflected by the spread of the culture of materialism, of promiscuity or sexual perversion, of liberalism, which makes people even proud of doing what they must be ashamed of, of philosophic arrogance and the utter disregard of the sacredness of the Bible, and of relative morality, which does not give the distinction between what is morally right and what is morally wrong, among others.
Working strategically, modern society has succeeded in secularizing even religion. There are churches that have compromised their supposed gatekeeping function to uphold firmly the fundamental biblical teachings on morality and family to social pressures like judicial institutions. They have departed from being strictly conservative to being tolerant of marriage and sexual practices that are against the teachings of the Bible to favor liberalism and misleading ideological advocacies.
There are countries where divorce and same-sex marriage have been legalized even if God’s laws are being trivialized or outly opposed by such. Indeed, man’s attitude towards his Creator, toward his fellowmen, toward his environment, and toward himself has changed radically. He chooses his secular or cultural values to rule over the Christian values taught by the Holy Scriptures in conducting his life. To see how people are conducting their lives today, choosing to be ungodly instead of being God-fearing, Apostle Paul warned all:
You may as well know this too, Timothy, that in the last days it is going to be very difficult to be a Christian. For people will love only themselves and their money; they will be proud and boastful, sneering at God, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful to them, and thoroughly bad. They will be hardheaded and never give in to others; they will be constant liars and troublemakers and will think nothing of immorality. They will be rough and cruel, and sneer at those who try to be good. They will betray their friends; they will be hotheaded, puffed up with pride, and prefer good times to worshiping God. They will go to church, yes, but they won’t really believe anything they hear. Don’t be taken in by people like that.
[II Timothy 3:1-5 Living Bible]
Brother Bob Pellien: Apostle Paul’s graphic statement gives a vivid description of how a person lives the un-Christian way. On the other hand, those who choose to remain conservative—that is, being biblically-oriented in their moral values uncompromisingly abide by what Christ teaches in conducting their lives. They will never let waves of changes make them deviate from God’s commandments no matter how compelling circumstances are, their conviction to follow His will on how to live properly cannot be moved.
Since everyone is accountable to God to live in accordance with the purpose for which He created man, Apostle John, who is among those who Christ sent to preach the gospel, taught explicitly:
Anyone who says he is a Christian should live as Christ did.
[1 John 2:6 Living Bible]
Brother Bob Pellien: The first two things everyone should do to fulfill God’s purpose for creating man, to know his Creator, the Almighty God: to serve and worship Him and to obey His commandments (Psalm 100:2,3; I John 2:3; Psalm 95:6,7). To be a Christian first, which can only be done by entering the Church Of Christ, which He built; and second, to live as Christ did.
A good example of who abided by this purpose is Apostle Paul. Named Saul, an accomplished person who lived a privileged life before his conversion into the first century Church Of Christ and be among the first century Christians, he chose to give up all his gains and even his own righteousness for the righteousness that comes from God (Phlippians 3:7,9). To live as Christ, then, Apostle Paul strived to have the attitude that Christ had. He was humble, and walked the path of obedience to His death on the cross (Philippians 2:5,8).
To let God’s will rule his life that it was no longer he who lived but it was Christ who lived in him, and to live by faith in the Son of God (Galatians 2:20). To live righteously, the Scriptures further teach all that they should not be involved in sin, but should live the rest of their earthly lives controlled by God’s will, not by human desires (1 Peter 4:1-3), but be purified from everything that makes body or soul unclean and be completely holy by living in the fear of God (II Corinthians 7:1).
Witnessing the prevailing Greco-Roman cultures strongly influenced by paganism and the philosophies highly recognized by his society that was so ungodly and blasphemous, Apostle Paul warned the Christians thus;
Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed inside out. Readily recognize what He wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
[Romans 12:2 The Message]
Brother Bob Pellien: More often than not, man is at the mercy of his society and culture. Good or bad, they work hand in hand. When they drag people to disobey God’s will, such society and culture are corrupt. Deceptively, they work—usually subliminally or subtly—that the ignorant or the undiscerning fall victims of their assault. Apostle Paul pinpointed what is at work behind the deception:
See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.
[Colossians 2:8 New International Version]
Brother Bob Pellien: Today, such philosophy can also be in the form of intellectualism or high-sounding nonsense founded on men’s ideas of the nature of the world (New Testament, Modern English by J.B. Phillips), or man’s wisdom and deceit going after the beliefs of man and the theories of the world (Bible and Basic Issue, English version).
An example of a philosophy that opposes Christian values is relativism, which people in the academies such as educators and scholars promote by using Kuhn’s paradigm shift high-sounding idea, immensely popular in the various domains including theology. I quote from Irvine Hexham, in this concise dictionary of religion, dated 1993. So, as people across cultures continuously choose to disregard the Bible by merely considering it as a work of literature, and it could be interpreted subjectively to be individualistic, materialistic, and hedonistic, to ignore God’s wisdom and prefer to be philosophically arrogant, and to be liberals of almost without restraint, Christians or true servants of God always choose to be God-fearing and to conduct their lives fulfilling the well-defined purpose for which man is created. Above all of man’s concerns in life, choosing to live in accordance with God’s commandments is the most important decision he ought to make. If he chooses otherwise, it’s the worst. That man is inevitably accountable for whichever decision he makes. The Bible clearly states:
… Have reverence for God, and obey His commands, because this is all that man was created for. God is going to judge everything we do, whether good or bad, even things done in secret.
[Ecclesiastes 12:13-14 Good News Bible]
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Brother Bob Pellien: To find more articles like these, get your copy of God’s Message Magazine from a member of the Church Of Christ. You can also find the podcast version on incmedia.org/podcasts or on iTunes or Google Play under incpodcasts. Thank you for listening. I’m Brother Bob Pellien. God bless.
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