"The Lord has given the command; the large house will be broken into pieces, and the small house into bits. Horses do not run on rocks, and people do not plow rocks with oxen. But you have changed fairness into poison; you have changed what is right into a bitter taste." (NCV)
Morality is the set of beliefs that a person or a culture embraces that determines what is right and what is wrong. Morality can be set outside of oneself by a religious system or by cultural practices or it can be established inwardly by what one decides.
Everyone has morality. Even the worst criminal has morality. The question isn’t whether or not we, as people, have a moral code, but rather if that code honors what God wants or honors what our own inward impulses tell us. In other words, what establishes our morality?
Amos accuses the Israelites of changing their moral code. Originally their morality was established by God and outlined in the first five books of the Bible, called the Tanakh by the Jews. That morality detailed how the Jews would worship God, what was a sin and how sins would be forgiven, and how they would interact with each other and with those who weren’t Jewish. But Amos now states, "You have changed what is right into a bitter taste." In order to justify their choices and actions, the Israelites had changed their moral code. Now, what had been wrong was now considered right and it was a bitter taste to the Lord God. They no longer obeyed and honored God, but established a moral code that was against His laws.
Does this sound like America? Things that were considered "the right thing to do" are now being acclaimed as discriminatory and wrong. What has become the ultimate judge of morality in America isn’t what is right, but rather individual rights. (Two totally different things.) Everybody gets to do what makes them happy, what they want to do . . . and because of it, America is falling apart, literally imploding from the inside. Why? Because we have chosen a system of morality based on other than God’s character. And since only God is good and righteous, any other moral system is the opposite; it is sinful.
So what moral system should we embrace? If we want to obey the Lord Jesus, He summed up all of what the Bible teaches in two short commands:
"But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, ‘Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?’ Jesus said to him, ‘"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind." This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.’" (Matthew 22:34-40 NKJV).
It will likely take eternity for us to truly understand all that is spoken in these two commands:
• You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.
• You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
To love as God loves. The Greek word here is agapeo which is sacrificial love, the love that puts aside self to give all and do all that the other person needs. God loves us with agape love; it was this love that compelled Him to come down from Heaven, to take the form of a man, and to die on the cross for our sins. It was this love that compelled the Lord Jesus to live without wealth or resources or power, but rather to allow His own creation to abuse and torture Him. It was this love that provided the only means that existed to reconcile us with the Father. And it is this love that lives inside us in the power of the Holy Spirit. Thus, without the Spirit, we cannot love God this way. It is only through His Spirit that we can love Him as we are commanded and it is only through His Spirit that we can then reach out to a hurting, sinful world and love them as we are loved.
What’s also interesting is the Greek form of what the Lord Jesus said. It doesn’t say: "You shall love your neighbor in the same way you love yourself," but says rather "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Do you catch the difference? It isn’t about loving yourself at all, but is rather all about loving your neighbor as if your neighbor was you! Even that has been turned around backwards in so many churches. In fact, so much of the false teaching in churches today is based on this one turned-backwards doctrine . . . that we have to learn how to love ourselves . . . and that wrong doctrine is based on a misinterpretation of this scripture. Scripture never said we have to love ourselves; it is enough that God loves us! His valuation of us is enough; it is sufficient. Rather, we are to love others as if they were us! This is why Paul teaches:
"Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself" (Philippians 2:3 NKJV).
The two Greek words here are very revealing. The first, translated "selfish ambition," is eritheia and means "seeking to win followers" (Vine’s G2052). Thus, we can say that it means seeking to be popular with others. It also contains the connotations of self-seeking and ambition. It is all about self, how we can manipulate others for our own purposes.
The second, translated "conceit," is kenodoxia, means self esteem (Strong’s G2754). The very thing we are told to run after, to find, to develop! And yet Paul tells us—the Holy Spirit commands us—to let nothing be done through self-esteem. Why? Because our value does not—can NOT—come from how we think or feel about ourselves, but must come from the value that God places on us. And that value was already determined at the Cross. Our price was the Lord’s death. We were bought and paid for by His blood. There is no higher price anywhere in creation! And that is our value.
So when we discard God’s morality to embrace our own, when we slough off the price the Lord Jesus paid for us to have "self esteem," when we try to learn to love ourselves before we love those around us, we are trading what is actually right for what is bitter tasting. What we have to decide is what we want to believe. This day, either cling to what you think is right or choose to believe that the God of the universe has established right and wrong and then trust Him to order your life accordingly.
© 2014 Robin L. O’Hare. All Rights Reserved.
For permission to copy, please contact servinggodalone@yahoo.com
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