College Study #42: "God's Moral Perfection"

 

‘Behold, the Lamb of God’

ide o amnos tou theou

College Study

42^nd teaching

7.1.2013

 

 “God’s Moral Perfection”

 

 

          Introductions.

Project Scriptura:

          Announce next week’s topic (God’s Veracity), challenge each person to find ONE Bible verse about this attribute of God to share next week, you may use any resource as long as you find just one verse.

Review:

          What was our subject last week? What is Jealousy? What is the importance of God saying that His name is Jealous? Scriptural data points out three characteristics of God’s Jealousy: what were they? Is there a right kind of Jealousy and a wrong kind? What would be an example of a wrong kind? A right kind? So what makes Jealousy right in one way and wrong in another? Then is it wrong for God to be Jealous? What’s the difference between Jealousy and Envy? Why is God Jealous for His own nature?                   

          End Review

 

          Turn to Genesis 18.

          A little background, if you please. In the book of Genesis up to this point, the LORD had called a man named Abram, later Abraham, to leave his own country and travel to a land which God would show him and give to him. God promised Abraham many descendants to dwell in that land.

          Now one day as Abraham was sitting by the door of his tent, three men appeared to him (the three men were later revealed to be two angel and the LORD Himself). Abraham, being hospitable, invited them to lunch. There, God reiterates His promise that He would give Abraham and his wife Sarah a son. And you may remember that Sarah laughed at the promise (she was old, after all), and so their son would later be named Isaac, meaning laughter.

          After their meeting, Abraham’s guests arose to leave. In fact, they were on their way to judge and condemn the city of Sodom. You remember Sodom, right? It was an alluring but sinful place, if you remember how Abraham’s nephew Lot seemed drawn to it. In fact, nephew Lot still lived in the city of Sodom, a city soon doomed to judgment. But it was a place with an immoral character encapsulated in the fact that large mobs formed with the intention of raping foreigners that entered the city (see Genesis 19 for that).

          But we pick up the story before the judgment of Sodom, there in Genesis 18:16-33.

          So Abraham, the father of the Jews, sort of ‘haggles’ God down. And on the surface, that’s all that this passage seems to convey. Yet if you think about it, there’s no way that this is the case. Was Abraham more righteous and holy than God to suggest that God not destroy the righteous and the wicked together, as if God Himself had never thought of that? Of course not.

          The fact that God had already considered this whole argument of Abraham to not destroy the righteous with the wicked is evidenced by the key-verse, v25: “Far be it from You to do such a thing as this, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous should be as the wicked; far be it from You!” WHY? Because “shall not the Judge of all the Earth do right?”

          Abraham’s whole argument to spare the righteous from the punishment due the wicked rested upon a strong conviction of God’s Moral Character. The fact that God is absolutely moral allowed Abraham to point out that God must do right, that He could not destroy the righteous with the wicked. And certainly because God is the possessor of this perfect Moral Character, He had already reached the decision that He Himself would not slay the righteous with the wicked

          So this whole story rests upon God’s Moral Perfection. And I can imagine God, there in human form, walking away from Abraham with a muted smile on His face. Why? Because the Teacher saw that the student had learned the lesson.

          Abraham did not have a Bible written down for him. Abraham had never been to church as we know it. Abraham had no idea what systematic theology is, or what fancy words like impeccability means. But Abraham did have a real relationship with God, and over the course of that relationship, Abraham realized what kind of Person God is, One who does not wrong. Abraham learned from living with God that God is morally Perfect. Thus, the student had learned what the Teacher wanted him to and the student was able to rephrase the lesson in his own words, the proof that any student has actually learned the lesson.

          And Abraham’s plea for Sodom’s righteous to be spared is essentially a prayer, a prayer that is firmly anchored upon an attribute of God. As a side-note, this is precisely how prayer should be: realize Who you’re praying to and what kind of a God He is. God is merciful, pray for mercy. God forgives, pray for forgiveness. God is morally perfect, pray for his perfection to be enacted and seen as in the case of Abraham’s plea here.

          Now, it is Abraham’s lesson learned which brings us to our subject at hand. Tonight’s study is entitled: “God’s Moral Perfection”.

          As it turns out in the story of Genesis, God found less than ten righteous in the city of Sodom. Abraham must have thought, ‘well there’s got to be at least ten good people in Sodom’. Nope. God barely got Lot and his two daughters out of Sodom before it went up in smoke. THREE PEOPLE! Yet God did not allow the family of Abraham to suffer the punishment of the wicked.

          Careful as Abraham was to plea upon God’s Moral Character, the Perfect God Himself saw to it that the righteous did not suffer with the wicked.

          So tonight, we have FIVE points to cover:

1.   What is God’s Perfection?

2.   Biblical Basis for Perfection

3.   Reasonable Basis for Perfection

4.    Perfection vs. Perfectionism

5.   Answering Accusations

 

1.   What is God’s Perfection?

          As was the case with our topic of Jealousy last week, I think we can come at the word Perfection with an already skewed idea of what it is. And as is the case with all of these important qualities that describe what the most important Being in existence is like, we need to be careful to clarify and specify.

          I have a ‘perfect’ example of how skewed our view of perfection is: earlier today, when I was putting together the images for these slides, I typed “perfection” in the Google search engine. Big mistake. Guess what dominated most of the image results? I typed in “perfection” and got mostly pictures of human bodies, most of them women’s.

          I think, because of the materialistic and primarily physical culture that we live in, we automatically think of “perfection” in terms of physicality and outward beauty. Millions of us are being told daily that we’re not perfect unless we look a certain way, dress a certain way, live a certain way and act a certain way. Unless we fit into a mold which society reserves for the beautiful, the perfect.

          I actually had to type “the word perfection” into Google in order to get actual results I needed. After that, I typed “moral perfection” and I literally got next to nothing useful: a couple images of Benjamin Franklin and some covers of books on virtue and morality. Nobody had come up with a nice graphic about moral perfection. Perfection was dominated by the idea of physical beauty.

          However, when God Himself is our subject, we must not look at him through the lenses of our American society. For example: when we sing of God’s beauty, it isn’t any physical beauty or attraction; Isaiah 53:2 says of Christ “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him”. Polar opposite of the very American Jesus imagery we’re familiar with: strong chin, bright eyes, fair complexion, neatly combed hair.

          But realize then that this is the case with discussing God’s Perfection. His beauty is unlike the beauty we often think of. His love is unlike the love we often think of. So too, His perfection is unlike the perfection we often think of.

          The Greek word teleios  is translated perfect, complete in all parts and mature.

          God’s Perfection, in theology-context, is not a physical perfection but a Moral Perfection, a perfect “maturity” of morality and complete and total “goodness”. As Abraham emphasized in his pleas for Sodom’s righteous, God has an absolutely perfect moral character. There are various other words that touch upon this idea: holiness, righteousness and goodness to name a few. But Perfection, it seems to me, is the best of these “morality” words to start with. Perfection is a kind of blanket statement almost. It describes a God who’s every quality is perfect and whose character is perfect.

          This subject of Moral Perfection should remind us (those of you who’ve been with us) of one of His metaphysical attributes. Thinking back, which metaphysical attribute is closest to the idea of Moral Perfection.

          That would be Impeccability. Remember, Impeccability is the doctrine which states that God cannot sin. That’s a kindred-doctrine to this idea of Moral Perfection. God is morally perfect and therefore impeccable. God is impeccable and therefore morally perfect. These go hand in hand. They’re interlocking doctrines: impeccable being metaphysical (having to do with His nature) and perfection being moral (having to do with His character).

          When viewed in this light, you might think of moral perfection as being the logical result of impeccability. If God cannot sin, then He does not sin and therefore can only be left with a perfectly moral character.

          So to get this firmly ingrained in our brains: the word perfection in relation to God describes His attribute of absolute Moral Perfection.

2.   Biblical Basis for Perfection

          As always, the best example of what God is like comes from His own admission, His own autobiography. If we want to know what God is like, the greatest specificity comes from the Bible.

          Therefore, let us have our Project Scriptura verses. Hopefully you found a few verses which describe God as Perfect.

          Matthew 5:48/Ecclesiastes 3:14/Psalm 18:30/Romans 2:4/1 Samuel 2:2/1 Peter 2:22

 

          Note that the Bible not only says directly that God is perfect, but that things about God are perfect. The Word of God says that His ways, His works, His knowledge, His law, His purpose, His faithfulness, His will and His gifts are all perfect. One of the clearest attributes of God in Scripture is His quality of Perfection.

3.   Reasonable Basis for Perfection

          We’ve seen how impeccability leads to moral perfection; you can show that God is of perfect moral character since He is also impeccable, incapable of sinning or doing wrong or committing an error.

          What I’d like to do here in point 3 is provide other reasonable bases for proving God’s moral character. This serves to show again how interwoven all of God’s attributes are. Based on what we’ve already learned, we can arrive at God’s perfect morality in at least three ways:

a.    Immutability

          Remember Immutability? What does it mean in reference to God? That He essentially does not change. Now while things like God’s actions can change (ex: He isn’t constantly creating the world unchangingly over and over again), His essence, His persons, His qualities do not change.

          Now we already covered Immutability some time ago and saw that it has solid proof in Scripture. But you can start with Immutability and arrive reasonably at Perfection. Like this:

          If God were to change, then He would change either for the better or the worse. But God cannot change for the better, since He is already perfect. And God cannot change for the worse, for this would meant that He would no longer be perfect. Likewise, God is Immutable and cannot change, therefore no change for the better or the worse can occur in God and thus He remains unchangeably perfect.

b.    Metaphysical Attributes

          God’s metaphysical attributes (qualities which describe what God is in His essence) is the section of systematic theology that we just finished. Hopefully, some of them are still fresh in our minds. Here’s how you can start with the metaphysical attributes and arrive reasonably at Perfection:

          It is granted that God is a moral Being with moral qualities. Because of His metaphysical attributes, because He is infinite, unchangeable and necessary then God must possess morality in an infinite, unchangeable and necessary way: in other words, God has infinite, unchangeable and necessary morality which means Perfect morality.

c.    Moral Lawgiver

          Way back when we studied God’s existence, we named three classic arguments for the existence of God… do you happen to remember them? The cosmological, the teleological and the moral arguments.

          Now the moral argument specifically says that a law implies a law-maker, and since there is a moral law that exists universally in all human hearts, there must be a universal moral law-Maker. This ultimate Giver of Morality must Himself be the ultimate standard of Morality. In order to tell the imperfect from the perfect, we must understand what perfect is and that which is perfect is God.

          All that to say that the moral argument and the moral law in human hearts proves that God Himself is perfectly moral. He must be in order to be the source of moral laws and morality. The ultimate source of moral perfection cannot be less than ultimately perfect. And by His very nature, therefore, as the origin of morality, God is morally perfect. God’s perfect nature and character are the standards of perfect morality.

          *So while I’m certain there are many other methods to be discovered in which you can prove God’s moral perfection, we shall stick with these three. Thus far then, we have the solid evidence of Scripture and the evidence of reason to prove that God is morally perfect.

          Now before we move on to the next point, let me say this: I think there is a very real temptation a lot of the time to steer a Bible study into the realm of nothing but personal application. I hope that I’m clear in saying that there is nothing at all wrong with personal application. God so designed us to be able to learn and He so wrote His Word to be instructive and corrective and applicable for us. However, the study that loses sight of teaching God so that it may teach us simply how to better ourselves has lost sight of God. Our aim isn’t so much to make us “good religious” people. This is not so much a study designed to help you better yourself and your fellow man, although those are good things, you may as well join any religion in the world if that’s all you want. Rather, our aim specifically for this college study, is as the slogan on our flier says: ide o amnos tou theou = Behold, the Lamb of God. We should be beholding God before we go about bettering ourselves. In fact, we learn how to better ourselves primarily from God’s self-revelation. So let’s not get the cart before the horse.

          We cannot sing “all for the glory of God” if our only question is “what does all for the glory of God do for me?”.

          That being said, the temptation is present to spend the remainder of our time in humanitarian study, how we can better aim for perfection ourselves, and what we should do to be more moral. That’s all fine to study and learn, but it is not our primary aim. Yet while not our primary aim, we shall touch on it briefly before moving on:

4.   Perfection vs. Perfectionism

          Widely regarded, even in his lifetime, as one of the greatest artists in history, Michelangelo once said: “For those who feel it, nothing makes the soul so religious and pure as the endeavor to create something perfect; for God is perfection, and whoever strives after it, is striving after something divine. True painting is only the image of the perfection of God, a shadow of the pencil with which he paints, a melody, a striving after harmony.”

          Doesn’t that make you want to do something awesome? Doesn’t that make you want to do something great, to paint, to sculpt, to create art? It certainly makes me want to. I also think it exemplifies something about the human spirit.

          We all, at some point, desire to do something great, or in the words of Michelangelo: strive after perfection. Yet here is where I think the subject gets muddled.

          It is clear from Scripture that we as Christians have received a call to perfection. Matthew 5:48 says “Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.” But what Scripture also makes clear is that Christian perfection is a process: Philippians 1:6, “For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.” And 3:2, “Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on…”

          So Perfection, we understand from Scripture and from practical living, is a goal which we shall never reach in this life. Yet it is still to be pursued. It is a finish line to see in the distance and to run for, full knowing that you shall not cross it until you cross the border of death into life. And in a nutshell, that is the doctrine of Christian perfection. We know one day we shall be perfected, but in the meantime, we rely on the blood of Christ to cleanse our imperfections as we strive to pursue the divine, to chase after perfection.

          However, there is a subtle difference between the biblical portrayal of perfection and what we call perfectionism.

          Perfection sees the goal and pursues it, full knowing that it cannot yet be reached. Perfectionism seems to think that the goal can be reached now and so the human failures we should expect of ourselves because all the more acute and painful.

          Listen, the Bible does not contain a picture of the believer being perfectly successful all the time. And if and when you fail, that does not mean you’ve lost God or your salvation. It means that you are a human pursuing an unattainable goal. And yes we should repent of our sins and be grieved over them, but we should not allow them to crush us.

          The 3^rd century bishop of Constantinople, John Chrysostom, said: “Let no one mourn that he has fallen again and again, for forgiveness has risen from the grave.”

          If we become Christian perfectionists and not Christians pursuing perfection, we run the risk of mourning over our every fault and weakness (things which we will constantly face as sinful humans) and derail our pursuit of perfection for the sake of grieving over our mistakes, expecting perfection from ourselves when we cannot yet attain it at all.

          See it clearly: perfection is a goal to be pursued and its focus is the end; perfectionism is a focus on the now and the failures that mark the path toward the goal. Perfection is relies on the grace of God to get through our mistakes; perfectionism struggles to overcome any mistakes, to try harder and yet to fail still. There is a difference.

          Proverbs 24:16, “…a righteous man may fall seven times and rise again…” When you fail, repent and get back up. You can’t expect to finish a race if you stopped to bemoan every trip and stumble. Aim for perfection in the goal, not perfectionism in the race.

5.   Answering Accusations

          Besides for His existence, God’s Moral Perfection might be the most commonly and the most hotly debated of His attributes in our world today. How many times have you heard it said: “How can a loving God allow such and such to suffer? How could a good God allow evil to happen? How could a loving God demand sacrifice? How could a moral God allow the Holocaust, the school shooting, the destructive hurricane, the tragedy of war, the starvation of children, the abortion of unborn babies, the murder, the rape and all the evil that happens in the world?”

          We’ve each certainly heard God’s moral character called into question at some time or another. Remember, this is nothing new: the problem of evil was a philosophical argument against the Christian God used by Epicurus some 300 years before the birth of Christ. Known as the Epicurean paradox, the argument goes like this:

          Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.

          Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.

          Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?

          Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

          Essentially, this is still what everyone is going on about, slamming God’s moral character by asking how a loving God could allow such and such to happen or command that such and such a thing be done. No one wants to admit that God is out there until something bad happens, and then it’s suddenly God’s fault.

          So considering God’s moral perfection is what is most often brought into question about God, we need to know how to answer the accusations of God’s critics in the defense of the Christian faith. And that means we get to play a little game.

          What I’m going to do is split you into groups. Each group will receive two different questions regarding God’s moral character, accusations against His morality. Each group will then present their answer and the other group and I will have a chance to respond to their answer, if it needs clarification or if it is incorrect. I’m not simply going to give you the answers to these questions, we’ve been studying this for a while and many of us have grown up in the church. We ought to be able to respond to some of the most common accusations against God and Christianity.

GROUP ONE

Q1: How can a loving God allow the Devil to run free and cause suffering?

Q2: In Deuteronomy 3, the children of Israel follow God’s instructions to kill men, women and children in neighboring cities. How can a God of love command people to murder children?

 

 

GROUP TWO

Q1: In Genesis 22, God tells Abraham to offer his son Isaac up as a human sacrifice. How could a loving God possibly ask anyone to do that?

Q2: How can a good God justify sending millions into undending torture in Hell just because they don’t believe in Jesus?

 

          So hopefully these questions have helped us to be able to articulate some answers, or at least to be able to think about answering them. It is a serious accusation of the moral character of God which some of these people have suggested. And I use the word serious because I think there’s a very wrong way which we can come at unbelievers some times.

          Both sides, Christians and Atheists, are guilty of making light of the concerns of the other side. Sometimes we can approach accusers of the faith in a way that definitely shows how little we love them and how little we think of them. Case in point, earlier today I read a thread on what seemed to be an atheist forum. They were discussing the moral argument and when I read some of their posts, my immediate reaction was involuntarily “Ha! Man, that’s ridiculous! How could anyone believe that?”

          But is that not exactly what they say about the Christian position? The point is, atheists do not have a divine instruction to treat others with respect and love. However, we do. And we should train ourselves to approach the questions that vex others, which might seem simple to you, with total seriousness. Is it a laughable matter that many millions hold on to false arguments to their grave and the punishment beyond?

          We need to learn to respond to questions others have, even deliberate accusations, with the gentleness and the love of Christ. Because you know what? Odds are it’s not so much your eloquent speech or counter-argument that will win them over, as much as the love you could show them in spite of any antagonism they might be showing you.

          Anyone can memorize arguments or use big words or point out flaws in logic, but not just anyone can love their own enemy. Speak the truth in love.