How To Live By God's Standards - Christian Perspectives
Christians want their lives to reflect God in everything they do. What makes that hard is many of the people they rub shoulders with don’t. This world is getting more permissible for just about everything except godliness. So in that type of environment, how does the Christian live by God’s standards?
For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. Romans 3:23-24
The way I memorized this verse was, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. I think we need to understand what “short of the glory of God” really means. Then we would approach life just a little bit differently. The Bible translation I have been reading says that we fall short of God’s standard. Again, if we just understood what that standard is, we would change the way we live.
As humans, whether Christian or non-Christian, we tend to create our own standards. Which now makes “the” standard a relative term instead of a subjective one. Our standards are set by the world or, should I say, the society that we live in. Those standards then will change all the time.
God’s Standards in a Changing World
So with a changing standard, how do we as the church function? When serving God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever, find ourselves stuck in the middle. Oh, we want to live by the standards of God, to the very best of our ability, but. . . Many churches and Christians, find it hard to go against the flow of the worldly currents.
As we walk with God we are often labeled as narrow-minded, discriminating, and even hateful. The problem is, we want to live by God’s standards. But we also want to be accepted by those around us. What happens is we start to inch away from the standards of the gospel. That way we can be more accepted by the world.
The Lord wants everyone to follow his standards, but he won’t force anyone to conform to his ways. Paul said in Romans chapter 1:
Since they thought it foolish to acknowledge God, he abandoned them to their foolish thinking and let them do things that should never be done. Romans 1:28
Living By The Standards of God
The question at hand is, how do we live by God’s standards? Paul gave us the answer in verse 17 of Romans 1.
This gospel unveils a continual revelation of God’s righteousness—a perfect righteousness given to us when we believe. And it moves us from receiving life through faith, to the power of living by faith. This is what the Scripture means when it says: “We are right with God through life-giving faith!” Romans 1:17 TPT
In other words, We must totally trust God and believe what He tells us in His Word. Think about how powerful that verse is. It says we received life through faith. That is the life we received when we accepted Jesus. And that life translates into the power to live by faith.
Lord, thank you for giving us life and for the power to live that life by faith.
Read this related post When You’re Out of Your Comfort Zone, Trust God. Another related post which deals with the church is called What Are Your Reasons For Attending Church?
You can read all of Romans 3 here
You would enjoy reading the cornerstone post on discipleship called How To Be An Effective Devoted Disciple Of Jesus
Featured Image Photo by jonathan-chng-MnsnLMHofpM of unsplash
To receive each new devotional post delivered to your inbox, subscribe below by giving us your first name and email address.
