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Mere Christianity. Social Morality. Christian Social Morality is Nothing New.
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Mere Christianity Social Morality
Christian Social Morality is Nothing New • “The first thing to get clear about Christian morality between man and man is that in this department Christ did not come to preach any brand new morality. The Golden Rule of the New Testament (Do as you would be done by) is a summing up of what everyone, at bottom, had always known to be right. Really great moral teachers never do introduce new moralities: it is quacks and cranks who do that. As Dr. Johnson said, ‘People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.’ The real job of every moral teacher is to keep on bringing us back, time after time, to the old simple principles which we are all so anxious not to see…” C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Harper-Collins Publishers, 1952) 82.
Nothing New • Luke 6:31 (The Golden Rule) • II Thessalonians 3:10 (If you won’t work, you don’t eat.) • Matthew 6:25, Philippians 4:10 (Worry and anxiety are wrong.)
We’re all responsible for showing God’s morality. • Lewis agrees with people who say, as he puts it, “The Church ought to give us a lead.” as long as what they mean by “Church” is every believer, rather than church leaders. Christian doctors should be practicing in the medical profession to the glory of God. Christian lawyers should be practicing law to that end. Christian economists should be influencing society’s economic system for the glory of God. Each of us has a role in the body and a role in the world, and we have a very real responsibility. Church leaders teach us Christian principles, and we apply those principles in whatever field we’ve been trained in and God has placed us in.
This Won’t Happen Unless There’s a Heart Change • “A Christian society is not going to arrive until most of us really want it: and we are not going to want it until we become fully Christian. I may repeat ‘Do as you would be done by’ till I am black in the face, but I cannot really carry it out till I love my neighbor as myself: and I cannot learn to love my neighbor as myself till I learn to love God: and I cannot learn to love God except by learning to obey Him. And so, as I warned you, we are driven on to something more inward – driven on from social matters to religious matters. For the longest way round is the shortest way home.” C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Harper-Collins Publishers, 1952) 87.
Heart Change • Jeremiah 31:31-34 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
The New Covenant is for Christians. (V. 31) • Romans 9:6-8 But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.
The New Covenant is for Christians. (V.31) • Romans 4:13-14 For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith. For if it is adherents to the law who are to be heirs, faith is null and the promise is void.
The Old Covenant was with a physical nation. (V.32) • Exodus 19:5 Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine;
Those in the New Covenant have God’s law written on their hearts. (V.33) • Ezekiel 36:25-27 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.
All those in the New Covenant will know God. (V.34 a) • John 10:14-15 I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.
Those in the New Covenant have forgiveness of sins. (V.34 b) • Romans 4:7-8 (Psalm 32:1-2)Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.”
Heart Change • So you see, we can’t just forge a good, Christian society in our own strength. Real societal change will take the power of God to mold the hearts of His people to love Him and desire to do His will. And the good thing is, He’s promised to do just that.
Morality and Psychoanalysis • We judge people by external actions; God judges them by their moral choices.
Morality and Psychoanalysis • “We see only the results which a man’s choices make out of his raw material. But God does not judge him on the raw material at all, but on what he has done with it. Most of the man’s psychological makeup is probably due to his body: when his body dies all that will fall off him, and the real central man, the thing that chose, that made the best or worst out of this material, will stand naked. All sorts of nice things which we thought our own, but which were really due to a good digestion, will fall off some of us: all sorts of nasty things which were due to complexes or bad health will fall off others. We shall then, for the first time, see everyone as he really was. There will be surprises.”C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Harper-Collins Publishers, 1952)
Our Judgment vs. God’s Judgment • We’ve all been shaped by different influences and circumstances. This gives us different “raw material” to work with. • What matters is what moral choices we make with those raw materials. • Some people may be more morally upright than they seem, while others may not be as morally good as they appear.
More Heavenly or More Hellish • Every moral choice you make forms you into either a more heavenly or more hellish creature • Romans 12:2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Being Conformed to the Image of This World • When you make bad moral choices, turning yourself into more of a hellish creature, the bible calls this “being conformed to the image of this world.” The world, remember, is following after Satan. (Ephesians 2)
Transformed by the Renewal of Your Mind • When a CHRISTIAN makes good moral choices, he/she is being transformed by the renewing of his/her mind.
Renewal of Your Mind – We do this by: • Reading the Bible • Praying for God’s guidance • Obeying what we read/hear
The more godly we become, the more aware of sin we are. • ”When a man is getting better “When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less. A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right. This is common sense, really. You understand sleep when you are awake, not while you are sleeping. You can see mistakes in arithmetic when your mind is working properly: while you are making them you cannot see them. You can understand the nature of drunkenness when you are sober, not when you are drunk. Good people know about both good and evil: bad people do not know about either.”C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Harper-Collins Publishers, 1952) 93.
The Apostle Paul • Before becoming a Christian, Paul thought very highly of himself. • (Philippians 3:4b-6) If anyone else thinks he has confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, bleameless.
The Apostle Paul • After conversion and having lived as a Christian for some time, Paul had a very different view of himself. • (Ephesians 3:8) To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, • (1 Corinthians 15:9)For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.
The Apostle Paul • Philippians 3:7-11 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith – that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
