Tag: Science

Cornelius’ deep insight

It’s maybe good to lay again the foundation of our authentic hope for answers: when I say that only God can furnish us with satisfying, true answers to our existential situation, I mean that there is literally no way of finding true answers any other way. Human thinking is inherently flawed and inadequate to the task.

Cornelius Van Til was a professor of both theology and philosophy, with deep insight into apologetics. His thought is as profound as it is radical, and I summarise in simple terms his demonstration of the absolute need of the God revealed in Christian Scripture for being able to know anything at all.

  1. We all constantly live and act as if reason is valid. This is the universally experienced way we think. We are rightly considered rational creatures. We check things out by our reason, and require rational answers.
  2. The question is: on what can we ground this experienced fact that reason is valid? No-one wants ridiculous illogical answers: why is that? 
  3. Reason is the opposite of chance. We make our life-decisions reasonably, not on the basis of chance.
  4. It is unreasonable to think that reason came from chance occurrences, i.e. from something less reasonable than itself.
  5. Since reason is an aspect of our personal nature as human beings, the only possible ground for the validity and reality of reason is in a Person of supreme or ultimate Reason. “Unless God is back of everything, you cannot find meaning in anything” (Van Til). 
  6. An infinitely wise Creator God is thus the indispensable necessary ground for any reasonable thinking at all. To refuse this is to opt for the illogical.
  7. All who reason therefore tacitly (and unknowingly) assume God as the ultimate ground to validate their reasoning.
  8. Even the atheist cannot argue against God without needing to hold (consciously or, more often unconsciously) to the existence of an all-reasonable God as the only ground for believing that their reasoning process is valid.

Cornelius Van Til writes therefore that the atheistic materialist has to face an irresolvable problem here, for “on his assumptions, his own rationality is a product of chance.” If our brains resulted from chance movement of atoms and molecules, there is neither real intelligence, nor personality: both are illusory.

We are rational beings and our reason requires true answers to our basic vital questions. There can be no satisfaction to this need except through the infinite wisdom of God’s mind; he alone can answer our dilemma. Without a rational Creator on whom we can ground the validity of our rationality, we are for ever lost in confusion, for the very value of our mental processes would be undermined. 

And the great news is that this Rational God is no mere philosophical supposition: the God who is there has revealed himself and communicated truth through his Son, Jesus, sent into the world to teach us. 

John’s Gospel starts by affirming: “In the beginning was the Word”. The Greek word translated “word” is logos, from which we get our word logic. John goes on to tell us that “the Word” was the Creator: “all things were made by him; without him nothing was made that has been made.” Then the Gospel says, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us”: the Creator God became incarnate, and “we have seen his glory” – the glory of the Son of God sent from the Father. “He has made God known” (John 1.1-18).

Authentic hope for answers can only come through Jesus who brought God’s wise answers to our existential questions. Jesus’ life and teaching is the evidence that God has spoken to the world.

Clive Every-Clayton

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How do we know?

Maybe you’re wondering if all this is true, that Jesus’ death was a perfect atonement for our sin. Anyway, how can we know? How can we be really sure? 

The supreme proof of the whole truth of Christianity and the saving value of Christ’s death is the fact that he rose from the dead. This totally unique historic event demonstrates for all time the divine nature of Jesus, the Son of God. It was the first emphasis of the disciples’ proclamation, just seven weeks after the crucifixion, in the very town where Jesus had died. Having seen the risen Christ, spoken with him, eaten with him – even touched him, they were authentic eye-witnesses to the fact of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. They simply proclaimed the powerful truth, and thousands were convinced and became the first believers of the Christian church in Jerusalem. 

Numerous efforts have been made by those antagonistic to the Christian faith to deny these historic events: none have proved to be compelling. The Master had taught the apostles to speak the truth. They would never have lied about his resurrection since they witnessed it. Liars do not keep lying in the face of the persecution, even to martyrdom; the disciples suffered for the truth that they would never deny. 

The apostle Paul sums up what he preached: “That Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas [Peter], then to the twelve [apostles]. Then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive… Then he appeared to James… Last of all … he appeared to me” (1 Corinthians 15.3-8).

The resurrection of Christ therefore proves at least three things:

  1. That Jesus had spoken the truth when he predicted he would rise again. Few people realise the astounding fact that on several occasions in his public speaking, Jesus had prophesied that he would rise from the dead after three days. No-one else has ever predicted their resurrection, have they? If they did, did it happen? Of course not! But Jesus did! (Check it out: Mark 8.31; 9.31, 10.33-34, similarly reported by Matthew, and by Luke). Jesus also made other allusions to his resurrection. He declared: “I lay down my life of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again” (John 10.17). The night he was arrested he fixed a meeting place with his disciples: “After I am raised up, I will go before you into Galilee” (Matthew 26.32). This is surely mind-boggling!
  2. That Jesus was indeed the divine Son of God. He was “declared to be the Son of God with power by his resurrection from the dead” (Romans 1.4). This is an integral part of who Jesus was. Christians believe it because the evidence is right there in the historic records.
  3. That his sacrificial death for the saving of sinners was approved by God the Father who raised him from the dead. The resurrection was the Father’s way of showing that the atoning sacrifice had been perfectly accomplished.

This means that God has intervened in history; he has spoken to mankind; he has created the way for sinners to be forgiven by Christ’s atoning death. Jesus has conquered death; he is alive and able to receive all who turn to him in repentance and faith. That furnishes experiential proof, so believers know it is true.

Clive Every-Clayton

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Mission accomplished

When Jesus was dying on the cross, two “famous last words” with deep, but obscure meaning.

The first is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15.34). To understand this properly we need to know that it is actually a quotation from the first verse of the prophetic Psalm 22, in which the sufferings of the Messiah are predicted. Centuries before crucifixion was invented, this psalm made the astonishing prophetic statement, “they have pierced my hands and my feet” (v16). 

One may then ask: did the Father abandon his obedient Son on the cross? It is of the essence of hell to be forsaken by God, excluded from the warm experience of his loving presence. Is that what Jesus felt on the cross?

His cry of dereliction came when “he bore our sins in his body” on the cross (1 Peter 2.24), accomplishing the atoning sacrifice necessary so that God’s forgiveness could be granted freely and in accordance with absolute justice. Jesus’ cry expresses the Saviour’s anguish as he voluntarily took on himself, out of love for us, the full weight of the hell that we deserve for our transgressions, so as to save us from it.

The eternal punishment of hell that sinful humans incur was condensed on the infinite, divine Son of God – and that provoked his anguished cry. His supreme sacrifice, endured out of compassion for lost humanity, was the way of granting salvation to the likes of me and you. This was the greatest act of love in all the history of the world!

The second mysterious cry was Jesus’ last: “It is finished!” (John 19.30). This also was not a shout of despair but a victorious cry of accomplishment. Jesus had previously affirmed that his aim was “to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work” (John 4.34). It was his saving work that needed to be “finished”. In John 17.4, he prayed in anticipation on the eve of his death, “Father… I have finished the work that you gave me to do”. Finally, having made the perfect and unique atonement by giving his life “as a ransom for all” (Mark 10.45), shedding his blood “for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matthew 26.28), he spent his last breath proclaiming that his mission was accomplished.

So Jesus died, “the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3.18). He was “the Lamb of God” introduced by John the Baptist, “who takes away the sin of the world” (John1.29).  He was the perfect human fulfilment of the Old Testament animal sacrifices offered previously which were never effective, but rather prophetically didactic, looking forward to the coming of Christ who “was sacrificed once to bear the sins of many people” (Hebrews 9.28). Now no more is needed. “All is finished”.

We owe our salvation to Jesus: he was the only sinless person who could offer his life in the place of sinners. As the divine Son of God, his human sacrifice had value far beyond that of a mere man dying in the place of another. His death had infinite value to atone for the sins of a vast multitude.

As his mission and sacrifice have been so perfectly accomplished at the cross, God, on that basis, offers full and free forgiveness, by grace, to all who repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. 

Clive Every-Clayton

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The unmentionable

No-one in polite society ever talks of death – yet everyone, deep down, is afraid of it. Howard Inlet in Collateral Beauty expressed it: “At the end of the day, we long for love, we wish we had more time. And we fear death”.

When I was an adolescent I remember one night lying awake at night thinking about death and the great Beyond. I was so perturbed I finally got out of bed, crossed the landing to my brother’s room (a year and a half older than I) to try and get some reassurance. It was only some years later that the true answer came to us both and ultimately made us into workers for the Gospel.

One Bible verse I did know in my teens was, “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6.23). The Bible, right from the beginning, makes it clear that death comes as a punishment for sin; we all die, because we are all sinners. God is kind enough not to inflict the penalty immediately when we sin; he allows time for people to remain alive and repent and find forgiveness.

The “death” that is the “wages of sin”, however, is not merely physical death. It is also what the Book of Revelation calls “the second death”, which is hell. This is described by Jesus as a place of “torment” where there is “weeping and gnashing of teeth”. There are sobering warnings throughout the Bible of the awful reality of eternal punishment; there are also wondrous depictions of eternal bliss and eternal life for those who have found mercy, obtained grace and been forgiven.

It is because “the soul that sins shall die” (Ezekiel 18.4) that the atoning work accomplished by Jesus had to take the form of his death. The sinner must die – so justice will be done; but if a representative bears the penalty in the place of the guilty, they may go free. That is why Jesus died: he said he would “give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10.45). “Christ also once suffered for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3.18). “He himself bore our sins in his body” on the cross (1 Peter 2.24).  He came to deal with our sin problem, “to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Hebrews 9.26). It was the supreme demonstration of his love for you and me: “Greater love has no-one than this”, said Jesus, “than to lay down his life for his friends” (John 15.13). “I am the Good Shepherd”, he said, “The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10.11).

If you ever doubt that God loves you, look with the eye of faith at the cross where Jesus bore your sin and your death penalty, to save you from eternal death. This is the great message of the Gospel: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5.8).

This loving service, indispensable for our forgiveness, was accomplished by Jesus in human history, at Jerusalem, almost 2,000 years ago, and its value is such that on that basis any sinner may turn to Christ in faith and find salvation.

Our response must logically be that of thankful faith. Once we grasp what Jesus did for us, how can we but turn from sin and open our hearts in grateful love to such a Saviour? Once we do that, we need no longer fear death: the verse that begins, “The wages of sin is death”, ends, “but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” 

Clive Every-Clayton

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Why forgiveness isn’t easy

We human beings find it hard to forgive; it means accepting to suffer whatever it was we had to forgive, giving up any desire to get even, and acting towards the offender as if it hadn’t happened. Our hurt pride finds that hard to stomach!

With God, forgiveness is not easy either – but for different reasons. Let me explain. First of all, God is, by his very holy and righteous nature, the upholder of all justice in the universe that he has created. He cannot be guilty of injustice; he loves righteousness and hates iniquity (Psalm 45.7). His justice rightly reacts with holy anger at the sins of human beings and that means he punishes the guilty “according to their deeds” – a biblical affirmation 9 times repeated, indicating the exact justice of any divine punishment.

This being so, how can God wipe anyone’s slate clean without betraying his justice? That is, as it were, God’s problem. To forgive is essentially an unjust act. When we forgive our enemies, we may yet think that they will have to face Justice. When God forgives, he himself is the guarantor of justice, and he knows full well that Justice must be honoured. He had to find a way to forgive sinners while still upholding the righteous demands of Justice.

The great message of the Bible is God’s willingness to forgive and that he promises forgiveness. How can a just God forgive? Only on the basis of justice somehow being done. God’s absolute wisdom found the way to do that: this is the heart of the good news of the Gospel. Because he has done so, we may be forgiven.

So, what has God done? J.B. Phillips translates 1 John 4.9-10 very well here: “The greatest demonstration of God’s love for us has been his sending his only Son into the world”; that is the first step. The Son of God became like us so as to represent us, as it were, before the Judge. It was “not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to make personal atonement for our sins”.

This means several vital things: first, that we did not love God as we ought, so we didn’t deserve his mercy. We can’t earn our forgiveness; it comes by his generous grace. Second, there needs to be atonement. What does that mean? It means justice has to be satisfied. It can only be satisfied by the inflicting of the just penalty. But that penalty can be borne by a willing sinless representative. Thirdly, it was Jesus, God’s Son, who made atonement for our sins. How? By standing in our stead and suffering death upon the Cross, out of love for us who deserved judgment. God is immensely kind to hell-deserving humans! He sent his Son who willingly came to seek and save the lost. God thus provided the atoning sacrifice which had to be made. This was the only possible basis that allows him to forgive while fully honouring the obligatory demands of justice. This is no mere theoretical solution; it happened in history.

This was the way that the infinite wisdom and the extraordinary love of God united to find a way to make our forgiveness possible. This is the good news of the Gospel, summed up by the apostle Paul when he wrote “Christ died for our sins” (1 Corinthians 15.3). If you have never seen that before, take time to take it in. It is the most stupendous news mankind could ever hear! Since we all need forgiveness from God, it is a wonder that he found the way – at considerable cost, the Cross – to offer us full and free forgiveness.

Clive Every-Clayton

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A good conscience

The philosopher Emmanuel Kant was impressed, he said, by two things: the starry sky at night and the moral law within. The stars tell of the greatness of the Creator; the conscience speaks of his holiness.

When the holy Creator made persons in his likeness, he inscribed into the depths of our inner nature a consciousness of right and wrong. This is one of the outcomes of our species being made “in the image of God”. Indeed, our conscience speaks with a quasi-divine authority, warning us of temptations and reproving our faults.

Did you ever stop to think that everyone without exception knows what it is to have a bad conscience? Our conscience tells us, in spite of ourselves, when we’ve done wrong and it makes us feel bad. It is our inner sense of justice. When we sin, it tells us we are guilty.

It is important to know how to deal with this uncomfortable feeling of guilt. The wise Swiss Doctor Paul Tournier penned a book entitled, “True and False Guilt”, showing that false guilt is that which comes from being criticised by people, and we can feel guilty when we have actually not done wrong.

Our conscience judges our actions by the light of our own “inner law”. The voice of conscience is a universal experience, but the “inner law” by which we judge ourselves varies from person to person, and we can either educate it or relax it, consciously or unconsciously.

Although our conscience is not therefore an infallible moral guide, it does make us aware of the wrongness of temptations, and if we listen, it makes us conscious of our sins. Happy the one who has a good clean conscience!

We are endowed with conscience so that we are constantly reminded that we should do good, not evil. The reason that the experience of a bad conscience is universal is that we are all morally imperfect; we all err, make moral mistakes, fall short of our duty. So through our conscience, God is telling us that we are sinners and we need forgiveness.

Forgiveness is one of our heart’s deep needs; without it, people have been led to despair, to suicide, to hopelessness and even to madness. The problem, and the good news, are expressed in the words of Psalm 130.3-4: “If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness”. Yes, God is in the business of forgiving sinners!

And when God forgives, he does it well! He wipes the slate completely clean! “I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more”, he says (Hebrews 8.12). “Though your sins are like scarlet they shall be as white as snow” (Isaiah 1.18). Nothing else in all the world can work that miracle of real forgiveness; it is God’s own speciality. If you need forgiveness (and who doesn’t?) you must apply to Him.

And getting forgiveness is the gateway into the harmonious relationship with God that we were made for, that gives true human fulfilment. So how do we get it?

I’ll take a few more blog posts to make it clear, as it is so vital and wonderful. But just realise this first: you can’t buy it, you can’t earn it, you don’t deserve it. It is a gift! God gives it because he is a God of grace.

Clive Every-Clayton

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Justice and amazing grace

Some people get confused about God’s nature: they think that God is “only love” – as if that one divine attribute is so glorious that it says all there is to say about God. Others, however, are gripped by “the fear of the Lord” and apprehend that God is a cruel judge who is out to condemn them to hell. What is right?

All God’s various attributes (and there are as many as 25) cohere in Him in absolute harmony; he is in no way divided against himself. All the attributes that describe him are his in perfection, and all he does honours all the many facets of his glorious divine character.

So when he contemplates us, sinful human beings, he looks on us both with justice and with love. His love desires our true happiness; his wisdom knows how to procure that happiness while respecting our freedom. He wants to win our love by demonstrating his great love for us. 

But equally he looks on us assessing the real seriousness of our sin, our disobedience to his will, our indifference to his love and our many transgressions of his holy law. Our sinful conduct incurs his righteous condemnation. He is a God of justice and that means he punishes disobedience to his commandments. Indeed, he expresses not only his calm, objective condemnation; he is stirred to righteous – but well-controlled – anger by our wilful disobedience.

These two aspects of his nature appear to be in conflict; but in his infinite wisdom, God knows how to show mercy in harmony with his justice.

Exactly 250 years ago, John Newton, who had been a worthless and wicked slave trader before his radical conversion in a storm at sea, penned the much loved hymn, “Amazing grace”. He had certainly deserved God’s judgment by his foul lifestyle on the high seas for many years. He admits he was a “wretch”. But – ah, the grace of God reached him, saved him, changed him into a saintly wise old preacher and hymn-writer, a much respected church leader and an inspiring spokesman of the movement that brought an end to slavery in Britain.

What then is this amazing grace of God that can save a wretch like Newton? It is a glorious theme in the Bible: it means that God is so loving, he is even kind to his enemies – to wicked, hell-deserving sinners – to the extent that he sets in motion a grandiose plan of salvation whereby those sinners, living in rebellion against God and flouting his law, can be brought to an enduring and radical change of life and inherit eternal life. Newton testified, “Grace… saved a wretch like me”. He once was lost, far from God, a blaspheming immoral sailor; but God found him and drew him into his loving arms and transformed his whole existence.

Grace means that even when we think we’ve sinned away all chances of mercy and forgiveness, and however heinous our sins may have been, there is still hope that God is willing to receive us back with love. Indeed, he has gone before us and done all that is necessary to allow him – in a way that fully respects an honours the requirements of his justice – to pardon sinners such as me and you.  

How he does that is the most wonderful news the world has ever heard!

Clive Every-Clayton

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The character of God

A man of God once wrote that what enters into a person’s mind when they think of God is the most important thing about them. What comes to your mind when you think of God? What kind of character do you think he has?

I’ve written about his goodness and his kindness and his love, but maybe when you think of God, you would not normally think of those attributes; perhaps you think God is all about condemning people – a God of judgment. We really need wisdom and balance here. Twice the Bible says, “God is love”. But twice it also says, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord”.

An aspect of God’s goodness is his holiness: his very nature upholds truth, purity, justice, as well as kindness and absolute goodness. His will, expressed in his precepts, defines what holiness is for us, his creatures.

One of the most mind-bogglingly profound pieces of writing ever penned, in my opinion, is the 17th chapter of John’s Gospel, where we have God the Son speaking in prayer to God the Father. I ask myself, who could ever have invented such a conversation? What mere mortal mind could conceive the deep concepts that are shared within the Godhead? John and the disciples eavesdropped on this astounding conversation where Jesus prays for the fulfilment of his mission to the world. Read it and ponder!

Jesus declared that he knows the Father (John 8.54-55). In that prayer, Jesus uses two striking adjectives in addressing his Father: “Holy Father” (v11) and “Righteous Father” (v25). Jesus knows, and teaches, the holiness and righteousness – or justice – of God. Elsewhere he teaches God’s goodness and love, of course, but these two attributes are also essential to God’s perfect nature. Together they guarantee that all that is done in God’s creation will ultimately demonstrate the justice and perfection of God’s will.

We don’t often think of holiness. I have just sent to the publishers a book on the subject, because I believe it is not only a fundamentally important aspect of God’s nature, but we human beings are supposed to be holy, as image-bearers of God. My book is in French, but the title translates as “The holier you are, the happier you are” – and I really believe that is true, because that is what the Bible teaches. To be holy is in our best interests!

God wants his moral creatures to share his passion for holiness. It is thus that we will be most like him, as creatures made originally in his image. And it is thus that we will find the greatest fulfilment. 

I have said that fulfilment comes from a harmonious, loving relationship with God. For that to come about, we need to be on the same wavelength as God, on this issue of holiness. Our human problem – what hinders our true fulfilment – is that we are not holy; we are sinful.

Now “sin” is another word that deserves clearer thinking, because, unlike the more general term “evil”, sin is defined in relation to God and his will enshrined in the Bible’s commandments: “Through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Romans 3.20). Indeed, “sin is lawlessness” or, “the transgression of God’s law” (1 John 3.4). 

The glory of the Christian gospel is that it brings an answer to our human sin problem – a remedy not merely in theory but in our personal experience.  I’m eager to share that with you.

Clive Every-Clayton

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Why life’s meaning is elusive

I have sought to show that Jesus, affirming and demonstrating that he had come into the world from God his Father, is the key to getting authentic God-given answers to our essential questions about life, the universe, God, human fulfilment – and everything. 

I have shared, on that basis, that a harmonious relationship with our Maker is the key to the true purpose of our existence as persons made in his likeness – and this is the way to true human fulfilment because God loves us very much.

But why is this life-purpose so elusive? Why do so few people enjoy a loving relationship with God? Why do so few seem to show it in their lives?

Well, I have broached the subject of good and evil, and therein lies the problem. How can a good and holy God show his love for people whose lives are attached to their self-centred, godless, evil ways? Or rather, how can we, shameful transgressors of God’s commandments, ever reach any kind of agreement or connection with a pure and holy God? We intuitively realise there is a barrier obstructing that relationship, so it is not friendly as it should be, but rather fraught, anguished, fearful – if there is a relationship at all.

If only we could approach God knowing that he longs to put his loving arms around us and welcome us into his intimacy! We may sometimes hunger for such divine love, but at the same time we realise he must disapprove of us; so we prefer to keep God at a distance; we don’t want him to disturb us. This is the practical outworking of the sin principle within human nature since the Fall. 

Somehow this barrier must be overcome if we are to find true fulfilment; but how? Can we work our way into God’s good graces? Can we earn his friendship by our religious practice? Many have tried in the various religions of the world, and would like to think they are doing well. However, we cannot buy God’s forgiveness by doing good. Although many nourish that hope, it is ultimately of no avail.

Why is God so hard to find? Why does our search for fulfilment turn out to be so frustratingly elusive? Because there is only one way for the barrier to be broken down, and it is not something we can do “from our side”. The initiative comes from the God who loves us very much. 

We must realise that God is extraordinarily good and kind! His generous love is called “grace”: it’s the lovingkindness he shows to undeserving sinners. “Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1. 17). This is what Jesus brought at the cost of his life; it is only his coming and death for us that provides the way to remove the barrier that sin makes between us and God. 

So Jesus said, “I am the way… No one comes to the Father except by me” (John 14.6). That is the only way. Jesus says that if we try to find God’s life-fulfilling purpose without trusting him, we will never attain it! We must turn to him; he is the Saviour we need. Through him we can find forgiveness and enter into life which is truly fulfilling.

How grateful we should be that the insoluble human dilemma has an authentic, valid, real, effective answer! “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened,” says Jesus, “and”, he promises, “I will give you rest” (Matthew 11.28).  

Clive Every-Clayton

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Good and evil

Everyone agrees that a nurse who kills seven babies under her care in a hospital is guilty of horrible evil. Other examples of evil come readily to mind. Evil is real. But so is good. We all know some really good people, like the kind, reassuring and efficient nurses that have been taking care of me these last few days. 

Everyone knows the difference between good and evil; our conscience gives us this moral intuition. But when we complain about the wrong someone has done to us, they do not necessarily agree that what they did was wrong. They have a moral code different from ours. Indeed, with the rise of moral relativism, many think that what was considered immoral 50 years ago is perfectly okay now. Who is to say what’s right? Do good and evil alter over time? Can the individual just decide for himself? Are there no objective standards? 

The problem with moral relativism is that it tends to favour the easiest, most lax moral code for oneself – though one may have harsher standards when judging others! When a society as a whole has only relative standards to guide it, the tendency is therefore towards greater permissiveness. And if it continues unchecked, moral chaos will result. 

Neither atheism, nor science is able to move in and alter that downward trajectory. Moral reformers are generally religious people. In their efforts to uphold higher moral standards, they invoke God. It takes a prophetic voice to bring spiritual revival and ethical improvement. 

People in our generation in the West who enjoy the liberalising effects on moral values don’t want to listen to the challenge of Christian morality. But that is what is needed to stop the rot of a society where statistics show, in so many areas, the detrimental effects of liberalising moral norms.

We need both moral light and moral authority: God alone provides both. Whether we like it or not, we must face the fact that we are created by a good God to have an inner sense of good and evil. We have a God-given conscience that makes us understand that we ought to do good, and turn away from evil. Wisdom dictates that we listen to what God has to say in the area of good living.

It is a striking fact that Jesus’ first public preaching, recorded in Mark 1.15, is his call to “repent”. To repent means to rethink one’s moral situation, and to turn away from what is wrong. Or as Jesus also said, “Sin no more” (John 5.14). The call of the Christian gospel comes as a challenge to change one’s life-style, to commit to a better, purer, kinder and more righteous way of life, as Jesus defines it. The Gospel is much more than that – it centres on Jesus who, out of loving kindness towards us wayward sinners, came to give his life for us so that we might be forgiven. But the gracious offer of forgiveness is promised to those who repent and believe in Jesus as Saviour and Lord. Maybe that’s something you need to do? Think about it. 

Clive Every-Clayton

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