Is morality dead? The short answer is no, morality is not dead. We know that to be true because mankind was created in the moral likeness of God. “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Genesis 1:26-27). Man’s likeness to God invariably includes a moral likeness because God himself is a moral being. The Scriptures teach us that the Lord is holy and righteous in all his ways, words of moral character. “The LORD is righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his works” (Psalm 145:17).
God placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden with instructions to cultivate it and care for it. Everything was at their disposal for food with one exception, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The LORD “commanded man, saying, of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Genesis 2:16-17).
The rest is history. Adam did that which God had told him not to do and sin entered the world. “Wherefore, as by one man [Adam] sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Romans 5:12). Death now reigns because every man and woman born into this world is a sinner. Every cemetery that dots the landscape of our countryside is testimony to the universal presence of sin and death.
Sin did not eradicate that image of God in man, but it did mar it greatly. In short, man’s moral compass is broken. Morality then is not dead, but merely tragically disfigured by sin’s destructive influence and the blindness of our hearts. Jeremiah, the prophet, reminds us “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). Men, apart from the mercy and truth of God, wander in darkness inviting the judgment of God. “Professing themselves to be wise, they become fools” (Romans 1:22).
We are a people that, as Isaiah puts it, “call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” (Isaiah 5:20). But, take heart! God is in the business of restoring his image through the reconciling work of Jesus Christ. The Scriptures declare that “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them…for he hath made him [Christ] to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:19, 21).
Christ bore our sins on his cross suffering the wrath of God that was due unto us “for the soul that sinneth, it shall die” (Ezekiel 18:4). His blood paid the ransom for our souls. Those who put their faith in Jesus enjoy the forgiveness of sins and are declared righteous with the very righteousness of Christ. We stand reconciled to God by him. And it is through this reconciliation that the process of restoring that moral image of God begins.
From the Chaplain 