(Matthew 4: 1 – 11)
2. Moral discipline: This
is concerned with goodness or badness of human character or behavior,
or with the distinction between right and wrong. Man is a moral agent
because we are capable of moral action. We can distinguish between good
and evil and choose between good and bad. Character is defined as the
collective qualities or characteristics that distinguish a person or
thing. The natural man is an evil being because the Bible says that “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? (Jer. 17:9 KJV). The character of Man is selfish, self-centered, greedy and wicked and there is no exception because the Bible says “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God (Rom. 3: 23).
In other words, man is immoral in his character or behavior. On the
other hand, God is holy, righteous and pure in all His ways (Hab. 1:13, I
Pet. 1:16). God is moral in His character or behavior. In the
beginning, God made man in His likeness and in His image (Gen. 1: 26 –
28) as a moral being but man rebelled against God in Eden and since
then, he has lost his moral nature. Man by himself cannot change his
immoral nature and that is why God came down to earth as our Savior
Jesus Christ to redeem us from our sins. As many as receive Him, God
gave power to become the sons of God (John 1:12). As we become the
children of God, the nature of God is restored back unto us, the grace
to live holy lives is given unto us and the power to overcome in life is
transferred unto us. We are a moral people living in an immoral world.
However, we are not shielded by God from temptation. That is where moral
discipline comes in. God allows us to be tempted or examined because
temptation is a stepping to our spiritual development (James 1: 2 – 4).
For every temptation, God makes a way of escape (I Cor. 10:13) but we
must be morally disciplined to follow that way. It took moral discipline
for Joseph to refuse to commit sexual sin with Potiphar’s wife; it took
moral discipline for Daniel and his friends to refuse to defile
themselves with the king’s food, it took moral discipline for Samuel to
live godly in the company of Hophni and Phinehas, Eli’s children. The
world we live in today is becoming more and more immoral and we
Christians need to be more morally disciplined in order not to
compromise our faith. God must be the standard against which we measure
ourselves and not the world. We need to develop moral discipline as
follows:
1. Present your body as a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1)
2. Don’t be conformed to the world. We are predestined to be conformed to the image of Christ (Romans 8:29).
3. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind (through the word of
God). Our thinking will change as we fill our mind with the word of God.
We must focus on God’s word and meditate on it according to Phil.
4:8.
4. We must apply the word of God by practicing His presence. We speak
His word to Him in prayer and wait to receive from Him
5. We must fully surrender because full surrender will allow us to live for God.
The good news is that God has made His grace available to us so that we
can develop moral discipline and resist the devil when he comes (James
4:7).
When we are morally upright our life will radiate the light and glory of
God to the dark world in which we live and we will attract the favor of
God and men