Quotes about Morality

But what then is this "righteousness of God"? In Israel's scriptures, to which Paul explicitly appeals in 3:21b ("the law and the prophets bore witness to it"), God's "righteousness" is not simply God's status of being morally upright. It is, more specifically, God's faithfulness to the covenant—the covenant not only with Abraham and Israel, but through Israel to the wider world.

those who invoke YHWH as the judge of all must themselves live in the light of that coming judgment.

Saul came from a family who knew what that meant. It meant Ioudaïsmos: as we saw, not a "religion" called "Judaism" in the modern Western sense, a system of piety and morality, but the active propagation of the ancestral way of life, defending it against external attacks and internal corruption and urging the traditions of the Torah upon other Jews, especially when they seemed to be compromising.

Sin," then, is not simply the breaking of God's rules. It is the outflowing of idolatry.

Sin," for Paul, is therefore not simply the breaking of moral codes, though it can be recognized in that way. It is, far more deeply, the missing of the mark of genuine humanness through the failure of worship or rather through worshipping idols rather than the true God.

many people today assume that Christianity is one or more of these things—a religion, a moral system, a philosophy. In other words, they assume that Christianity is about advice. But it wasn't and isn't. Christianity is, simply, good news. It is the news that something has happened as a result of which the world is a different place.

We've had enough of pragmatists and self-seeking risk-takers. We need people of character.

The only way we can get to the heart of understanding the moral challenge Jesus offered, and offers still today, is by thinking in terms not of rules or of the calculation of effects or of romantic or existentialist "authenticity," but of virtue. A virtue that has been transformed by the kingdom and the cross.

We cannot and must not soften the blow; we cannot and must not pretend that evil isn't that bad after all.

This should not put us off. A world full of people who read and pray the Sermon on the Mount, or even a world with only a few such people in it, will always be a better place than a world without such people.

Sin" is not just "doing things God has forbidden." It is, as we saw, the failure to be fully functioning, God-reflecting human beings.

Have you any right