Living by Christian Ideals

Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.--Rom. 12: 2.

If we are going to be Christians, we must live by Christian ideals.

But, someone says, that is expecting too much of us in a world like this; we have to be realists and adjust ourselves to our environment. That is precisely the mistake many of us are making--trying to adjust Christianity to a pagan environment. It just won t work. You can t adjust Christianity to the environment of this world. Instead of trying to do that, we must live as though our environment were Christian, and thus seek to create around us an environment that will conform to the Christian pattern. We must never give in to the idea that it is necessary to do in Rome as Romans do. We must do as Christians ought to do, and refuse to follow the fashion of the world.

It is possible to live by the will of God in the world, bad as it is. It means that we must be nonconformists, and that is hard, I know. But we are able for anything in Christ who strengthens us (Phil. 4: 13).

You do not have to lower the standards of Christian idealism in order to be a realist and deal with the hard realities of the world. The fact is, anything less than the ideal is unrealistic, and will never work successfully. The world can’t be run successfully on greed, hate, and injustice. The only thing that will work successfully is the will of God. Christians must demonstrate this. By their way of living and by their conduct, in their relationships and dealings with others, they must show that the will of God is good and acceptable and perfect, that it works out that way in practical life, that it is basic to an orderly, prosperous and happy society.

We see all around us what Paul calls “deeds of darkness”--”bouts of drinking, debauchery, sensuality, quarreling, jealousy”--men “thinking and planning how to gratify the cravings of the flesh.” But we must live as though we were living in a world redeemed from these things and ruled by love, purity and righteousness. We must not let the darkness master us, rather, we must “put on the armor of light” and defy the darkness--“live decorously as in the open light of day” (Rom. 13: 12-13, Moffatt). This requires constant renewing of our mind through prayer, worship, the study of God’s Word.