No Other Standard

No, this is not a post about Theonomy, despite the very well known book title of the same name by Greg Bahnsen.
It is about God’s standard for you, and I, and the entire human race.  That standard is given through  God’s revealed will, which is manifested in the Ten Commandments or Law of God.
Adam and Eve, in a state of innocence, had the standard God required. They were born, perfect. God never created anything that was less than perfect.  When God says in the  Scripture at the end of the Creation history, it was "very good,"  (Gen 1:31) he meant it was excellent, and perfect. The imperfections we see all around us today, within the creation, including the creature is a consequence of original sin, and the fall in the garden of Eden, and how that has left us not being able to fulfil that Standard that God revealed to us, it is now impossible for us to, because we have inherited the sin nature that Adam and Eve passed down to us.
Plenty of people believe, if they live a “good” life; do not harm anyone else, and do as much good to others as they are able to, then since that doesn’t make them “bad” people, they will go to heaven when they die. The idea of anything other, is abhorrent to them, at least for a loving God to have a standard that living the above kind of life does not fulfil the criteria of “good” or good enough to go to heaven.
God’s meaning of the word “good,” is what we would know as “perfect.” An absolute good that has no faults or shortcomings, in fact, exactly the way Adam and Eve were in their state of innocence.  When they lost their innocence, we lost the ability to be “good” in God’s eyes. No matter how noble a life we think we lead. Because of the fall, and how that darkened man’s understanding of God, we are in no way capable of even distinguishing what is truly “good,” in a Biblical sense, in our state of nature.  When man’s understanding became darkened, so that natural revelation and creation was no longer all he needed to clearly know there is a God, and to know of God from that, we lost the ability to discern between right and wrong in a Biblical sense.  What man in his natural state may call wrong, God may call right, and vica-versa.   [Isa 5:20]  Man became his own God, and served himself and his own race, and God became some far off speculative being, that unless converted, we never do know God.  But for conversion now, we need special revelation in the form of the Word of God, whereas before that, all that was needed was  natural revelation, because God’s fingerprints were in our heart, and easily discernible to us just from the creation.
Even though we can no longer in our natural state, have any real hope of ever defining “good,” with any accuracy, or in a way that matches what God calls “good,”   God’s standard has not changed, we have done, but God will never ever change and if his standards were to change, then that would make him a changeable God. What was right by him, last week, we would have no guarantee the same would be true next week or next month. It would make for a very uncertain faith and an unknown God.
Have you ever known anyone, who you felt you had to walk on egg-shells around? Because you never knew what would  start them off or upset their apple-cart, and things could be calm and peaceful between you one moment, and the next, all hell has broken loose and all out war ensues as  their anger has been sparked  unexpectedly, out of the blue,  and what you felt sure of a moment ago, now seemed to have very great doubt over?  Imagine a god of that nature. How could we possibly aim to please him or know how to please him at all, if what was okay with him at one time, and acceptable,  another time would spark of his rage and wrath and you was left cowering the corner from the wrath of this god, when you had been doing your level best to please him and be obedient to his revealed will.  How could any of us serve a god like that?  GOD by his very definition has to be immutable, unchangeable, and we have to know exactly what he expects from us, ALL of the time.  That is why God’s Law, the moral law, is his ABSOLUTE standard—once and for all until the end of the world.  If we know what God expects from, and he has one standard for all time, then when we come to Christ we have no excuse for saying we don’t know what he expects or requires of us.

John Calvin and many of his contemporaries of his day, were known as humanists. However, the term humanist in that era, has a very different meaning to how we understand the term today.  Today we understand it as a secular term, whereas Calvin’s humanism merely meant an interest in the human arts and things of that nature.  John Calvin probably remained a humanist for the rest of his life after his “sudden conversion,” it is doubtful he would lose such a consuming love that he had for them when they were not contradictory to his faith.   Yet to Calvin, God was supreme, and sovereign, and man was under his Sovereign rule.  That is no view that any humanist today would hold to.
The Law of God has two tables. The first table is our duty to God and the second our duty to our fellow man.  Sometimes the line between these becomes blurred, because at heart, we are very often humanists, and we display that in our actions, even if professing the opposite. I aim to give an example or two.
As any Presbyterian will know, the first question of the Catechism starts:

Q. 1. What is the chief end of man?
A. Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.

That is the CHIEF end. Anything else we do, or don’t do, comes under that, is almost a sub-heading of that, and unless what we do, still achieves the above, then we are falling short.  We must serve God first, and then man. WE must serve man, as a consequence of serving God. That way, we will never make man our god, and put him and his needs, above God’s requirements.
People do not like rules generally; many of us don’t and we can all tend to be rebels at heart, as far as following rules goes. Following rules also has bad connotations at times, as a term of expression about the Christian life, as people immediately put a legalistic bent on it when that is often not the way you intend it, but what are the Ten commandments and God’s requirements of us, apart from obedience to his revealed will and so –following the rules he lays out for us in his moral law and in other ways in Scripture too?  If you have children, you probably have a set of do this and don’t’ do that, kind of scenarios that they know what is expected of them. They are rules as the parent you lay down that you expect them to follow and be obedient to you as their parent.  Why does not our Father in Heaven have the exact same right with his wayward children too? To teach them what he expects and requires of them, by his giving us a set of rules to follow—it IS exactly what the Ten commandments are. Though we shouldn’t try to obey it out of some kind of servile fear, but out of love and reverence to the God of heaven, and  in obedience as his children.

But an example of how we display ourselves to be humanists in many ways, would be the common scenario of, to quote a  Jeremiah Burroughs title, “Evil of Evils,” which to make a sub title of it, would be “Should I do a little evil so that the greater good may come of it? Is it better to sin than to suffer, if by sinning I can relieve mine (or another’s) suffering”
We can see numerous examples of where God’s people do this in Scripture and God blessed them despite of it, but certainly not because of it. Evil is always evil, and God never once in the entire Scriptures tells any of his people to ever do evil, and that evil is ever okay, no matter if it is for a “good” cause.  There is that word again.  When we do evil so that “good,” may come of it, it is I believe because we have put our own limited understanding on what constitutes “good,” and it’s certainly not the same as what is “good” in God’s eyes.  The absolute perfection that God calls “good,” in his revealed moral Law, anything less is not “good” in his eyes because it falls way below that standard of perfection.  So if we do evil so that good may come of it: an easy example would be lying, to save someone else getting into trouble or something very similar. The lie is the evil we have done, and we may kid ourselves that  we had legitimate reason to do so, because the “good” will come from it, of  preventing that person unnecessary bother or hardship.  Yet how can we say that “good” is coming from it, when we have just blatantly,  rejected God’s standard of absolute good, to  tell the lie to shield the person?  That is when we behave like humanists because we put the serving the creature above  and ahead of serving God.  God says don’t tell lies—most of us cannot say we do not understand something as simple as that. So if we then tell lies, to shield another, we have  openly defied God, and flouted his standaed of absolute good,  for our own, perverted sense of what is “good” in our own eyes of shielding the person we know, and try to convince ourselves it was for a “good “ cause, yet how can that logically be so, when to do so, we have had to  tear down the standard that God set of what equates “good,” ?  We are then masters of  our own destiny, and  doing what is right in our own eyes, even if we  know that by doing so, we openly defy and  turn away from what God calls “good,” in the clear commands of his law, and replace it with our versions of what in our eyes seems “good” to us.

God has an absolute standard, the perfection of the moral law. Since the fall, we cannot ever  achieve that standard of perfection,  but that is not the same thing as openly choosing to defy it and turn away from it,  so that something may seem “good” to us happens.   We can never achieve that standard no matter what, we are just not capable of doing so any more.  We have lost our innocence, and along with the ability to perfectly obey God’s dictates. We do nothing, say nothing, and think nothing that is not tainted with impurity or sin.  But that is what the blood of Christ is for, for those who turn to God and call on his name, and in their imperfect way, try to walk in his way and in his statutes.   But to deliberately defy what God says, to turn away from that absolute standard that God set,  that not only means we cannot fulfil it perfectly, but that we are in open rebellion to what God says and what God calls “good,” and we are committing the sin of Isa 5:20, of calling good evil,  and evil good.  Because good, the real good, can only have one true definition. That defined by God and revealed to us in His Holy Word.  God says do this or that, it’s very simple to understand.  We either do it or we don’t. But if we choose not to, and think we can justify it by saying “good,” will come from it, please don’t say your intent is good, or that God knows you mean well,  and that your heart is inclined to doing the right thing, call it what it is, of deliberately flouting the Law of God,  and doing what is right in our own eyes, and being in open rebellion to what God says is “good,” or not by us redefinign what God called "good,"  as if he didnt' know what he was doing!

For a thorough job of this Evil of Evils—should I do evil so good may come from it, then may I suggest this book, by Jeremiah Burroughs