It would be blasphemy for a mere creature to share this exalted title with the only Sovereign of the universe. Any teaching that diminishes the supreme sovereignty of the Lord Jesus Christ is from the devil, whose one goal has been to overthrow the sovereignty of the Triune God. He is the only uncreated, self-existent being who is not subject to death. The Father has life in Himself and gives it to whomever He wishes, and Jesus claimed the same divine attribute for Himself John 5: Proud men exalt themselves as if they will live forever.
God sends an invisible virus or microbe and lays the strongest of men in the dust. The mighty Alexander the Great conquered the world but died in his early thirties in a drunken stupor with a raging fever. Only God is immortal! No sinful human being could even dare to draw near to God apart from His grace in Christ any more than we would dare to put a man on the sun. He would be instantly consumed. Even so much brighter is God in His splendor!
We could never come to know such a great and mighty Being through our own reason or will power or human ability. But God condescended to reveal Himself to us in Jesus, who is the visible manifestation of the invisible God. Normally, of course, Piper would have worked on applying such truth to his flock. But on that day he felt led to make a test of whether the portrayal of the greatness of God in and of itself would meet the needs of people. This family was there that Sunday and sat under his message. Some weeks later he learned the story. Do you know what has gotten me through?
Is proper theology and sound doctrine practical or impractical? What need do you have, what problem do you face, that cannot be met by getting a bigger vision of the Almighty God? Then get a bigger awareness of God: By His grace you will join Timothy and many other saints who have glorified God by testifying the good confession.
You will live with integrity, even under fire. Handing Off the Baton 2 Timothy 4: Walking the Romans Road. Facing Winter Seasons 2 Timothy 4: Paul gives Timothy three things that he must keep before him that will motivate him to build such integrity into his life: Discussion Questions Why is integrity so rare, seemingly even among Christian leaders?
Why is this fundamentally flawed? Copyright , Steven J.
Integrity – A Christian Virtue
Cole, All Rights Reserved. This has both negative and positive ramifications. Negatively, there is no getting God to change his mind through bribery or whining. Positively, when God makes a promise, he can be counted on to fulfill that word. The sting remains of broken promises from parents — ballgames missed, trips never taken. Much of the heartache we experience is directly related to the unreliability of people. There is no possibility of manipulating or bribing or bargaining with God, because he will never compromise his perfect integrity.
He does not merely act with integrity; integrity is his character. But what about us? The biblical virtue of integrity points to a consistency between what is inside and what is outside, between belief and behavior, our words and our ways, our attitudes and our actions, our values and our practice. When the prophet Isaiah had a vision of the glorious and awesome Creator of the universe, he was overwhelmed by the holiness of God. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple.
Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two the covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another:. At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.
Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar.
Proverbs 11:3
To be undone means to come apart at the seams, to be unraveled. What Isaiah was expressing is what modern psychologists describe as the experience of personal disintegration. The word integrity…[suggests] a person whose life is whole or wholesome. To have integrity is to be integrated, to be whole, to have it all together in a sense, to be consistent. Isaiah finds himself torn apart, and this forces him to realize his own deficiency. When faced with the awesome holiness of God, Isaiah becomes aware of his own uncleanness.
Proverbs 28:6
An encounter with holiness is traumatic. The holiness of God becomes a standard to which we can never measure up, and this is traumatic for people who so desperately want to fool themselves into thinking they are self-sufficient. In John 18, a cohort of armed soldiers comes to arrest Jesus and have their own traumatic encounter with holiness:.
And Judas the traitor was standing there with them. Six hundred soldiers fall to the ground, and the word that is used implies that they were sort of held there, pinned to the ground. There are many speculations as to what exactly happened, but it appears as if the veil of his flesh lifted, and that pre-incarnate glory that he had before the foundation of the world was opened up for a microsecond. It was sufficient to overwhelm them.
Kent Hughes, in his commentary Behold the Man suggests:. His words were a gracious warning that they were in over their heads. Six hundred armed men are now more afraid than the one they came looking for. Throughout the Bible, men discover just how traumatic an encounter with holiness is. This is the same John who had leaned on Jesus in the upper room John John would often sit next to Jesus. There was an intimate bond between them. But when he saw that holiness, he was overwhelmed.
The conversion of Saul on the road to Damascus Acts 9: The list goes on and on of people who are absolutely terrified and overwhelmed by the awe-inspiring holiness of God. But there is another side of his nature, his closeness to us, that somehow allows us to have this relationship with him. Jesus, the mediator between God and man, makes it possible for us to avoid being consumed by his awesome holiness, and instead to be declared righteous. The Living God is willing to say that you are righteous. How is that possible? He wants to live his life through us Galatians 2: In fact, this is the genius of the Christian life.
Christianity is not about rules and regulations. Instead, it is the presence and power of a person who indwells us and promises to never leave us or forsake us Hebrews And, like Isaiah, it forces us to recognize our deep need for personal reconstruction. If we fail to face up to our inadequacy, we fall into the trap of the Pharisees: Hypocrisy is the opposite of integrity, and this is precisely what Jesus accuses the Pharisees and teachers of the law of in Matthew Originally, a hypocrite meant an actor who put on a mask to assume a false identity while he played for the audience.
This accusation would be particularly offensive to the Pharisees who hated all forms of Hellenization, including the Greek theatre. In essence, Jesus was calling them the very thing they hated. Anyone who has ever labored under the false notion that Jesus was some kind of quiet, nice man will have trouble with these verses:.
You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are…. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness….
You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell? Rogers with a beard! Notice that each verse that includes the word hypocrite begins with the words: In this passage, Jesus lambasted the Pharisees for saying one thing and doing another. Their lack of integrity was not only substandard for those who would follow Christ, as religious leaders they were guilty of misrepresenting God the Father.
The wise man or woman will live a life of integrity, which is a part of wisdom. Those who follow corruption or falsehood will be destroyed by the decisions and actions of their lives. A righteous man or woman walks in integrity and provides a path for his or her children to follow. That is my goal in this article as we talk about integrity.
As we examine integrity, I would like to talk about its opposite: We claim to be a nation that demands integrity, but do we really? We say that we are a nation of laws, but often we break some of those same laws—like speed limits and jaywalking— and try to justify our actions.
The results were startling. First, they found there was no moral authority in America. Only 13 percent of us believe in all the Ten Commandments. Forty percent of us believe in five of the Ten Commandments. We choose which laws of God we believe in. There is absolutely no moral consensus in this country as there was in the s, when all our institutions commanded more respect. Second, they found Americans are not honest. We lie for no reason. Third, marriage and family are no longer sacred institutions. Workers around America frankly admit that they spend more than 20 percent 7 hours a week of their time at work totally goofing off.
That amounts to a four-day work week across the nation. We may say that we are a nation that wants integrity, but apparently a majority of us lack it in our own personal lives. Honesty I would now like to turn our focus toward four key traits found in a person of integrity. One of those traits is honesty. The authors found that nearly everyone in America lies and does so on a fairly regular basis. Truth telling apparently is no longer a virtue people try to adopt for their lives.
What does the Bible say about integrity?
That is the problem with corruption; it is corrosive. We believe we can be dishonest just a little bit. We say we want people to be honest, but then we cheat on our taxes. We want to be honest just enough to ease our conscience. Many of us can relate to that man. We want to be honest, but sometimes we find it easier to be dishonest. Another characteristic of a person of integrity is trustworthiness. A person of integrity is unimpeachable. He or she stands by principles no matter what the consequences.
A person of integrity realizes there are moral absolutes even in a world of relative values. I wonder how often people of integrity hear a similar statement in corporate board rooms or the halls of government. There are no absolute right and wrong values. There are principles worth standing by and promoting. There are values that should govern our lives. Will I see the same person that I see when you are in a group of people? Do you do the right thing no matter what the circumstances? There was a newspaper story years ago about a man in Long Beach who went into a KFC to get some chicken for himself and the young lady with him.
She waited in the car while he went in to pick up the chicken.
- Smarandache Function, Vol. 2-3.
- Suggest a Verse;
- In the Saddle of Headless Horses.
- The Importance of Integrity!
- Bible Verses about Integrity.
- 6. Integrity | theranchhands.com.
- The essence of integrity?
Inadvertently the manager of the store handed the guy the box in which he had placed the financial proceeds of the day instead of the box of chicken. You see, he was going to make a deposit and had camouflaged it by putting the money in a fried chicken box. The fellow took his box, went back to the car, and the two of them drove away. When they got to the park and opened the box, they discovered they had a box full of money. Now that was a very vulnerable moment for the average individual.
However, realizing the mistake, he got back into the car and returned to the place and gave the money back to the manager. Well, the manager was elated! Apparently he had not considered the consequences of his actions. Even when he was doing something right, it turned out he was also doing something wrong.
A person of integrity is integrated and authentic.