At Elisha’s Riddle we often focus on the extravagant goodness of God. We mostly avoid harping on moralism because we’re aware that Christianity in the west has too often been reduced to a message of morality which often misses the complete awe and wonder in the salvation that Christ purchased for us. 

With that being said, we feel that from time to time it’s important we remind our audience to be holy and that good morals are a part of our Christian walk. We should live pure sexually, generous financially, loving to our families, and wholesome with our speech. We shouldn’t do these things to earn salvation, but we should do them out of gratitude for the free gift of salvation that we have received from Christ. 

Many of us have come out of a legalistic mindset where we believed we had to have good morals in order to earn God’s love. And we have rightly come into the truth, that God loved us way before we ever got our act together. But now, there is a place for us to improve in our behavior, not out of duty, but out of simple desire to do good and be good. This, of course, is all meant to flow from a healthy sense of identity . . . the self-knowledge of who we truly are in Christ.

I will add this: The image of God inside of humanity is real. Before experiencing trauma or rejection, all children have a desire to be good. There’s a child-like heart that really does love people, believe the best in them, and wants to share. A child-like heart that wants to behave well, because being a good boy and good girl is what we were created for. 

This reminds me of Psalm 103:5: “Your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.” Let the Lord renew your youth. Let Him renew your pure heart that treats everybody with love and respect . . . a heart that stays away from evil and honors God with joy and thanksgiving. 

This is what Christ did for us. He “circumcised” our old, wrinkly, cranky, selfish heart and renewed us to the youthful image of God.

⁹ Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices, ¹⁰ and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him. (Colossians 3:9-10)