Tomorrow is Sunday. Presumably, each one of us will wake up at an appropriate time, get ready for the day, and go to church. After church many of us will spend time with family eating a nice meal. Later in the day, we will (hopefully) attend church for a second service. It is good that we spend a solid portion of our day going to church and worshiping God. But that still leaves large chunks of time during which we have freedom as to what we do. In this post I would like to encourage you to seek excellence tomorrow as you decide how to spend the “free” parts of the day. Now what do I mean by “seek excellence?”
This past January the students at the PR seminary took a course on Christian ethics. In this class, the professor set forth various guidelines for facing difficult questions about Christian conduct and making moral decisions in a complex world. In the class, we learned the central place of God’s Law, especially the Ten Commandments, as the standard for deciding between right and wrong, good and evil. However, we also noted that there are many areas of life that Scripture does not address with explicit commands or specific instruction. In such areas, the Christian has a level of freedom to choose what course of action to follow.
With regards to Sundays, matters such as what time we wake up or how we spend our afternoon fall under this category of freedom. Importantly, in such areas of freedom, as our professor taught us, the Christian is not satisfied with what is merely allowable. Instead, the professor directed us to Philippians 1:9-10, where Paul prays that Christians might seek the things that are “excellent.” How does this relate to Sunday activities? As Christians we do not view all the possible ways to spend our time as equal, as though one is no better than the other. Rather, on the basis of Philippians 1:9-10, the Christian sorts out from all the legitimate possibilities and chooses the things that are best! Thus, as Christians who stand before Jesus Christ, we should regularly ask ourselves in such matters: “Am I aiming high enough?” So, tomorrow, don’t settle for what is permitted. Instead, seek excellence!
Matt Kortus
Young Calvinists 