INTEGRITY - All The Bible Teaches About

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. 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.

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.

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There was an intimate bond between them. But when he saw that holiness, he was overwhelmed.

What does the Bible say about integrity?

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. We have already discovered that integrity — the direct opposite quality of hypocrisy — is the quality that people want most in a leader. When we talk about integrity today, we generally use other, closely related terms such as ethics and morality.

But a clear understanding of the concept of integrity requires clear thinking about all three words. Each has a distinct meaning. When properly used, they bring clarity to a crucial but often misunderstood leadership essential:. If your friend John tells you he will lie, cheat and steal, he has a low ethic.

If he does business that way, he also has a low morality. John is unethical and immoral, but he has integrity — twisted as it may be — because the morality is consistent with the ethic. You can have a high or low ethic. You can be moral or immoral. The choice is yours. But if you want to have integrity, you must choose your ethic and live to match it. Anyone who wants to lead at least owes it to prospective followers to let them know what they are getting into.

The Bible teaches a high and holy ethic. If you cultivate these in your life and make them part of the fabric of your being, you will never lose your integrity. The prayers and songs of the Psalms and the wise sayings of the Proverbs speak a lot of integrity, honesty, and faithfulness….

And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable.

Integrity – A Christian Virtue

Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me—everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you. Habakkuk expresses the same complaint as all of us. Why does God seem to tolerate sinners? Habakkuk needed to rest in 2 things. This is the same thing that Peter expressed to the Jews of the dispersion who were being persecuted in the early church….

Featured image integration-welcome-shaking-hands by geralt. He did not create the universe or the human race to fulfill some lack in Himself. Nor is God frustrated or unhappy with the way history is going, as if it were out of His control.

Although Scripture pictures God as displeased with our disobedience and rebellion, nothing we do can disturb the deep, abiding, settled blessedness of God. The blessed God is the only source of true blessing and joy for His creatures. As Jesus taught in the Beatitudes, we can only know true happiness when we are rightly related to God who possesses such blessedness infinitely in Himself.

We may find fleeting happiness in relationships or things. We may find passing pleasure in art, beauty, nature, or sex.

But true and lasting satisfaction can only be found in God Himself who is blessed. The Greek word, dynastes , refers to the inherent capacity of someone to carry something out. God delegates authority to earthly kings as He wishes, but they are nothing in His sight, and He can dispose of the mightiest earthly ruler as a man flicks an ant off his arm. God is the only Sovereign! We as creatures can only know true blessing when we humble ourselves under the sovereign hand of the Almighty God!

Proverbs 11:3

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!

Suggest a Verse

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?