Articles
The Ever-Fixed Mark
The Ever-Fixed Mark
This phrase is taken from Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 to describe love. While it is an apt, poetic description of love, it also is the perfect modifier of God's Word. If there is a word to describe the current culture, it is "change." Our world is enamored with it, constantly changing its mind, its values, its standards of right and wrong, its worldview, and its priorities. Swept up in all of this are societal attitudes about so many things.
What was once right is now wrong. What was wrong is now right. And while not every instance of this is wrong, so many of them are the product of mankind pushing the envelope of previous norms and standards of decency. Let me cite some specific examples:
--The definition of marriage
--The definition of gender
--Sexual morals
--The sanctity and humanity of the unborn
--The view of the inspiration and authority of Scripture
--Male and female leadership roles
--The move from monotheism to polytheism (one God to
many Gods)
--The existence of God and the deity of Jesus Christ
--The ethics of honesty, hard work, and service
Our list could be much longer, but these representative items have all fallen victim to the world's push for what it sees as greater freedom, satisfaction, and happiness. Those who rely on the Bible as their infallible guide already know how the story turns out for those who make themselves the standard. "I know, O Lord, that a man's way is not in himself, nor is it in a man to direct his steps" (Jeremiah 10:23). More solemnly, Solomon says, "There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death" (Prov. 16:25). In Paul's day, suppressing, speculative, sensual, and subverting souls rejected God in deference to self-guidance with destructive results (Romans 1:18ff). Thus, it will always be when man builds upon the foundation of himself.
What happens with us, individually and collectively, when we build upon the rock of Scripture is survival in the severest tests (Matthew 7:24-25). When we see Scripture as something to change us rather than something subject to our changes, we have a sure standard by which to chart our lives. Antecedent societies have experienced the trauma of spiritual self-determination (Proverbs. 14:34). In a world enamored with unrighteous change, may we determine to fix our gaze on the ever-fixed mark of Scripture!
