What is the standard for all Christian living?

Measuring things can be a crucial task. If a car has a broken fuel gauge, the doors open for some major troubles, especially of lots of driving is required. If our rule for living is broken, we can never really measure out the way life is supposed to be lived. We work with the wrong scales for making judgments, and our life decisions will just be off.

Watchman Nee saw the importance for having right standard of measure in doing Christianity well. In Sit, Walk, Stand, he wrote,

If the life of a Christian is to be pleasing to God, it must be properly adjusted to him in all things. Too often we place the emphasis in our own lives upon the application of this principle to some single detail of our behavior or of our work for him. Often we fail, therefore, to appreciate either the extent of the adjustment called for or, at times even, the point from which it should begin.
        But God measures everything, from start to finish, by the perfections of his Son. Scripture clearly affirms that it is God’s good pleasure “to sum up all things in Christ,…in whom we were made a heritage” (Eph. 1:9-11).

One way sinful people miss the mark on living is by measuring actions on the broken scale of their own self-righteous legalistic prescriptions. Warning His disciples against making this crucial error, Jesus Christ said,

Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye (Matt. 7:1-5, ESV)

 The application to the Lord’s warning is universal, going well beyond some fundamentalist Christian moralists who need some refreshing on what their Master taught. In fact, legalistic moralists come in all shapes and sizes, and I dare say one never needs to be a Christian or even a god believer to live by some warped moral code. For example, If one fails to bow to the idol of political correctness, they can be certain to face ridicule and public shaming in every way, shape, and form. Public figure and celebrities have to craft words carefully in speech, tweets, and whatever so as to avoid offending some particular segment of society (e.g. ethnic groups, LBTGQ, the disabled, children, women, etc.).

But in a world where everyone does what is right in their own eyes, can we even begin to grapple well with just what is the right thing to say and do?

Jesus Christ, God incarnate, the flawless one, is the righteous standard for measuring out the way to live. Christ is the theological center of all things expressed in the panoply of the Scriptures—the Old Testament and New Testament. If there is an answer to questions on life and living, which includes gender, equality, identity, and everything else, it must begin with Christ. If Jesus affirms with Moses that “from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female’ ” (Mk.10:6, ESV), perhaps the it is far from without any merit to take the less hip view that gender distinctions are well-defined and self-evident, as opposed to some sort of nebulous orientation.

~ WGN