Biblical Standards and Love

Because we are sinners living in a sin cursed world, all of us have experienced some measure of heartache in our lives because of sin. Perhaps someone was rude to you or you were rude to someone else. It may be tempting to just decide that this is the way things are and there is nothing we can do about it. We may not be able to change other people, but we should be concerned about our own behavior.
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As Christians, we understand that the greatest command is to love God and the second is to love our neighbor. With that in mind it should not surprise us that our love should be growing more and more. Philippians 1:9-11 says, “And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment; That ye may approve things that are excellent; that ye may be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ; Being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God.”
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As our love abounds more and more, the result should be a life that understands what is excellent according to God’s standards, and then that should translate into a life that is lived in a righteous way.
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As we study scripture we find a number of things that should not characterize the Christian life and we also find things that we as Christians should be doing. All of scripture taken together and applied appropriately should show us how to apply our love for God in a way that conforms to His standards.
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Still, we understand that none of us will measure up to those standards. “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Still that should not be an excuse to ignore His standards. “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?” (Romans 6:1).
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Because of our love of God, we should not make excuses for those who reject God’s standards, but what happens when someone accuses us of rejecting God’s standards as we are trying to apply them? This can sometimes happen among those who have a zeal for serving God.
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For example we have some friends who have a concern for dressing in a modest way as not to offend God or cause others to stumble. We share that same concern. The problem is that our application differs drastically. They believe that for a woman to be dressed modestly she must not wear pants. Though I disagree with their conclusion, I admire their desire to do what they think is right, however, when they invited us to go roller skating with them, I insisted that my wife wear pants. I did this for the same reason that the women in their family wore dresses- modesty. My wife had not skated in years and I figured that if she fell down and her legs went up that it would be much more modest for her to be in pants than in a dress.
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You see, both families were concerned about high standards, but our conclusions were quite different. This is a reminder that we need to be careful about not being judgmental toward those who apply a principle a bit differently than we do. It is also a reminder to let our love for God and our love for others abound more and more as we take care to apply God‘s standards appropriately.