Making Ethical Decisions – The Proper Goal

All good works must be done with the proper goal in mind. Now, good works may have any number of immediate goals. For instance, when parents earn money to pay for food, shelter, and clothing, their immediate goal is to support themselves and their families. This is a good and admirable goal. But If our works are to please God, immediate goals like caring for our families, honoring our parents, going to church, and the like, must be part of a bigger picture. We must do these things because, at our core, we want to glorify God by living in a way that pleases him.

Scripture teaches us in many different ways that God's glory is to be a central, foundational goal in our lives. It does this both by specific examples and in general principles. One such example appears in Paul’s instructions about eating meat sold in the marketplace. Paul allowed that both eating and abstaining could be good things to do, as long as God's glory was respected. He wrote these words in 1 Corinthians 10:31:

Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.

Paul understood that some immediate goals might make it good to eat, while different immediate goals might make it good to abstain from eating. His point was that there ought to be another principle overriding these immediate goals, namely a concern for God's glory. Unless this ultimate goal was in sight, neither eating nor abstaining could be considered good. One place we see it stated rather plainly is Romans 11:36, where Paul wrote these words about God:

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever.

Here Paul expressed great joy at the fact that everything is “to him,” meaning, among other things, that everything is to be done for God's sake, having his glory and honor as its ultimate goal.

Romans 11 suggests that God is ultimately glorified in everything that exists, whether by creating it, sustaining it, governing it, empowering it, or receiving it as service in his honor. It should be no surprise, then, that he approves of works intended to bring him glory, and that he condemns works that disregard or oppose his glory. God rewards and approves only those works that have his glory as their ultimate goal.

When we look at life from God's perspective, we need to realize that our life is created to bring glory and honor to God. When we make moral decisions, many times we try to see what benefits me, or benefits the immediate people around me, rather than thinking about what is the ultimate reason for making a moral decision. And therefore, I believe that we need to recognize that it is God who has set standards for our decisions. And when we try to recognize that our goal has to be pleasing God, bringing glory to him, makes our moral decision, even if it entails, sometimes, difficult times, suffering, it still becomes much more important, because ultimately, we find meaning in the decisions we have made. [Dr. Ashish Chrispal]