Once upon a time, God showed the world what material prosperity and blessings upon blessings poured out on sinful mankind would accomplish in a nation. He, at the same time for the same nation, showed the world what would happen if God protected that same sinful mankind from all external enemies. Not only all that, He gave that same sinful nation all the rules and laws they would need to maintain equity and justice in their midst and in every aspect of life so that none would be oppressed and none would have need of anything. These rules would be His laws of love, compassion, mercy, fairness and justice. Finally, He allowed and called this sinful nation to be His representative on earth, the place where He would dwell with man. He treated this nation as His very own children. He loved them as His own dearly beloved wife.
This indeed was a nation blessed by God and God revealed Himself in all His goodness and faithfulness to that nation and set them up to be blessed forever. God prospered all their activities, gave them, through Godly principles of life and a set of laws, a moral compass to live by and protected them from all the things they feared. He instructed them and blessed them in everything good and revealed to them how to be a good and Godly people in all their dealings with each other and with the outside world. He taught them how to be good and do good in the marketplace, in the home, as a nation and as a people.
How did all this turn out ? This nation, in short order and in the end, destroyed themselves and their nation. God said that His good and moral law was given not to reform men, but rather to reveal the exceeding sinfulness of sin in their hearts no matter how blessed they might be from God or how great His promises to them if they will only do good to each other . The Israelites' nature as sinners could not be constrained by all the God given external restraints, blessings, protections, instructions, wisdom, and warnings that God could provide a nation. God proved that no nation, no matter how externally blessed, guided or protected, would turn out well.
Today, there are people who advocate that we as Christians can infuse or inculcate into a society, culture, nation and the world a moral framework that will constrain sinful man or even, perhaps, change sinful man and even work to produce blessings from God amongst them. We have many who believe that we can help build such a nation of sinful men who will turn to God if only we can reform their way of treating each other. A "reformation" of sinful man by the work of the "transformed" men and women of God. Get the irony ? God had to transform men's hearts to even begin to create a people worthy of His Kingdom and we, now, as those transformed people, think we can reform our nation or the world with what we now have and know, and as a result, we expend time and resources to prove it.
God has proven in the Garden and in the nation of Israel that a blessed people does not produce a blessed man. Only a new heart can change a man. A good Christian, with good moral instruction and even with good financial rewards to offer, can never change a nation, a man or a heart. God already proved that to us through the ultimate example of His people Israel. Somehow, we think we can do more than He did with even the less that we have to offer. We can't make the world a better place to live. We can only rescue the people living under its influence and under the overriding predisposition of a sinful heart through preaching Christ and Him crucified. All the other attempts to reform man in the history of the world have failed. Even God showed that all His best efforts to reform man from the outside won't work. He didn't fail at all though. He just knew that we would try what could not be done even by God Himself and so He provided us an example so that we wouldn't deceive ourselves and think we could build His Kingdom on earth by "reformation" of a nation, or a home or a heart or the world. A new heaven and a new earth populated by new creatures in Christ is the hope of the old sinful man.
Teaching sinful children the ways of God, teaching sinful man how to love each other well, and teaching God's laws of love to the world are good. However, expecting those things to change mankind is, in the end, not the point. It will not result in a reformed child, man or world. It will only ultimately reveal the goodness of God and the sinfulness of man. A better world will not happen. God must change the hearts through the preaching of Jesus so that we can usher in a new heaven and new earth. Transformation not reformation.
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Robert
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