Genesis 20:3-13. 3But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night and said to him, “Behold, you are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken, for she is a man’s wife.” 4Now Abimelech had not approached her. So he said, “Lord, will you kill an innocent people? 5Did he not himself say to me, ‘She is my sister’? And she herself said, ‘He is my brother.’ In the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands I have done this.” 6Then God said to him in the dream, “Yes, I know that you have done this in the integrity of your heart, and it was I who kept you from sinning against me. Therefore I did not let you touch her. 7Now then, return the man’s wife, for he is a prophet, so that he will pray for you, and you shall live. But if you do not return her, know that you shall surely die, you and all who are yours.”
8So Abimelech rose early in the morning and called all his servants and told them all these things. And the men were very much afraid. 9Then Abimelech called Abraham and said to him, “What have you done to us? And how have I sinned against you, that you have brought on me and my kingdom a great sin? You have done to me things that ought not to be done.” 10And Abimelech said to Abraham, “What did you see, that you did this thing?” 11Abraham said, “I did it because I thought, ‘There is no fear of God at all in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife.’ 12Besides, she is indeed my sister, the daughter of my father though not the daughter of my mother, and she became my wife. 13And when God caused me to wander from my father’s house, I said to her, ‘This is the kindness you must do me: at every place to which we come, say of me, “He is my brother.”’”
How often do we Christians just assume that we are occupying the moral high ground? How often do YOU assume that you are standing on the moral high ground, subconsciously condemning not only the pagans around you, but even the other Christians whose beliefs, politics, or convictions are not the same as yours?
Did Abraham think that because he is the one living under the covenant of Yahweh and Abimelech is obviously not, that he is automatically right when it comes to how he deals with this Gentile, regardless of what he does? At the very least, we can see that Abraham assumed he was dealing with a group of people incapable of righteousness – Abraham said, “I did it because I thought, ‘There is no fear of God at all in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife.’ What a proud assumption.
(Note: Here we don’t mean righteous as in the way the Apostle Paul uses this word, meaning justified, saved, redeemed. By righteous we simply mean doing what is right according to God standards – living from a moral standard that reflects the image of God and his common grace. Abimelech would never take another man’s wife as his own. Does that make him a “Christian?” No, but it does make him a righteous pagan.)
Abimelech shows us that God can use whomever he chooses, even those outside of his covenant blessing. God can speak to, warn, afflict, bless, curse, reveal himself to, anyone he wants. Abimelech is one of those to whom God chooses to reveal himself in order to protect his perfect redemption plan – the son of promise born to Abraham and Sarah, not Abimelech and Sarah.
And Abimelech shows us that even a pagan can listen to God, respond to God, and fear God. Abimelech is not like the men of Sodom. His response to God’s warning is immediate and genuine. He awakens from his dream and immediately spreads God’s warning and confronts Abraham with three questions in verses 9 and 10: What have you done to us? How have I sinned against you? And in essence, what were you thinking?
All three of Abimelech’s questions are valid, and Abraham’s answers reveal that he was only thinking about himself (not unlike Lot). Abraham is more pagan than Abimelech in terms of both causation and motivation. There is no fear of God. In fact, in verse 13, Abraham takes a page from Adam’s book and places the blame on God – when God caused me to wander. (Note also that the word God that Abraham uses here is the plural, the gods)
The great truth of being in Christ is that we are made righteous in him. Thankfully it is an imputed righteousness, Christ’s righteousness not our own. In Romans 4, Paul tells us that God “justifies the ungodly.” Abraham wasn’t godly and then God justified him. He wasn’t righteous and then God made him more righteous. No, he was ungodly, like Abimelech. Like every other pagan. We too are the ungodly justified. The saved sinners. The sinning saints.
Just as is proven in Genesis 20, our right standing with God is all of grace. Abraham does not occupy the moral high ground, and he never will. Neither will you, Christian. Just because we are in Christ does not make us more morally upright then the “pagans” around us. The minute we assume this we are on even more dangerous ground – the sinking sand of spiritual pride.
Of course, Christians should “live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this age” (Titus 2:12). But as this same verse says, our power for this righteous way of life is always Christ, the “grace of God that has appeared to us.” If you somehow stumble into godliness today, if by chance you actually choose self-control over self-indulgence, or uprightness over moral ambiguity, you can rest assured that it had nothing to do with you being such a good person. It was all of grace.
Christian, never forget that the ground is level at the foot of the cross. Do not wander away from this solid ground. Don’t go mountain climbing into the moral high ground where you assume you are a better person than everyone else. Chances are, your Hindu friend is a better neighbor than you. Your atheist co-worker works harder than you. Your ultra-liberal brother-in-law has a better motivation than you. Let the “righteous pagans” that surround you remind you that you too are ungodly. The justified ungodly, but the ungodly none the less.
To live is Christ is all of grace. Too often the world puts the church to shame, and too often the church blames God when it does. But in Christ, this never needs to be our response to our shame. Confession. Repentance. Humility. These are the marks of our union with Christ, not occupying the moral high ground and assuming the worst of the unsaved that surround us. This is the witness the world needs, not the witness of our self-righteousness or especially our self-protection, but the witness of the grace of God in the appearing of Jesus Christ.
You: In what ways do you tend to occupy the moral high ground with the “pagans” around you?
You in Christ: How does the gospel teach us that there is no such thing as the moral high ground?
Christ in you: Where do the people around you need to see your humility and repentance, instead of your self-righteousness today?
Prayer: Father, like Abraham, I too can fall back into self-justification and even blaming you when I fail. Help me to see that I am no better than anyone else, but that Jesus is best of all. Amen.
To Live is Christ 