A Moral Obligation

“If I perish, I perish.” Those were Queen Esther’s words as she stood in the gap for her people in ancient Persia, in a Christlike act of sacrificial love that God memorialized.

God has given mankind a moral obligation to rescue the perishing… “If you refrain to deliver those who are being drawn to death, and those ready to be slain; if you say, ‘Look, I didn’t know!’ Does not He who weighs the motives of the heart consider it? And He that keeps your soul, does He not know it? And shall He not render to every person according to their works?” (Proverbs 24:11,12).

This is, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” and it is the heart of the Gospel. As a warning, the Lord says, “Those who plug their ears at the cry of the poor, shall one day cry themselves, and not be heard” (Proverbs 21:13). We are our “brother’s keepers.”

God saw our need and sent Christ to save us, giving us an understanding of our accountability to do the same… “As God loved us, we ought also to love one another.” Those who stand against evil change history. There is spiritual power in doing right, speaking truth, and acting against evil.

There is a hymn that says: “Rescue the perishing, care for the dying; snatch them in pity from sin and the grave; weep over erring ones, lift up the fallen, tell them of Jesus, Mighty to save.”

Happy Purim. Evil won’t win.

(Devotional by Lisa Cataford)