The Importance of Ethics and God's Sanctions During Noah's Flood

      Ethics and the sanctions of God play a major role throughout the entire Bible, and one place where this is shown particularly clearly is in the story of Noah and the Flood. The Bible teaches that mankind had fallen into a state of total depravity, and that in all the world there was literally only one man and his family who found favor in God's sight – Noah. God's justice could not allow the majority of sinful man to go unpunished, and yet in His mercy He decided to let one man and his family be saved. The Flood was God's way of wiping clean the slate, so to speak – and yet, afterward He promised to Noah that He would never again destroy all the world as He had just done. Sin was destroyed for the most part, and yet there was mercy, too. God's attitude towards sin is one of absolute intolerance, and so when He is depicted showing mercy in the Bible, He appears more holy and glorious because of it. Noah recognized this when the Flood was over that God had saved him and his family because of His righteousness, not the other way around. The reason ethics and God's sanctions play such an important part in the Bible's story of man is because man is flawed and God is perfect, and it is only through God's grace and mercy that man is saved – like Noah and the Flood.