Therefore you have no excuse, O christian…
Do you suppose, O christian… —that you will escape the judgment of God?
Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?
But because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.
He will render to each one according to his works:
Dear unfaithful sister in the Lord — dear unrepentant brother in the Lord:
Do these verses from Romans 2 look vaguely familiar? (I only changed one word: ‘man‘ to ‘christian,’ meaning apostate, former worshiper of Jesus Christ.
Will YOU be convicted by the letter to the church at Rome? (Yes, we know that these words were written for unbelievers.)
The world cannot differentiate our hypocrisy from their sins.
REPENT!
Romans 1
English Standard Version (ESV)
“The righteous shall live by faith.”
God’s Wrath on Unrighteousness
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
O, dear christian, how we suppress the truth of our sin: HYPOCRISY!
19 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 20 For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.
So they are without excuse. 21 For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
Do YOU honor God? and thank the Lord?
OR is your worldly witness worthless to Christ?
22 Claiming to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.
24 Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, 25 because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.
26 For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions.
- For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature;
- 27 and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another,
- men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.
29 They were filled with all manner of
- unrighteousness,
- evil,
- covetousness,
- malice.
- They are full of envy,
- murder,
- strife,
- deceit,
- maliciousness.
- They are gossips,
- 30 slanderers,
- haters of God,
- insolent,
- haughty,
- boastful,
- inventors of evil,
- disobedient to parents,
- 31 foolish,
- faithless,
- heartless,
- ruthless.
32 Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die,
they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.
Can you tell the truth (even to your self before God)?
HOW MANY of these SINS invade the lives of your ‘christian’ household and ‘christian family’ EVERY DAY?
None of these in any way describe Jesus Christ.
None of these of our sins describe the fruit of our witness before the world that our returning Bridegroom expects of His spotless bride, His Holy Church.
The earlier quotes from Romans 2 (a mirror on christians for us) are followed by more conviction:
11 For God shows no partiality.
22 You who say that one must not commit adultery, do you commit adultery?
Let God be true though every one were a liar, as it is written,
“That you may be justified in your words,
and prevail when you are judged.”
“None is righteous, no, not one;
11 no one understands;
no one seeks for God.
12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
no one does good,
not even one.”
13 “Their throat is an open grave;
they use their tongues to deceive.”
18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.
Romans 6
English Standard Version (ESV)
Dead to Sin, Alive to God
6 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 By no means!
How can we who died to sin still live in it?
This is the QUESTION for the mirror of EVERY soul claiming Christ Jesus?
3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
Let us confess our sin and bury it.
Let us not confess a righteousness not yet worked out by the fruit of grace.
Let us no more judge the sin we have not buried in Christ and cleansed for our returning Savior and Bridegroom of the Church.
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