There are many people who say they are Christians attending church buildings every week who have never trusted Christ. They only "say" they have but the evidence of the character of Christ is not present in their lives. The fruit is rotten and the desire to obey the whole counsel of God in the Scriptures is conspicuously absent.
God's fruit in all born-again believers looks like this:
We will not see those who possess this fruit playing silly manipulative games or sporting superiority to appear special and above others.
We will not see them deliberately and covertly or overtly diminishing others to elevate themselves. Those who love Christ love others and want to help encourage them rather than tear them down to feel the joy of watching them fall. It is the hatred of the devil that promotes jealousy in the hearts that operates in the lack of empathy and rudeness.
1 Corinthians 13:4-7
"4 Love is patient, love is kind, it is not jealous; love does not brag, it is not arrogant. 5 It does not act disgracefully, it does not seek its own benefit; it is not provoked, does not keep an account of a wrong suffered, 6 it does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7 it keeps every confidence, it believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."
God said: Matthew 7:15-20
You Will Know Them by Their Fruit
15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.
16 You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles?
17 Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.
18 A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.
19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Therefore by their fruits you will know them."
Anyone who says to you that you cannot know the heart because only God knows the heart, remind them that Christ lives in us and gives us His discernment and principles from the Bible that tell us the heart of a person. Otherwise the warnings God gives us in the Bible to avoid certain people would be meaningless. We are told by God to evaluate someone as to whether or not they would make godly companions. A person's actions on the outside cannot be different from the heart condition, everything flows from the heart before it becomes an action. Attitudes can easily be seen even before actions occur that warn us something is off, then we can ask the Holy Spirit to show us the nuances of the warning.
Proverbs 4:23
"Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life."
If someone murders they are a murderer in their heart before they did the deed.
If someone steals they have hate in their heart that allows them the excuse that they had a good reason to steal.
If someone lies they have a heart of deceit that brings forth the false words.
Everyone who violates any part of the Ten Commandments has broken every other commandment just as Christ said because their heart is one of rebellion against God. Someone who lies, someone who steals and someone who murders has dishonored their parents and justified their sin.
Those who dishonor their parents through rudeness and neglect have broken the commandment to "honor father and mother." If someone honors one but not the other they have violated God's Word. The command was to honor both parents.
What is honor: this is rarely defined by people because our culture has been trained to believe honor means coming to their birthday party or giving them a holiday gift. These things may be nice but they are not honor.
Honor is to value someone, value them through attention to their wisdom desiring to please them because of who they are in God's eyes, those that bore us and raised us. Another aspect of valuing parents is to never speak to them harshly with disrespect no matter how much you disagree with them. Treating a parent with contempt because of a disagreement is to violate all of the commandments of God.
Doing something friendly, such as a birthday party, for a parent and then treating them with disdain the rest of the year tells us their party was to elevate themselves and not for the parent.
Honor is far deeper than a gift once a year or showing off in front of others to raise up oneself in the eyes of others. The best gift a parent can receive is loving concern, empathy and kindness to them when no one else is looking.
In my experience, as I have observed, the narcissist treats the parents with a disingenuous (insincere) form of respect when others are looking and disrespect when there is no one to see them.
Our culture as a whole has become hard wired to think that saying something makes it so and doing something out of obligation lacking love and even courting contempt, is good enough as long as others don't notice.
God looks at the heart rather than the words and even the actions.
Matthew 7:21-23 "21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’"
Genuine actions and words from the heart are what counts with God.
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