Those who know their sin and defend it loudly will be the ones who are always ready with an excuse why the commandments don't apply to their special circumstances.
Or perhaps their sin wasn't so bad because of things that happened to them over their lifetime.
Perhaps they don't understand that any sin and all sin leads to hell. It is only through believing in Christ that we can be saved from our sin and from hell.
Christ had never sinned and yet look what others did to Him. He was the creator of the world, perfect in all His ways and able to blow the world and mankind away in a single breath if He wanted to, but chose to die for the sins of others. He blessed and not cursed. One day His day of grace will be over and the world will be punished if they do not change their mind toward Him to become born again after confessing their need for the Savior.
How utterly silly to think that we can make God listen to excuses for sin when His own misery was caused by that sin of ours.
Imagine creating a world of people, giving them all they need and will ever need only to have them defy Him merely to "be their own person." Then after punishing them for refusing to listen to Him, they began to turn against Him without cause.
Let's take some inventory, Christ made human beings to love them and be loved by them. He gave them a world to live on and a garden in paradise without illness or misery. All He asked was that they not eat of the poison fruit that would make them die. It was for their good and to help them learn how to resist that which is not good for them.
Then what did mankind do, disregard His perfect creation, wanting the one thing in the garden they were forbidden to eat when all around them was perfection and every kind of food for them without having to work for it.
They wanted the bad thing simply because it was forbidden to them. No one was going to tell them what to do.
What did they get in return for their independence? The earth was cursed, their bodies began to become ill and die a slow death. The animals became dangerous meat-eaters and every species on the earth began to fight with one another, even the humans began to fight with one another.
I guess my question would be, "how is all that independence working out for you."
So many people destroy their own lives through rebellion against God just to be able to say they don't take orders from anyone. What they didn't realize and still don't is that no one is independent entirely, everyone is being controlled by the devil's thoughts for the unsaved or God's thoughts for those who are born again.
Those in rebellion kill, molest and lie to one another constantly, lacking loyalty and dignity. When they destroy their own lives they claim it was someone else's fault. Once in a while, these lost ones will do something kind but it will be for their own glory. Even becoming angry if someone doesn't notice.
The Born Agains, love one another, speak the truth and "love to love" God's way. They are an asset to anyone's life even without trying because Christ is so much a part of them. Once in awhile they sin, when they do they hate it, learn from it, confess it and resolve never to do that same thing again. When they honor and help others they do it out of love for Christ and love for others without needing to be noticed for it. Self is not a very big part of their existence. They are not worried about loving themselves, their love for God and others just doesn't make room for self-exaltation.
"One of the elements of holiness is the absence of self-awareness." ( author unknown)
No one has to remain in their dead sinful state, they can face their sinful self honestly, confess it to God and ask Him to change them into a new creation. When He does this they will be a completely new creation that no longer thinks as they did before. The entire way we view everything including God is changed.
We get to choose, we can choose to be ruled by the devil while dying in sin or we can choose to be changed and ruled by Christ. The devil brings ruin and Christ brings love and beauty.
Romans 6
Believers Are Dead to Sin, Alive to God
6 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?
2 May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?
3 Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?
4 Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
5 For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection,
6 knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin;
7 for he who has died is freed from sin.
8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him,
9 knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him.
10 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.
11 Even so, consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts,
13 and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.
14 For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.
15 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be!
16 Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness?
17 But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed,
18 and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.
19 I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification.
20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.
21 Therefore what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the outcome of those things is death.
22 But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life.
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Dead or Alive, Heaven or Hell? Which one do you choose?
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