Romans 2:3-4 jumped out at me in today's reading "Do you suppose, O man - you who judge those who practice such things and yet do them yourself - 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?"
God is love, but He does not show kindness by letting us do whatever we want without judgement. I think that's a very human idea of kindness and it's definitely something that we hear about with "once saved, always saved" or people saying that God is a loving God, so He won't judge them for xyz sin.
God is on another level. He offers a much greater kindness - the opportunity to serve Him and have an eternal home in heaven. We need to make sure we're taking Him up on the opportunity to live a Christian life every single day and be on guard against the hypocrisy that we see throughout this chapter.
The thing I took was just after this verse...[5 But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed. 6 God “will repay each person according to what they have done."]
ReplyDeleteWe store it. We store up an amount of wrath. But we can store up good things too, like honor and glory. It's just crazy to me that you can view life in two different ways. Either you are actively storing up good, holy thing or evil, sinful things. The way you approach this, I feel, can really put a perspective on how we live. I never thought that I was collecting sin, but now it seems that every action can be boiled down to just that. When I sin it gets put into a basket that my soul keeps until judgment day when God will empty it (metaphorically speaking). Through prayer and repentance I can keep it filled with spiritual things that will hopefully be pleasing to God.
These are helpful thoughts. And to add to Candace's post, my take on it is that God gives us a free will. As a result we often sin. He forgives us if we have a repentant heart. But this doesn't mean that there are not consequences (i.e. earthly) of our sins. There is a reaction to every action. This may be oversimplifying things but it helps me be more cautious with my actions. I need to think before I speak what could be hurtful, gossipy, or unhelpful, and it helps me to try to put forward good things rather than negative, similar to what Lindsey was saying.
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