The Difference Between the Righteous and the Sinner!
Contents
Text: Luke 18:9-14
Title: The Righteous and Sinners
When man was first created, he was without sin. However, in the Garden of Eden, the moment Adam fell into a serpent and disobeyed the word of God and ate of the forbidden fruit, man was placed under sin, and as a result, all mankind fell to Satan's servants. Originally, the master of man was God, but when he disobeyed God's word and sinned, Satan became the master of man.
Because of these characteristics, all humans have the habit of going toward their homeland (God). In other words, all human beings want to live according to the goodness of God. However, as a human being under sin, it is by no means easy to achieve this will because of Satan's interference.
Prior to the advent of sin, human beings had no worries or concerns such as fear or anxiety. However, after the introduction of sin, all human beings have no choice but to live in fear. It is because of the fear of death that humans are gripped with fear and tremble. The fear of death is proof that you are afraid that your soul will be thrown into the fires of hell for eternity because of sin. This is the reason why the mind (soul) is anxious every day even if the body cannot feel it.
For this reason, all human beings are struggling to get out of this fear by any means. The only people of Israel were the first to know God. Their joy at that time could not be expressed in words! After that, they sacrificed cattle and sheep before God according to the law, and all became a holy people. After that, they treated strangers like dogs and pigs, and they didn't even talk to them about it.
However, among them, those who lived by the law came to live as a more holy people, and those who disobeyed the law were treated as sinners. The righteous and the sinners start here. In light of the saying, “The blood of bulls and the blood of goats cannot take away the sins of men,” the Israelites were all righteous people by themselves.
The same is true today. Gentiles who lived without knowing God also have the desire to live a good life in their hearts. This is also because the human heart is turned toward the home country (God). But the hearts of the Gentiles who are corrupt in heart are trembling with an even greater fear because of their daily sins. Today, many people try to do good deeds to shake it off, but that doesn't mean that anxiety and fear go away.
Giving the name of Jesus to the Gentiles who lived in such anxiety and fear was like a windfall. Moreover, when we believed in the name of Jesus, God poured out the Holy Spirit as a proof that our original sins were forgiven. How can we express that joy! From then on, Gentiles, like the people of Israel, came to worship in the name of Jesus according to the law of the Holy Spirit. After that, we came to call them Christians.
However, Christians do not engage in dealings with unbelievers who do not believe in Jesus, claiming they are children of the devil, and do not engage in marriage with unbelievers. It is also to separate those who are earnestly living the faith and those who are not, even though they are brothers in the Lord. That is to say, even within the church, they form a party among themselves.
This is not the only partisanship of Christians. Only our church is orthodox, the rest of the churches are all unorthodox churches, and if it doesn't fit with me, they are all treated as heretics. It is the same principle as the Pharisees treating tax collectors and prostitutes as sinners even though they are of the same race and brothers.
This is the characteristic of those who call themselves the righteous. If they do not match themselves unconditionally, they are considered heretics and children of the devil. And because they always believe that they are good, they condemn others unconditionally and point their fingers at them. The righteous always disguise themselves as good people.
Knowing the reason why those who unconditionally slander others by claiming that they are righteous have no choice but to do so, it is just a craft to make up for it because everyone is insecure about it. If you are a true righteous person like Jesus, rather than condemning others unconditionally, you should have compassion on those who are worse than you (sinners) and lead them to come out of their sins. However, false righteous people unconditionally regard only themselves as right and deny others unconditionally.
Even just looking at this, Christians are still all under sin. Nevertheless, if all were saved as righteous, Christians would not need to believe in the Son whom God would send in the future. Therefore, in the end, all must stand before God's judgment seat because of their daily sins.
On the other hand, what is the life of sinners like? In short, those who realize their sins need no words. The prayers of the righteous and sinners before God are clearly heard. When a Pharisee prays before God, he says, “I claim my righteousness, saying I am not like other publicans, who practiced extortion, injustice, and adultery.” But “the publican stood afar off and did not dare lift up his eyes to look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, “Have mercy on me, O God, for I am a sinner.”
What kind of person would the Creator of this world have pity on? All human beings are already living under sin because of the fact that Adam sinned. If the Jews went to the temple and slaughtered and offered sacrifices, no matter how many cattle and sheep, would that blot out the sins of mankind? And today, no matter how many services (sacrifices) were offered in the name of Jesus by going to the chapel, can all the sins remaining in the hearts of Christians disappear?
Salvation is what we receive while we are alive, not salvation we receive when we die. Therefore, when we are alive, we must believe in the Son God sends and receive forgiveness of our sins (sin against the Holy Spirit), in order to achieve true salvation. However, just because I go to the chapel and worship (sacrificing) every day like the Jews today, my sins of self-crime (sin against the Holy Spirit) cannot be resolved. Christians living under the Holy Spirit must wait for a spiritual son who will come to solve our self-crime problem.
If the Jews had offered sacrifices to take away human sins, God would not have sent His Son to the land of Israel. Likewise, if Christians today would go to the chapel every day and worship in the name of Jesus, if it seemed that all of the remaining sins (self-crime) in the hearts of Christians would disappear, then Jesus would not have said, “Keep awake and I will go like a thief.” .
What we need to know clearly is that for the Jews who lived under the law, they must believe in the Son who came in the flesh to receive the forgiveness of sins against the law and reach eternal life. ), the Son of God who comes to us through faith will receive forgiveness of all sins against the Holy Spirit and will lead to eternal life.
Therefore, those who call themselves righteous are those whom Satan calls their master, and only those who consider themselves sinners will all fall into the arms of the Lord. - He who has ears, let him hear and understand-