​God, the Righteous Judge!

“Don’t be misled—you cannot mock the justice of God. You will always harvest what you plant. Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful nature will harvest decay and death from that sinful nature. But those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit. So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up. Therefore, whenever we have the opportunity, we should do good to everyone—especially to those in the family of faith.” – Galatians 6:7-10 NLT

Although God created the world, the world became sinful world through Adam’s disobedience. Adam is the first man that God had created and his disobedience was that he did not protect the tree of the knowledge and good and evil, due to the fact that God strictly warned him not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Nevertheless, he ate the fruit and he blamed on his wife because she gave him to eat it (Genesis 2:15-3:12). I believe the reason why God commanded him not to eat the fruit from there is that God wanted to create intimate relationship with human beings, that they can depend and rely on Him for everything, because the original intention was to make them to be His image (Genesis 1:27). Nowadays, the world strongly urges us to be our own Lord and Saviour.

Because of this, God willingly sent His beloved Son, Jesus Christ as an image of Himself (Hebrews 1:3), into the world to crucify Himself on the cross for our sins. In addition to this, God has made eternal life available to those who would follow Jesus and believe in Him until the end of the age (John 11:25-26), due to His steadfast love (1 John 4:9-10; John 3:16-18). “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23) He cannot give eternal life to those of us who are disobedient in Jesus, such as not living for His glory, because He has to be the righteous Judge (James 4:12) as well as the righteous Father (Proverbs 23:24). For instance, if one wicked person goes to the kingdom of heaven at the end of the age and plan to be very selfish to have the kingdom of heaven all by himself with God, will other righteous children of God rejoice in their Father? If this happens, Revelations 21:1-8 is wrong, and there would be no point in living our lives for the glory of God. In fact, all determined followers of Jesus would be most pitiful because they believe that the kingdom of heaven is the wonderful, peaceful and everlasting place and they sacrifice everything for it, but if God is not righteous Judge, then it would not be.

But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished—He did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. (Romans 3:21-26)

Nevertheless, God is the forgiving Father, always is gracious and is willing to His compassion and love, especially to those who is willing to be obedient to Him until the end of the age. In fact, if we are obedient to Him enough, He is willing to remove every transgressions that we have committed (Psalm 103:8-12), including ignoring who we actually are and ignoring the power of God that is at work within us.  The main reason for this is because of Christ’s atonement at the cross (1 John 1:8-2:2). Furthermore, God has poured His Spirit into all of us, so that we are able to discern what the will of God is through the Spirit (Ephesians 5:15-18). In other words, the Spirit is able to guide us in the right direction that God wants us to be at (John 14:15-27). However, we have to open our hearts to Him to receive Jesus as the Spirit of God (Revelations 3:20). Luke 11:13 states, “If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” Moreover, the Christ-centered repentance is not only the repentance that we have to confess Jesus as the Lord and Saviour from beginning of our spiritual journey, but it is the continuous repentance that we acknowledge our mistakes to live for the glory of God as we strive towards it. When we have decided to live our lives for the glory of God (Colossians 1:16-23), we have to sacrifice and deny ourselves and worldly nature (Mark 8:34-38), and live our lives through the Spirit of God (Romans 12:1-2). As for me, I find difficult to manage my time throughout the weekdays and Saturdays—up to the point that I do not know what the will of God is. One side of me is telling me to do weekly devotionals, rather than daily ones because I think that if I do only write devotionals, then I cannot be a successful Christian writer. Nonetheless, the another side of me is telling to persevere in getting up early to write daily devotionals. I want to suffer my fatigue in Christ, but I have no energy. Because of this, I always close my eyes for a little while and continue to write it. At the same time, I always get a conviction that I need to persevere my tiredness, especially after I have eaten my breakfast or brunch. Thus, I am willing to write daily devotionals until I go to Unitec from March and see if what happens if I write weekly ones if I have time, of-course.    

His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins.

Therefore, my brothers and sisters, make every effort to confirm your calling and election. For if you do these things, you will never stumble, and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. (2 Peter 1:3-11)