5:5
“No immoral, impure or greedy person has an inheritance in the kingdom of God.” We worry sometimes that verses such as these are teaching works salvation, so we tend not to give them their full weight. Or we use them to become self-righteous, condemning others. Two things to say about this. The first is that salvation is not just a matter of being saved from our sins and the judgement that we deserve because of them, but is about being saved to Christlikeness. Our sinful self has no part in the kingdom of God. We are forgiven for our sins and sinfulness, and are being transformed to be ever more like Christ. So things like immorality, impurity and greed have no part in God’s kingdom. Secondly, the first application of this is to ourselves, we need to be constantly on our guard, for sin will seek to grab hold of us. Then Paul says that “such a person is an idolater”. So it looks as if Paul is speaking about someone for whom such things are a way of life, and defining aspect of their character. So how is such a person an idolater? It is because they are making something, be it sex, money or whatever, the focus of their life, the source of their life.
No comments:
Post a Comment