What Will You Likely Be Doing When The Lord Returns?

So many are consumed with the behavior of someone other than themselves. They find it more convenient to pass judgement on others than to judge their own conduct. The apostle Paul highlighted the hypocrisy of a person who does this when speaking to his fellow kinsmen in regard to their conduct.

Romans chapter 2

1 Do you, my friend, pass judgment on others? You have no excuse at all, whoever you are. For when you judge others and then do the same things which they do, you condemn yourself.

2 We know that God is right when he judges the people who do such things as these.

3 But you, my friend, do those very things for which you pass judgment on others! Do you think you will escape God’s judgment?

4 Or perhaps you despise his great kindness, tolerance, and patience. Surely you know that God is kind, because he is trying to lead you to repent.

5 But you have a hard and stubborn heart, and so you are making your own punishment even greater on the Day when God’s anger and righteous judgments will be revealed.

6 For God will reward each of us according to what we have done.

7 Some people keep on doing good, and seek glory, honor, and immortal life; to them God will give eternal life.

8 Other people are selfish and reject what is right, in order to follow what is wrong; on them God will pour out his anger and fury.

9 There will be suffering and pain for all those who do what is evil, for the Jews first and also for the Gentiles.

10 But God will give glory, honor, and peace to all who do what is good, to the Jews first and also to the Gentiles.

11 For God judges everyone by the same standard.

12 The Gentiles do not have the Law of Moses; they sin and are lost apart from the Law. The Jews have the Law; they sin and are judged by the Law.

13 For it is not by hearing the Law that people are put right with God, but by doing what the Law commands.

14 The Gentiles do not have the Law; but whenever they do by instinct what the Law commands, they are their own law, even though they do not have the Law.

15 Their conduct shows that what the Law commands is written in their hearts. Their consciences also show that this is true, since their thoughts sometimes accuse them and sometimes defend them.

16 And so, according to the Good News I preach, this is how it will be on that Day when God through Jesus Christ will judge the secret thoughts of all.

17 What about you? You call yourself a Jew; you depend on the Law and boast about God;

18 you know what God wants you to do, and you have learned from the Law to choose what is right;

19 you are sure that you are a guide for the blind, a light for those who are in darkness,

20 an instructor for the foolish, and a teacher for the ignorant. You are certain that in the Law you have the full content of knowledge and of truth.

21 You teach others—why don’t you teach yourself? You preach, “Do not steal”—but do you yourself steal?

22 You say, “Do not commit adultery”—but do you commit adultery? You detest idols—but do you rob temples?

23 You boast about having God’s law—but do you bring shame on God by breaking his law?

24 The scripture says, “Because of you Jews, the Gentiles speak evil of God.”

25 If you obey the Law, your circumcision is of value; but if you disobey the Law, you might as well never have been circumcised.

26 If the Gentile, who is not circumcised, obeys the commands of the Law, will not God regard him as though he were circumcised?

27 And so you Jews will be condemned by the Gentiles because you break the Law, even though you have it written down and are circumcised; but they obey the Law, even though they are not physically circumcised.

28 After all, who is a real Jew, truly circumcised? It is not the man who is a Jew on the outside, whose circumcision is a physical thing.

29 Rather, the real Jew is the person who is a Jew on the inside, that is, whose heart has been circumcised, and this is the work of God’s Spirit, not of the written Law. Such a person receives praise from God, not from human beings.

The world is full of the kind of hypocrisy that Paul points out in the verses cited above. There are many professed Christians who self-righteously pontificate, judging others while they do not follow the commandments contained in the Bible themselves.

They preach to others “do not steal” while stealing themselves. They preach ” do not murder” when their own hands are covered with innocent blood. They say to others “Be moral”, but they exhibit no adherence to Biblical ethics or godly morality themselves.

Some people like this see themselves as performing a ministry that is “saving souls”. But Jesus made a statement that highlights the folly of such thinking:

Matthew 16:26

“For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”

Jesus was counseling his listeners that they must deny their fleshly desires if they desired to ” pick up their cross” and follow him. This requires focusing on our own self, our own spiritual needs, and our own shortcomings. What good would it be personally to turn others to repentance if we ourselves failed to repent? We would in the end “lose” our own soul.

When the Lord comes, what will he find your conduct to be? Will we have spent so much of our time judging everyone else’s behavior, that we left no time to judge our own behavior and correct ourselves?

We live at a time when many people believe they can be a disciple of Christ, while they at the same time are leading a godless, immoral life. They have convinced themselves this is true and even have had false teachers tell them that they can defy Biblical commandments and still receive salvation through Christ. Since the advent of so-called ‘New Age Christianity’ many have been misled into this false belief.

But, the Bible tells us there is but one faith and only one gospel. And we are told that our conduct in life should reflect our Christian standards.

Philippians 1:27

“Only let your manner of life be worthy of the Good News of Christ, that, whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of your state, that you stand firm in one spirit, with one soul striving for the faith of the Good News;” (NHEB)

Here is the same passage translated in more expressive language:

“Most importantly, as fellow believers in Christ, conduct yourselves just like you learned you should do when you heard the message about Christ. Do that in order that whether I come and see you, or whether I am away from you and people tell me about you, what I hear or see will make me happy. They will tell me that you are unitedly and cooperatively resisting those who oppose the message about Christ (OR, oppose you). I will know that you are not allowing others to influence you to believe a message that is different from the gospel about Christ”. T4T

If someone is attempting to convince you that you don’t need to repent from sin and turn to leading a life in obedience to God’s commandments, then they are not teaching you the same gospel found in the Bible. The apostle Paul calls such teachers “accursed”.

Galatians 1:8 9

8 But even though we, or an angel from heaven, should proclaim to you a “good news” other than that which we preached to you, let him be cursed.

9 As we have said before, so I now say again: if anyone preaches to you a “good news” other than that which you received, let him be cursed.

If you follow these false teachers, you will not receive Christ’ approval when he comes.

Stop judging others and start judging yourself as Jesus and Paul admonished us to do. Doings so according to the gospel we learn from the Bible.

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