TIME TO SEEK SALVATION FROM MAN’S DEEP SEATED SIN
You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. 2 Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. 3 So when you, a mere human being, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? 4 Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realising that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?
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.’ 7 To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honour and immortality, he will give eternal life. 8 But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. 9 There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile; 10 but glory, honour and peace for everyone who does good: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. 11 For God does not show favouritism.
12 All who sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law, and all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. 13 For it is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous. 14 (Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. 15 They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.) 16 This will take place on the day when God judges people’s secrets through Jesus Christ, as my gospel declares. ROMANS 2:1-16.
The past few months have seen many occurrences in the world around us, which the secular world tend to dismiss rather easily, without delving deeper into the meaning of those events. As we approach the end of this year, we have another God given opportunity to reflect upon our inherent sinful nature and to find the place of our true security, and admitting the fact that we are born into a fallen race and apart from God’s grace, all of us are utterly helpless and hopeless. Because of man’s refusal to acknowledge and obey the true God and His rules, man’s history has taken a downwards path since the fall. As seen in Paul’s summary of the fallen human nature in Romans 1:18-23, none of us can excuse ourselves from God’s simmering anger unless we repent and turn to Him while we live in our present physical bodies: ‘The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles’.
Here Paul depicts three reasons why God condemns the pagan world. ① Suppression of God’s truth, ② Ignorance of God’s Word and revelation, ③ Perversion of God’s glory.
It is often said that society’s technology is outpacing its ethics. This has become abundantly clear in the Netherlands where a new phenomena has arisen: Funerals for aborted babies. In the Netherlands, a woman can have an abortion if it is performed by a certified facility at any time between conception and viability, subject to a five-day waiting period. The number of abortions performed in the country has hovered around 28,000 per year, roughly similar to other European countries. As part of prenatal health care, expectant mothers have their unborn children screened for birth defects. If the child is found to have disabilities such as Down syndrome (or have an “unintentional pregnancy”), the Dutch couple can opt to have the child aborted. After the abortion, couples are now choosing to hold funerals for the children they just had killed. The aborted children are being put in coffins or cremated…… But when Dutch gynecologists describe induced, pre-term birth as the most desirable way to get rid of one’s offspring—because “it causes no harm to the uterus” and “does not require anesthesia”—and counselors describe how meaningful a funeral or cremation can be to symbolize the life of the lost child—never mind that our actions actually killed it—something is utterly wrong. Medical evidence has shown the psychological trauma on the mother following an abortion. The woman (couple) enters into a brief relief phase lasting anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, because, for better or worse, the crisis is finally over. The moral dilemma eventually resurfaces, and the decision to abort is now questioned…… Dr. Julius Fogel, an obstetrician-gynecologist and psychiatrist who performed more than 20,000 abortions during his career, perhaps explained best the psychological situation confronting many women after an abortion. He states, “There is no question about the emotional grief and mourning following an abortion…… There is no question in my mind that we are disturbing a life process.… Often the trauma may sink into the unconscious and never surface in the woman’s lifetime.… Having these funerals are thought to help in the psychological healing process in the mother.” [They] put his tiny body in a dainty little coffin,” describes a LifeSiteNews correspondent, “and covered it with sand in an effort to create the illusion that his life was truly valued.” This newest practice of encouraging the killing of the unborn is an example of how Romans 2 describes the law written on our hearts and how we suppress the law with self-worship(Emphases added).
God created man in His own image and the enormous value placed upon each individual life is apparent from the biblical proclamation that God alone handles life over the whole creation as written elsewhere in the Scripture. Paul teaches on several principles of divine judgment upon sinful man in Romans Chapter 2. God had revealed Himself so as to let His ways and deeds be known to everybody, before man made himself, birds, animals and reptiles, etc., objects of worship. Having condemned non-believing pagans in Romans Chapter 1 verses 18-32, Paul proceeds to condemn even moral man in Chapter 2.
Up to this day in human history, there have been some moral people even among pagans, who would live up to high ethical standards, condemning the moral corruption of their contemporaries. Some Jews would be proud enough to condemn the Gentiles. However, Paul argues that those who believe themselves free from divine condemnation because of their moral lifestyle are not exceptions to God’s condemnation, ‘because (they) who pass judgment do the same things’, and are exposed in God’s sight even if they are hidden from others’ sights. All of us are inherently blind to ourselves and our sinful state, and therefore, we should be properly informed about God’s principles of judgment so that all of us will be led to eternal life with Him.
First, self-righteousness is condemned. The false assumption that we are already in the safe haven of divine acceptance and of the acknowledgment of truth must be got rid of. Secondly, the accumulation of our sinful deeds recorded in God’s book is ultimately judged at the end of our days. Pride, unconcerned attitude to others, prosperity and detestable things, the basis on which Sodomites were judged; ‘arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me’ (Ezekiel 16:49-50) would be all counted as guilt. However, there may not necessarily a single general judgment of all mankind but several different types of judgments. Thus, all will fairly be judged unless sinners turn to Christ for their salvation as the Word proclaims: ‘ “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life’ (John 5:24). Thirdly, each individual’s works are appropriately rewarded without partiality and without regard to ethnic background. Fourthly, obedience, not knowledge, is rewarded. The false security and peace of merely knowing God’s truth is the deceitfulness of sin. Each individual’s conduct reveals the real nature of his heart. As the Scripture states that salvation is not by man’s works but solely God’s grace for those who believe in Him, so man cannot get eternal life through his good and moral lifestyle. Moral Gentiles who ‘do by nature things required by the law’ show that the Law is not to be found on tablets of stone and writings of Moses alone but that it is inscribed in their hearts. Therefore, God’s Law is unconsciously reflected in their deeds, consciences, and thoughts. That is, ‘they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law’ in Paul’s words. However, the Scripture also teaches us that man’s conscience is not always trustworthy or not necessarily directing man to what is right. For instance, there is a case in that ‘both their minds and consciences are corrupted’ because nothing is pure for those who are corrupted and do not believe (Titus 1:15). Such people ‘claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good’ (1:16).
The second article contains quite an intrigue insight about European Anti-Semitism, in which one of the human’s defense mechanisms, “Reaction formation” in terms of Psychology is applied to the analysis of the ‘Stockholm Syndrome’. According to the late survey conducted by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (reported on 24th Nov.’13), many European Jews no longer feel safe in their home countries and more of them are thinking of escaping to Israel. One of five respondents to this survey avoids wearing anything in public that would identify them as a Jew and this is more acute in Sweden. This fact should be taken seriously for European governments and other nations, along with the biblical warnings against God’s enemy.
When European history teachers omit the Holocaust from their curriculum, they do not do this because they hate their Jewish students more than their Muslim students. They omit it because they are afraid of their Muslim students…… In the "Stockholm Syndrome," now seen, ironically, in Sweden, victims start bonding with their abusers in the wish that if they share the same values as their abusers, their abusers might stop abusing them. "We must be open and tolerant toward Islam and Muslims because when we become a minority, they will be so toward us." — Jens Orback, former Swedish government minister.
The European Union [EU] is singling out Israel for sanctions…… Is there, then, an EU tendency to be anti-Semitic? As Thomas Friedman once wrote "Criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitic, and saying so is vile. But singling out Israel for opprobrium and international sanction out of all proportion to any other party in the Middle East is anti-Semitic, and not saying so is dishonest"…… Although European anti-Semitism predates Muslim immigration to Western Europe, the recent rise in post World War II anti-Semitism there coincides with parts of European Muslim populations' becoming more numerous, vocal, assertive and sometimes aggressive. The fear of this onrush might sometimes be expressed in an unconscious, unaware way, displaced, or covered over, as some sort of morally superior solidarity. In Sweden, for instance, about a month ago, a tragic and disgusting incident took place. A pregnant Muslim woman was physically assaulted, verbally abused and her headscarf was torn off. This act should be condemned in the harshest of terms. But instead, many Swedes established the 'Hijab Outcry' movement, in which countless ordinary citizens and prominent figures took pictures of themselves wearing a Hijab to show their "solidarity" with the victim……
With the Swedish "Hijab Outrcy," for instance, one might look past this appearance of moral superiority, and see that show of solidarity for what it possibly really is: fear. Psychology teaches us that when we have feelings that we worry might be viewed as socially unacceptable or potentially damaging to us in some way, we find ways to defend ourselves from the discomfort of too much anxiety; these ways are known as defense mechanisms, responses that are involuntary emotional counterweights to try to offset the feelings that make us uncomfortable…… In the "Stockholm Syndrome," victims start bonding with their abusers in the wish that if they share the same values as their abusers, their abusers might stop abusing them……
The affection and solidarity that many progressive Swedes demonstrate regarding their Muslim population shows similarities to this stance: Swedes have reason to fear the aggressive elements among their Muslim population: many Muslims have created de facto enclaves in large cities, such as Malmö; and, if their demands are not met, do not shy away from using brute force…… The carnage caused to Swedish society by vast elements of its Muslim population, however, has apparently failed to change Swedish attitudes. The Swedes' solidarity in the face of pervasive gang-rapes and other abuses looks indeed "overdone, extravagant and showy;" what is really an ordeal has become transformed instead into a sort of online Instagram or Facebook contest of who can show the most solidarity. This might lead one to conclude that Swedish anti-Semitism might be propelled by the Swedes' fear of their Muslim population, whom they fear far more than their Jewish population, who are not numerous, aggressive or hostile. Without even being aware if it, unconsciously, many Swedes, as in the "Stockholm Syndrome," may be trying to get themselves into the good books of those whom they fear by displaying a kinship and closeness in racist tendencies against a group that both they -- and the people they fear -- also already dislike: Jews.
(21th Nov.’13,
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4041/european-anti-semitism-muslims)
We hope all the blessings and peace of this special Season
Will light up your life with Faith, Hope and Love.
Wherever and Whoever we are,
JESUS CHRIST is God’s Gift for us!
