God's wrath is upon man because of man's behavior. God desires that people be loving, kind, peacemakers, joyous, patient, gentle, good, faithful, teachable, and self-controlled. Instead people are hateful, merciless, arrogant, troublemakers, selfish, bitter, impatient, grasping, harsh, workers of evil, faithless, hardhearted, and given to lust, perversion, and drunkenness.

If we are hateful toward people we will suffer for it.

If we are merciless we will suffer for it.

If we are arrogant we will suffer for it.

If we are a troublemaker we will suffer for it at the beema of Christ.

If we are selfish we will suffer for it. The rich man entered Hell after his death, not because he had rejected Christ or committed adultery but because he was selfish.

If we are bitter we will suffer for it.

If we are impatient we will suffer for it.

If we are grasping we will suffer for it.

If we are harsh, a worker of evil, faithless, hardhearted, we will suffer for it.

If we are given to lust, perversion, or drunkenness we will suffer for it.

If through the Lord Jesus Christ we repent, confess our sin, and seek the Lord's forgiveness and the power to overcome our sin, God is faithful and righteous to forgive our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. We then are on our way toward the first resurrection from the dead.

But if we choose to believe the current "gospel" that teaches we will hear well done good and faithful servant even though we have been neither good nor faithful, and do not walk in continual confession and repentance as the Holy Spirit guides us, then we are facing the fire of God.

We may experience the Divine fire in this life. We may die and face the fire in the next life.

For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep. (I Corinthians 11:30)

The idea that we can walk with God by a kind of magic, that is, we can continue in our untransformed state and God will see us only through Christ, is not true.

This is what is taught. But is it actually true that when a believer fornicates God sees only the purity of Christ? We need to consider carefully what we truly believe!

It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father's wife. (I Corinthians 5:1)

Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. (I Corinthians 6:18)

Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand. (I Corinthians 10:8)

And lest, when I come again, my God will humble me among you, and that I shall bewail many which have sinned already, and have not repented of the uncleanness and fornication and lasciviousness [immorality] which they have committed. (II Corinthians 12:21)

And so on and on and on.

If this is the case with fornication, is it not true of all other sins? And if it is true that Christians are to avoid fornication and all other sins, is it not then true that the present doctrine that God sees us only through Christ is utterly false and morally destructive? Are we saved "by faith alone," meaning that if we subscribe to the correct doctrine our behavior does not really matter? It is the change in our personality through Christ that is salvation.

Will we repent or will we keep on courting the terror of the Lord?

To be continued.