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The Daily Word of Righteousness
The Resurrection and the Life, #6
The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. (II Peter 3:9—NIV)
The difference between God's elect and the people of the world. In order to understand the relationship between doing good, and salvation by grace through faith, we first must comprehend the difference between the salvation of the members of God's elect, His royal priesthood, and the salvation of those who are not of God's elect.
No person is elected to be saved. God is willing that all repent, believe in Christ, and be saved.
This is not true of the members of the royal priesthood. They have been chosen from the beginning of the world. When the appointed time of each member arrives, the Lord reveals the slain Lamb to him or her and then proceeds to weave the white robe of the priesthood, so to speak.
For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. (Romans 8:29—NIV)
Because of this difference in calling, "doing good" differs from one group to the other.
To the person elected to the priesthood, to be a saint, a holy one, the standard is set very high. We are commanded to present our body a living sacrifice, to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and follow the Lord Jesus. We have to cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit.
The Spirit of God deals with us night and day, day and night. Every nuance of thought, word, and action is considered. Sometimes we are required to go to a difficult mission field, or to serve in some sort of ministry. This is how a member of the priesthood does good.
The Lord is exceedingly strict with us because in the future we will be His rulers and judges.
Now if we, as a member of God's elect, do not obey the Spirit of God, choosing to live in the spirit of the world, in our fleshly desires, in our self-will, then we are doing bad.
Those Christians, the priests of God, who do good will enter eternal life in the Day of Resurrection.
Those Christians, the priests of God, who bury their talent, will be thrown into outer darkness. We have not done good so we are not resurrected to eternal life.
Several times in the Gospel accounts the Lord speaks of the punishments that will be administered to unfaithful, lazy servants.
They will receive the bad they have done.
Next we come to people who are not members of the royal priesthood; who have not been called from the beginning of the world to be the brothers of Christ.
Doing good refers to the decent things they do in their lifetime, their faithfulness to their family members, their kindness and gentleness with people, and especially to the way they treat the Lord's brothers, the saints.
Doing bad speaks of what we are seeing in the American society today as people murder, rape, rob, cheat one another.
To be continued.