Godliness today, godlessness tomorrow: Any nexus with salvation? – Part 4

Apostle Paul: He, as Saul, was a tormentor-in-chief of the disciples and followers of Christ, and he led the people that stoned Stephen to death. He was a man with the blood of godlessness in his vein and a sure candidate to hell fire. However, when he met Jesus Christ, the evil blood in his vein was flushed out, and was replaced with the one embedded in righteousness. Thereafter, he did not look back again, and he led so many people into accepting Christ. He then became the tormentor-in-chief of agents of darkness by depopulating their kingdom.

King David: He was a man moving from righteousness to ungodliness, and on his periodic realisation, he never failed to repent and asked for forgiveness from God. He did honestly well, by refusing to kill Saul, the man after his life, but he brought himself very low, by killing Uriah, so as to marry his wife (Bathsheba). His major great gift was his ability to remember every time, that no sinner could stand in the presence of God. This he carried in his heart and in his actions, and he never left God, till he died.

Salvation race, in the midst of godliness and godlessness
The race towards God’s kingdom, as expressed in the Bible and which believers must take very seriously, is that the standard to meet has been laid down. Therefore, irrespective of man’s frailties and what the Psalmist talked about “if the Lord should mark iniquities, who can stand”, anyone with the sign of any iniquity cannot stand to claim righteousness.

Also, anyone who is unrighteous is lost in the race for salvation. And as the Bible says in one of the passages stated above, Christ will come as a thief in the night. Nobody is given the ability to know when his life will end. This lack of knowledge and information, as to when the bell shall sound, is why everyone must be wary of those unconscious and ‘little’ sins, which might stand as obstacles between man and God’s kingdom.

Those ‘little’ sins are so called because many people seem to lose sight of them in their daily relationship with God. We mostly talk and deliver homilies on Adultery, Fornication, Covetousness, Murder, Stealing, but unconsciously ignore Exaggeration, Boasting and Peddling of rumours. Yet, the Bible says that, all unrighteousness is sin (1 John 5:17a).

Meanwhile, as man continues to work in consonant with godliness and with the knowledge Satan already has on man’s inability to know when he will die, he (Satan) then starts working in a way that death will meet his victim in an unrighteous state. This is the more reason, the children of God and true born again Christians by acts and not by mouth. They must do everything possible to keep that gap between godliness and godlessness. This is also the simple reason repentance and asking for forgiveness from God must be part of us all the time.

This is because there are so many overlooked iniquities we fall into daily. And while we believe that we are still with God, Satan will be rejoicing and planning how we will not remember those sins, till death knocks on our door. Satan equally knows that Salvation stands as a link, between righteousness and unrighteousness. He knows that without something calls SALVATION; there would not have been any need for anybody to want to run the race of becoming righteous.

Therefore, since salvation is meant for those who live their lives in Christ Jesus to the end, and the plan of Satan has always been that man should join him in Hell Fire, he will therefore, do everything possible to make us lose sight of the iniquities embedded in our lives. With all these in mind, we cannot afford to be overconfident about our spiritual lives and be thinking that we are still born again, when as a matter of fact, Satan is already aware that our Moses has killed one Egyptian sometimes ago, and he is ever ready to use it against us in God’s presence.

This is why there is need for each and every one of us to have at the back of our mind at all times the word of God in 1 Corinthians 10:12 – Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.
May we never fall into the hands of Satan, in Jesus name.Remain permanently under God’s banner!