Kootenai Church Morning Worship

It would be nice, I think, if there were some shortcut to Christlikeness, some pill we could take, some infusion, an IV, an injection, eat a certain diet, do a certain pattern, certain program, something easy, something quick, something effortless to make us like Christ. And in fact, one of the alluring lies of false teachers is that they often offer that very thing to people. They will tell you that really what you need is their private revelation of some truth that's been hidden from the church up until now, but now they have it. They have received it by the power of the Holy Spirit, a revelation for the church of our day. Or they will tell you that they have a new approach, a secret to godliness, a secret to abiding, a secret to fruitfulness, a secret to usefulness, some new approach. What you need is an experience or a conference or an event or a feeling, an encounter, some meeting, a formula, a prayer, a practicum. That's what they offer, all of that and more.
And that's part of the allure of false teaching. If I follow this guy, he's given me the secret to this, and if I have the secret to that, it's much easier to get what I want. And so if you just Google “the secrets of,” you will find all kinds, thousands of them. The secrets to deliverance, the secrets to maintaining your deliverance, the secrets to abiding, the secret to this, and the secret to that, and even the book The Secret. Remember that? That was a big, popular one years ago.
But there can be no shortcut to Christlikeness since the process itself is actually part of the goal. So Christlikeness is perseverance and discipline, endurance, patience, steadfastness, work, labor, striving, effort, persistence, learning, consistency. Those are the things that produce Christlikeness. And those are the things that, when applied with all diligence, produce that Christlikeness within us. And when you have those things, then you are like Christ.
And there can be no shortcut to those. I mean, how do you achieve patience without waiting for it? Don't you have to learn patience by waiting? You can't be made patient. You can't go from impatience to patience simply quickly and easily like that. You have to learn patience by learning to wait. How do you cultivate perseverance if you just take a shortcut, if you never have to persevere? If you never have to endure anything that feels unendurable, then you'll never learn endurance. You'll never develop that because endurance can only come by enduring. There's no shortcut to that. How do you develop discipline quickly? Discipline is something that is developed over the long haul of a Christian life as you apply the means of grace and pursue holiness and Christlikeness day after day, hour after hour, month after month. These are all virtues that require diligence and effort, and though it is difficult, and though it requires effort and it requires striving, this is the way that we are made useful and fruitful to the Master.
The command in 2 Peter 1:5 to apply all diligence is not given to us without the promise also of a reward. So last week we looked at the virtues that we are to cultivate in verses 5–7. We spent two weeks on those. Faith, moral excellence, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love—those eight virtues, they will bring a benefit, a blessing, and fruitfulness to your character and to your Christian life.
And that brings us now to verse 8, where Peter lays out for us an encouraging description of the one who has these virtues and the one who doesn't have these virtues, and his purpose, his point, is that we would see, in contrasting those two people, the benefit and the blessing of cultivating these qualities in our lives. So let's pick it up at verse 8. We're looking today at verses 8–9, but we're going to read verses 8–11.
8 For if these things are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the full knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
9 For in whom these things are not present, that one is blind, being nearsighted, having forgotten the purification from his former sins.
10 Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to make your calling and choosing sure; for in doing these things, you will never stumble;
11 for in this way the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be abundantly supplied to you. (LSB)
So far in this passage, in verses 1–4 Peter described the sufficiency of our salvation and the sufficiency of Scripture. He alluded to it. We have been given everything that we need that pertains to life and to godliness through the faith that God has granted to us. That's in verses 1–4. Through His precious and magnificent promises given to us in His Word, He has supplied everything for our salvation. But with everything for our salvation also comes everything that we need for our sanctification, for life and for godliness. So in verses 5–7 then, Peter described the effort and the work that we are to put into our sanctification as we pursue holiness and godliness.
And now we come to verses 8–11, where Peter describes the blessings and the benefits of the man whose character is marked by these qualities. So our text today is verses 8–9. You'll notice that verse 8 describes one who has these qualities, and they are increasing. What qualities? The ones listed in verses 5–7: faith, moral excellence, all of those all the way down through love, those qualities. It describes the one who has those and increases in them. Then in verse 9, he describes the one who does not have these qualities. And so Peter is contrasting here these two people, one who has these qualities and has added them diligently to his faith, and the one who does not have these qualities and has not been diligent in his faith. And in contrasting those two, Peter is going to show us the blessing and the benefit that comes to the one who will apply all diligence to supply to their faith moral excellence, self-control, all those virtues all the way through love.
So here is our outline for this morning. In verse 8, we see that the diligent Christian is fruitful. And in verse 9, we see that the negligent Christian is forgetful. The diligent Christian is fruitful, and the negligent Christian is forgetful. In verse 8, the diligent Christian is fruitful. Let's read verse 8 together again: “For if these things are yours and are increasing, they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the full knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Now notice—this stood out to me this week. Notice that Peter gives a negative description of the one who has these qualities. He said the one who possesses (that's a good thing, a positive thing)—the one who does have these qualities will be rendered neither (but then he gives a negative description) useless nor unfruitful. The implication is that the one who has these will be fruitful and useful. But Peter doesn't say he will be useful to his Master and fruitful in his service. Instead, Peter negates sort of a negative quality. You won't be useless and unfruitful. And I think that the reason Peter does this—because you'll notice in verse 9 that he says the one who doesn't have these qualities is “blind, being nearsighted, having forgotten the purification from his former sins.” So there's three more negative descriptions—blind, nearsighted, and has forgotten his purification from his sins.
So by saying in verse 8 that the one who has these qualities won't be useless and unfruitful, the implication is that the one who doesn't have these qualities is also what? Not just is he blind and nearsighted and forgetful, but he's also useless and unfruitful. The one who has these qualities is therefore not only not useless and not unfruitful, he's not blind, he's not nearsighted, and he hasn't forgotten his purification from his sins. So in structuring it this way, Peter's kind of lumping all of those descriptions, both positively and negatively. If you have these qualities, you're not all of those things. If you don't have these qualities, you are all of those things. And I'm going to ask you when we get to the end of this, Do you have these qualities and are they increasing? So as we go through this, the comparison of these two Christians, keep that in mind.
Peter wants these qualities to be present in the lives of believers. He wants us to possess them. He says if these things are yours, if these qualities are yours and are increasing—and the phrase “if these are yours” is a word that describes owning something and possessing something. It means to be or to have as relates to property. It describes one who possesses these things as a matter of enduring or an abiding sense. It doesn't mean that these things merely describe you from time to time, once in a while on your good day. But do you possess these qualities like you possess possessions?
In fact, this word that is translated here “yours” is translated as “possessions” in other contexts. For instance, Hebrews 10:34: “You also showed sympathy to the prisoners and accepted with joy the seizure of your possessions [that which you had or belonged to you], knowing that you have for yourselves a better and lasting possession.” This same word is translated “belonging” in describing land that belonged to Publius in Acts 28. It says that there were certain lands that belonged to the leading man of the island, Publius. And in describing the lands that he possessed, it's describing his property.
So Peter is saying the goal is that these qualities would be at home with you and that your soul, your character, would possess these things. Peter is not concerned that you can list them but that you live them. He's not describing somebody who is merely familiar with what these things are and sort of falls in and out of these virtues from time to time. Oh, he's really good for a week. Self-control—there'll be seven days in any given quarter of the year when it's really good, but then the rest of it, he's a mess. You don't possess that. You don't possess this if that describes you.
This is not just somebody who can once in a while put on some of these qualities to make things go easier in life, at home or at the workplace or in the church or in the small group, but somebody who owns or possesses these virtues like they are his very own property. They mark you. They characterize you. You bleed these virtues.
And not just that you have them in a static sense but in an increasing and abounding sense. Notice Peter wants them to be yours and to be increasing. That means that they are growing in abundance, that you have these more and more, to an always increasing degree. In an always increasing way, you are growing in these things so that you have more than enough perseverance, more than enough self-control, more than enough love and brotherly kindness, that these things flow out of your lives, and that this is what we would be known for, that this is what we would be marked by, and that we would have these things in abundant and increasing fashion.
This means that these virtues that we list in verses 5–7 are not things that we achieve and then move on to the next. Remember, I gave you kind of the overview of the list. I said this is not a list that you check off. Faith, check. Self-control, check. Knowledge, check. Moral excellence, check. I got these, I'm moving on to the next virtue. That's not how these virtues work. Since they are all tied together, since they all grow up together, and similarly, sort of wilt together, all of these virtues, because they are tied together, must be always increasing.
And there should never be a time when you are not increasing and growing in all of these virtues in some measure and in some way. There will never be a time when you have exhausted brotherly kindness, where people look at you and say, “Brotherly kindness—he has no more room for growth in that area.” His self-control, her moral excellence, his faith, her perseverance, her love, they have reached the pinnacle of it. There's nowhere else for them to grow, nothing else for them to do. That will never happen for you, that will never happen for me in this life. So we are always, therefore, to be increasing in them.
This means that we are, in our lives, identifying those areas in our lives where we need to put off our sin and put on righteousness and grow in one of these graces. And in so doing, we will find that growth in one of these areas is growth in all of these areas. So we are either growing or wilting in all of these. The goal is not that these qualities would be minimally observant in you from time to time but that they would be overflowing from our lives so that we are marked by these things. They would belong to us in an abounding and overflowing sense as we pursue them.
Now, at this point, we kind of want to ask a question. How do I measure them? How do I know if I'm growing? How do I measure them? Should I expect to have, say, 3 percent more self-control this year than I had last year? I look at last year and I think I didn’t have so much self-control as I have today. Probably about a 3 percent increase. How do you know what is 3 percent of self-control? You don't know that, do you?
Or do we say, “This year it's going to be my goal to add four units of godliness to my godliness from last year. That's my New Year's resolution”? Is it possible to measure the shining luster of your moral excellence and then think to yourself, “Next year, that moral excellence is going to shine even brighter. It's going to be flashier than this year's moral excellence”? Or can you say, “Is my love big enough? How big is my love? Can I measure it?” You can't measure it. How much does my faith weigh? How do I know if I have enough faith or if I've grown in my faith? I can't measure my faith. I can't weigh my love. I can't plumb the depths of my self-control. I can't put a percentage on it. So how do I grow in these things? How do I know if I'm growing in these things?
Well, those are the kinds of questions that we ask when we are more interested in checking off a box and charting our progress and accomplishing a to-do list. And listen, I love to-do lists. You know that. But those are the kind of questions that we ask when we are more interested in doing that than in simply pursuing with a goal the likeness to Christ, keeping our eyes fixed on Him, “the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb. 12:2). We are looking to Him and saying, “OK, I'm going to pursue Him and I'm going to grow in these virtues.”
I can look at these virtues. It's OK to look at ourselves and say, “Here is where I need to grow. Here is where I am weak. Here is where I think I am strong. I need to pursue this in order to accomplish that,” and then get about doing it. Apply all diligence. If it were not possible for us to in some way measure our progress in these things, Peter would not be giving us a list of things to measure our progress in. But the goal is that we would make progress in these things. In our Scripture reading from 1 Timothy 4, Paul says, “Here are the things you ought to pursue. Now make sure you make progress in these things, Timothy.” But Paul doesn't say, “Here is where you should be at on year 1 and year 5 and year 10.” Instead, he just says pursue these things and make progress.And I think we know if we are making progress or not. Though we can't measure them, we know where we are weak. And so the call to us is to pursue strength in those areas.
And should you be content with just a tiny, little bit, almost indiscernible improvement in your life over the course of many years? No, it should be a cause of great concern. Many people who claim they're Christians, and maybe even some Christians, would say, “Look, yeah, I may not have grown very much in this area, but if you look back where I was at, say, thirty years ago, I've made progress. I mean, it's this much progress, but I've made progress. A very little bit.” Should you be content with that?
Would you be content with minimally observant growth in your financial investments? Would you be content with minimally observant growth in your income, in your health if you were sick? Or would you pursue growth and advancement in all of those areas? I think we would. How much progress, for instance, would you like to see in the lives of those that you live with? Just a wee little bit, or a lot? I think we'd all like to see a lot, and so therefore, we ought to pursue that in our own lives.
How useful or fruitful do you want to be to the Master? How useful do you want to be to the One who called you by His own glory and excellence? Peter says if we do this, we will be neither useless nor unfruitful. What is the opposite of useless, by the way? It's useful. This word translated “useless” here is a word that describes something or someone who is inactive, idle, or even lazy, unemployed or slow. Not mentally slow but just somebody who just lacks any kind of motivation or movement.
It is translated as “idle” and “not moving” in Scripture. For instance, in Matthew 20:3, in the parable of the vine growers, Jesus said, “And he went out about the third hour and saw others standing idle in the marketplace.” They weren't working. They weren't moving. They weren't earning anything. They weren't producing anything. They just, with their hands in their pockets—I don't know if that's true. I added that. Well, they had robes. Their hands by their sides, not inside of their pockets, but just doing nothing in the marketplace, being completely unproductive. That's the word that's being used here. Useless, idle.
It's translated as “idle” in 1 Timothy 5:13, where Paul warns Timothy about the danger of young widows not being married. He says, “At the same time they also learn to be idle, as they go around from house to house. And not merely idle [here's the word, idle], but also gossips and busybodies.” In other words, this is not a good characteristic. You do not want to be called idle. This is not a good thing.
It's translated “useless” in James 2:20, when it describes faith that has no works. Such faith is useless, James says. It's idle.
It's then translated as “lazy” in one of my favorite verses in the New Testament. “One of themselves, a prophet of their own, said, ‘Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons’” (Titus 1:12). Wow, that from the mouth of an inspired apostle. That's the word that's used, lazy. Useless.
Instead, the one who applies all diligence will themselves develop these qualities, and you won't be useless. You will be useful to the Master. It should thrill the heart of a believer that I just want to be useful to the Master. If He uses me, that's a different thing, but I want to be useful. I cannot control if God will use me, but I can control if I will pursue usefulness. I can't control the fruit. I can't control the circumstances around which I may be of use to the Master. But I can at least—it is within the purview of my ability to control the pursuit of being useful to the Master.
So all of us should want to have the quality that Paul describes in 2 Timothy 2:21: “If anyone cleanses himself from these things, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified, useful to the Master, having been prepared for every good work.” Paul says cleanse yourself from these things, the things that make for impurity. That is something we can do so that you will be useful. And then the prayer is that God would pick us up and use us in some way.
Not only will you not be useless—you'll be useful—but you will not be unfruitful. And that word means barren or unproductive. It describes the Word of God and the hearts of those where the Word is sown but because the thorns and the thistles, the worries and concerns of this life, choke out the Word, the Word becomes unfruitful in the heart of that stony-ground hearer or that seed that is sown among the weeds.
In Titus 3:14, it is used of believers. “And our people,” Paul says, “must also learn to lead in good works to meet pressing needs, so that they will not be unfruitful.” A Christian can be unfruitful. That’s possible. A Christian can not bear fruit in their lives, fruit of their salvation. And Paul's telling Titus that Christians can be unfruitful and that disobedience and laziness and lack of diligence produces no spiritual fruit.
In Jude 12, this word is used to describe false teachers where Jude says, “These are the men who are hidden reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves; [listen] clouds without water, carried along by winds; autumn trees without fruit [that's the word], doubly dead, uprooted.” So the false teacher, just as their godliness is a show, it is fake, so is their alleged fruitfulness. It's tempting sometimes to look at the lives of false teachers and say, well, they've got money and they're on Fox News and they have big ministries and thousands of people go to hear them and they're on the podcast and they have the publishing industry and blah, blah, blah and all that stuff, and to think the Lord must be blessing that. That must be fruit. No, that's like plastic fruit hanging on the tree. That's all it is. There's no real substance to it. It kind of looks like fruit because we don't know what to be looking for when we think that that's fruit. That is not fruit. Those false teachers are useless, unprofitable, barren, fruitless, lazy, idle wolves.
And this usefulness and fruitfulness is connected with our knowledge. Notice what Peter says in verse 8: you will be “neither useless nor unfruitful in the full knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.” That knowledge that you have of Him which has brought you faith, which has brought you to salvation, it should be fruitful, it should produce a usefulness, it should produce and result in these qualities that Peter has listed in verses 5–7.
And if your knowledge of God and His truth does not issue in diligence to progress in these—faith, moral excellence, self-control, etc.—then something is wrong. If your knowledge of God is not fruitful and useful to the Lord as you grow in these graces and in these virtues, then your knowledge is worthless. It has not benefited you in this life, and it will not benefit you in the life to come. You will be fruitless in this life and without reward in the life that is to come. That is what is at stake. I want to be neither, and you should want to be neither, useless nor unfruitful.
This is the path to usefulness. Apply all diligence to add to your faith moral excellence, self-control, godliness, perseverance, brotherly kindness, and love. Make every effort. And by doing that, you will be both fruitful and useful. And if you abound in these things, then you will please the Master. You'll please the King who purchased you with His own blood.
So the diligent Christian is fruitful. Second, in verse 9, the negligent Christian is forgetful. Verse 9: “For in whom these things are not present, that one is blind, being nearsighted, having forgotten the purification from his former sins.” There's the other side of the coin. We could say that those in whom these things are not present, they are useless and they are unfruitful. And by the way, that is the normal trajectory of our lives, which is why we have to be encouraged to apply all diligence. Because we are normally spiritually lazy except for the few moments after our salvation when everything is on fire and we're in the cage stage, we can't wait to tell everybody about our conversion, we want to get baptized, and we get baptized and publicly proclaim that. And then the realities of life slap you in the face, and you've got an income you need to earn, and you've got to work, and unbelievers are hostile to you, and all of that strikes you. And after a period of time, it just becomes more and more difficult to advance in these things.
One critic of Christianity described the Christian experience as an initial burst of enthusiasm followed by chronic inertia. That is a great description. An initial burst of enthusiasm followed by chronic inertia. And since we tend to be lazy and not apply that diligence, that's why we have to be encouraged to apply all diligence. Because the normal trajectory for us is usefulness and unfruitfulness.
The one in whom these things are not present—that is, they don't possess these qualities, they do not cultivate these qualities, they are not applying all diligence—Peter describes them as blind, being nearsighted. The word blind here is a word that is used not only to describe literal physical blindness but also in a symbolic or metaphorical sense. It's used figuratively to describe spiritual blindness, an inability to see or to understand things. In John 9 with the story of the man born blind, this word is used to describe him. He couldn't physically see. At the end of chapter 9, Jesus uses the same word to describe the Pharisees’ inability to spiritually see. And John uses it both literally of physical blindness and figuratively of spiritual blindness. And Peter is using it here in a figurative sense.
Not only would they be blind, unable to see, but they're nearsighted. Now, it's odd to see these coupled together, right? How many of you have been waiting until we got to this verse to say, “How is it that somebody can be both blind and nearsighted? It seems to me that if you're nearsighted, you're not blind. And if you're blind, you're not sighted, not nearsighted. So how is it that one can be blind and nearsighted at the same time?” The ESV and the LSB translate it well in that the ESV says this person “is so nearsighted that he is blind.” The LSB says they're “blind, being nearsighted.” In other words, their nearsightedness makes them blind to something. The nearsightedness results in a certain kind of blindness that Peter has in mind.
This is an interesting word, the word translated “nearsighted.” It is only used here in all of the New Testament. This is the only place where the word is used. And it means to blink or to shut the eyes. And it was used sometimes to describe squinting. So like if you're nearsighted, for instance, and you want to see something distant, you kind of squint, strain your eyes. That's the way it was used to describe sort of the screwing up of the eyes or the squinting of the eyes. It's what you would describe for somebody who looked into a bright light. They squint their eyes, they close their eyes.
This nearsightedness that Peter is describing here is the cause of blindness. And what Peter means is the person who does not have these qualities is nearsighted and can only see what is right in front of them. In other words, this person is not living for next year, a legacy, or the life to come. They are consumed with earthly concerns, the things here and now. How much is in my bank account right now? How much will be there at the end of this week? That's what they're consumed by. They are eaten up by the things of this world.
They are useless and fruitless in spiritual terms because they cannot see out far enough to be thinking in terms of producing fruit and doing something in the long term, but instead, all they are consumed with is the here and now. They don't look to the reward. They're not thinking about what their legacy is going to be. They're not thinking about their children or their grandchildren. They're not thinking about the kingdom that is to come and the reward that is waiting there. They don't have any of that in view. All they're thinking about is today.
And the person who is so nearsighted will not have a long-term perspective. Fruitfulness comes in the life of those who are not thinking about the right now. They're thinking about the long term. Fruitfulness and usefulness characterize the life of those who work now to invest for the future because they are thinking about what is to come and the reward that is to come.
To go back to my gardening analogy that I used last week, I don't plant in May expecting to enjoy the fruit of that the next day or the next week. And really not even the next month. I plant in May for August and September. This year, I planted asparagus that I will not touch for three years. Last year, I planted trees that I will not see any benefit from for three to five years. But if all I thought about was what I can get next week and today, would I ever plant a tree, asparagus, or anything? No, I wouldn't.
And the same thing is true spiritually speaking. We must live not nearsighted. That makes us blind to eternal considerations, eternal concerns. It makes us blind to the fruit that we sacrifice, the usefulness we give up, the rewards of the kingdom, so that we can have what we want now. Our lusts say, “I want it, and I want it now.” And self-control and godliness and perseverance says, “No, because what is to come in the future, and maybe even the distant future, is far better than what I want in the now.” But if you are nearsighted and blind, you're not thinking about that. You're only thinking about what you want in the moment. This describes a person who has shut their eyes to the light. They have blinked and squinted so as not to see.
And Peter says they have forgotten their purification from their former sins. That is a way of describing salvation. Titus 3:5–6 says that Christ has “saved us, not by works which we did in righteousness, but according to His mercy, through the washing of regeneration [notice the language of purification there] and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior.”
It seems to me that what Peter is describing here is something that can happen to a believer. This is one who has been purified, whose sins have been taken out of the way. And at one time, they saw the light of the glory of the gospel of Christ. It shone upon them in their eyes and upon their hearts, and they were regenerated. But then the light became too much and they stopped. They closed their eyes up to that and became blind to those things that ought to consume them and became consumed with those things that mean nothing. And so their nearsightedness has made them blind because they have forgotten. This is gospel amnesia. Their salvation, justification, the joy of all of that is put out of the mind, and they become almost, as it were, intentionally blind and intentionally nearsighted to the things of this world.
That, dear Christian, is something that can happen to Christians, and it renders us useless and fruitless in this life. Because all we are concerned about is the things that don't matter, and we're not concerned at all about the things that do. Michael Green in his commentary on this says, “Spiritual blindness descends upon the eyes of those who deliberately look away from the graces of character to which the Christian is called when he comes to know Christ.” Spiritual blindness descends upon the eyes of the Christian who looks away, squints his eyes, says, “That's too much for me. I don't want that. I don't like that. I'm going to do this instead.” That renders you useless and unfruitful.
So this is a tale of two Christians, the one in whose life these virtues are present and the one in whose life these virtues are not. One is diligent, one is negligent. One is fruitful and one is forgetful. So Christian, which one are you? Are you applying all diligence? Are you pursuing these qualities? Do you possess them? Are you abounding in them? Are you growing in them? Or have you become lazy and forgetful and blind? Do you make excuses for your lack of these virtues? And are you turning away from the truth and squinting up your eyes?
If that is the case, if these things are not yours, then listen carefully, the best thing that can be said about you is that you are a Christian who is unfruitful, useless, blinded by nearsightedness, and you have forgotten God's grace. You have gospel amnesia. That's the best thing that can be said.
The worst thing that can be said is tragically much, much worse. And that is that you are not a believer at all and that your cosplaying of Christianity on Sunday mornings is only fooling you. And your show to others will be revealed soon enough. It's possible to pretend, it's possible to put on an exterior, a veneer, of righteousness and godliness, and be as far away from God as you have ever been because your heart is stone-cold, unresponsive to truth, and you are unregenerate. Any B-list actor can fool people for a period of time, but eventually the curtain's going to close and it's going to be over and all your acting will be for nothing.
And if that describes you, I have hope for you. There is hope in the Person of Christ. You must recognize that you are a sinner and that you have been putting all of this on for all of these years, that you have lied, that you have stolen, and that the wrath of God hangs over your head and it will fall upon you in the end. And all of your knowledge of the truth will do nothing to deliver you on the day of wrath, but instead it will only increase your judgment and your accountability. You must repent and come to the One who died on a cross and rose again three days later to pay the penalty for all who will trust in Him. And if you will not do that, you will stand before that Savior on Judgment Day and He will be your righteous Judge and you will get what you deserve for taking His name in vain every day of every year of your entire life. So repent and believe and be born again. Receive the regenerating gift of God through faith in His Son. Be reconciled today to God through the death of His Son.
For you, Christian, do not forget your purification from your former sins, but instead remember diligently and faithfully what God has done to redeem you through the sacrifice of His Son.