Show Some Respect

As a friend, how do you treat your friends? How respectful are you towards your friends? What kind of person are you? Are you a friend who drops everything when you’re needed? Are you a friend who goes to great lengths to check on your friends when you know they are in need? Are you a friend who helps others financially, spiritually, or emotionally? Are you the type of person that pays forward good deeds? Or, are you the kind of person that accepts those good deeds but never repays them? Are you selfish and you take for granted those people in your life that are always there for you? How do we as a people look to Jesus Christ? Are we appreciative of the sacrifice Christ made for us?

When you have much to offer, people will flock to you in droves. When Christ was healing everyone, handing out free food, lifting everyone up, the people loved him. When he started talking about everyone being sinners, and heaven wasn’t achievable for everyone because of our love of Sin, they turned on him. They threaten to stone him, and ran him out from one town after after. This is the savior and only when it suited us, did the people appreciate the truth, no, they preferred to live happy in a lie, instead of face the bitter truth.

( Spoilers Ahead for The Matrix)

I’m reminded of the first Matrix movie. The Matrix a prison meant to enslave the human race by keeping their minds trapped inside a digital construct, while harvesting a human being to essentially be living batteries. A soldier for the cause for the revolution against the machines Morphious In the first film one of the freed mines, a man named Cypher betrays the crew and causes a lot of problem. When the betrayal is discovered Cypher describes how he’d rather live in ignorance, and the joys of the Matrix, rather then suffer and live with the truth.

Proverbs 10:9 “He that walketh uprightly walketh surely: but he that perverteth his ways shall be known.”

Luke 8:17 “For all that is secret will eventually be brought into the open, and everything that is concealed will be brought to light and made known to all.”

Aren’t we the same way? We look at Jesus as the answer to the problem. We sin, but it’s okay because we are forgiven, so it doesn’t matter what we do, as long as we say we’re sorry once in a while, and we keep living our lives. Yeah, see, that’s not how this works at all. Hebrews 10:26 “For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins,” It’s said that when we take the Holy Spirit into our hearts the idea of sin becomes so repulsive we don’t do it intentionally. While we will always have moments where the flesh takes over and we Sin, the guilt we should feel when we do is where the repentance comes into the picture.

We are responsible for our own sins. We are responsible for how we treat others around us. We are responsible for the kindness in our own hearts. We are responsible for the selfishness in our hearts. The taking of Bashiba by King David was a knowing sinner at the time he took her into his bed. He knowingly sinned as he plotted the death of her husband. He knowingly sinned as he attempted to plot and scheme to hide his own sin. How appreciative of someone who picks up our tab at dinner? Now think about it, how appreciative are we now when we think about our eternal salvation? Do we live like someone who has been freed from an eternal death sentence? There’s a price for our sin, there’s a price for our actions, how we treat someone, and “The bill comes due, always” (Dr. Strange)