Theme: THE SIN OF DISOBEDIENCE
Text: “For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.” – Titus 3:3.
Comment: Those who are converts to Christianity were given to acts of disobedience due to lack of spiritual knowledge and understanding. But having been spiritually born again through the knowledge of the truth (1 Peter 1:23) and being guided by the spirit of God (Titus 3:4,5), the Christian makes conscious or deliberate efforts to put off the old man (sinful acts) and put on the new man (conduct guided by the knowledge of God).
Unfortunately, some of those who claim to have become Christians indeed, secretly or even openly, practice the works of the old man. Our Lord Jesus Christ asked the Jews in those days, “And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?” (Luke 6:46) It is those who do the will of God that He will hear their prayers. (Psalm 66:18; John 9:31) They will enjoy His peace. (Isaiah 48:18,19) Apostle James therefore exhorted: “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.” – James 1:22-25. See also Luke 6:46-49.