His message is clear! He has issued His commands, His standing, always valid orders! See Matthew, Chapters 5, 6, and 7! He more than gladly gives us all the grace and strength we need in order to keep all His commands with joy, zeal, and faithfulness! There is no excuse whatsoever for not doing your utmost to do all His will! How can we then be so impertinent and be indifferent as to whether we do His will or not? How can we dare to oppose Him? How can we actually dare to sin, and continue to do it? Think to dare to break His Word, the words of the Most High! Transgressing His laws and commands as if He did not exist! What presumptuousness! Or to act as if we never had to appear before His judgment seat!? Why do we not hasten to do His will in every possible area, at any cost, with joy? Are we suffering from spiritual sleeping sickness? Do we not want to be saved and transformed inwardly? Do we push the thought of the day of reckoning from us? Do we think that we will have any excuses on that day? Do we listen to the opinions of sinful people, or to our bitter adversary, instead of earnestly paying heed to Jesus’ commands? Who is it that can defend us against God’s perfect judgment on that day? On what will you rely then? There isn’t a speck of grace to be found there! Only now can we receive grace to be able to do all of His good will with joy and with great zeal! Today is the day of salvation! Not another time, not later! Are you so obstinate that you push away the wonderful offer of the Most High, of His effective help for glorious salvation and transformation? Do you reject the helping hand? Do you represent recklessness personified? Have you no fear at all to act against the great God and Creator and Savior? Will you resist Him, believing that it is to your benefit? How can you permit yourself to continue to sin, to be so brash and insolent, acting against the Most High and yet remain just the same and indifferent, smiling sweetly as if nothing had happened? How can you be so bold as to criticize and judge others, you, who are a sinner yourself and are criticized by those of like mind? And you do this in spite of the fact that you know very well that it is strictly forbidden! Matt. 7:1; Rom. 2:1. How can you manage to say a derogatory word about a brother or a sister when the person concerned is not present, that is, behind their backs, when they cannot answer for themselves? Slander is one of the most detestable and basest of sins in existence! Ps. 50:19-22; Lev. 19:16; Ezek. 22:9. Slanderers are like murderers. Jas. 4:11-12! Slander is so appallingly evil that the extremely wise and good apostle Paul exhorted the church to put such evil people out of the church. 1 Cor. 5:11-13. A drunkard is someone who habitually gets drunk, and a slanderer [reviler] is someone who habitually slanders, someone who tends to be evil in this way! The only meaningful thing to do is to fear such evil, ungodly, and shameful behavior that you immediately depart unspeakably far, far from this murderous abomination, so that it disappears completely for time and eternity, consistent with what is written in Romans 6:2. This also applies to all sin that can be mentioned! According to many scriptures, it is absolutely strictly forbidden not to love each other, and everyone, sincerely from the heart in spirit and in truth, and in deed and in truth just as Jesus did and still does! The person who does not love is and remains in death! 1 John 3:14. In other words, such a person is totally ruined; he is an absolute zero! Very many people conduct themselves as if God’s Word is a joke, as if God’s Word did not mean precisely what it says! Such people are in deep darkness and consequently dare not to regard it with the utmost seriousness! Imagine neglecting to be filled with the love of Christ, the very love that causes us to keep His commandments, in spite of knowing that it is indispensable and required, and in spite of knowing Jesus’ word that everything is possible to him who believes! What excuse does such a person have? Think—something as presumptuous as bearing a small grudge against someone, and criticizing a little bit instead of loving the person sincerely from the heart! Think of how much you desire to be loved! It is so brutally ungodly not to love them! This is sufficient proof of one’s crying lack of fearing to displease the Most High! He dislikes this to the utmost degree! We are exhorted to put off all sin now! Col. 3:8. Think about something as ungodly as being in the church year after year, for many, many years and even your whole life long, and not having put off all conscious sin! What a tragic indifference! And then still imagining being with Jesus when He returns to fetch His bride! He is to fetch a bride who is holy and pure, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, filled with peace and joy! 2 Pet. 3:14; Eph. 5:27. You don’t think that God is joking or that He wants to fool us, do you? Or that this tremendous work is going to occur in the hereafter instead of now during the time of grace—contrary to what Jesus has said and what the first apostles have written? You are possibly not thinking about this at all, but almost exclusively about earthly things? Think about it! If this is the case, then you are virtually dancing on a rope over the abyss. When Jesus says, “If you love Me, keep My commandments,” (John 14:15) how presumptuous and impertinent it is, and how hardened one has become by saying that you love Jesus and yet know that you simply do not keep His commandments at all?! Then such a person is blinded and deceived! Wake up in earnest so that you can receive everything you need, as soon as possible, to be able to keep all the words of life in the New Testament, that is, that you can cease to sin, cease to displease God. Only then will you become thoroughly happy, which is the intention with all God’s Word!Elias Aslaksen