9 For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living. 10 You, then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God’s judgment seat. 11 It is written:
“‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord,
‘every knee will bow before me;
every tongue will confess to God.’”
‘every knee will bow before me;
every tongue will confess to God.’”
12 So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God.
God is the Lord of the dead believers and the living believers. Jesus did not die just to be Saviour, He died to be Lord. You cannot believe in Him as Saviour without also submitting to His Lordship. The two are inseparable. I used to think you could. I used describe some Christians I know as people who would acknowledge Christ as their Saviour but they would not submit to His Lordship in their daily lives - they were not "victorious Christians". If we are not submitting to His Lordship, I'd now say there is an extremely likely possibility that we've never actually accepted His as our Saviour either. We may say we have, we may even believe we have - but the reality is, if we have not accepted Him as our Lord, He has not saved us.
God is the only One with the right to judge. As as surely as the Lord lives, that judgement day is coming.
And again, we're not talking about sin here. We're talking about matters of preference - drinking alcohol in moderation, how long women's/men's hair should be, whether we can eat pork or not, etc, etc.
When the believer's motive is to please and honour God by doing what they believe is right, they need to do that, and we need to not judge them for doing so. It's really that simple.
BUT - don't use that as an excuse not to confront over sin. This is not talking about sin, but about non-moral, preferential areas.
God receives us.
God is able to sustain us.
God alone is judge.
We are to love one another, encourage each other and build each other up.
Tomorrow's scripture focus: Romans 14:13-18
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