Proverbs 21:8,16,21,25,26 NASB1995
“8 The way of a guilty man is crooked,
But as for the pure, his conduct is upright.
16 A man who wanders from the way of understanding
Will rest in the assembly of the dead.
21 He who pursues righteousness and loyalty
Finds life, righteousness and honor.
25 The desire of the sluggard puts him to death,
For his hands refuse to work;
26 All day long he is craving,
While the righteous gives and does not hold back.”
The Scriptures, both in the Old Testament and in the New, make a clear distinction between the righteous and the unrighteous, and between the saved and the unsaved. And it isn’t that one person made a profession of faith in Jesus Christ and the other did not. It is that one person, by God-gifted and God-persuaded faith in Jesus Christ died with Christ to sin, and is now walking (in conduct) in obedience to our Lord’s commands, by the Spirit, and the other has continued in habitual sin, and not in obeying God.
But this doesn’t make us perfect. It does not mean that we will never sin, or that we will never fail to be who God wants us to be, but that sin should no longer be our practice (addiction), and obedience to God should be what we practice, by his grace. For Jesus Christ gave his life up for us on that cross to put our sins to death with him so that by faith in him we will now die to sin and follow him in obedience to his commands, so that we will now serve him with our lives and no longer our flesh – all in the power of God within us.
So, we often find these comparisons between the righteous and the unrighteous, and the saved and the unsaved, in the Scriptures. And we need to pay close attention to what they teach us. For many people today are buying into the lies of the enemy, and they are being convinced that if they make a verbal profession of faith in Jesus Christ that now all their sins are forgiven and heaven is guaranteed them when they die, but regardless of how they live. But the Scriptures teach the opposite of that. Please know!
So, one who is a genuine follower of Jesus Christ should be one who is pure and upright in conduct, who lives to please the Lord and not the sinful flesh. They should be those who are walking in fellowship with the Lord, eager to do what is pleasing to the Lord, and not looking for loopholes to excuse away what they know is sinful behavior. They should be those who pursue righteousness and what is godly, and who are loyal to the Lord and to his word. Obedience to God should not be a drudgery, but their heart’s desire.
Yet we have many people today who give lip service to the Lord who are still deliberately and habitually walking in the ways of their sinful flesh. Their hearts never changed. Their desires never changed. They said the “magic words” to “get saved,” but their actions did not follow suit. They are those who deliberately wander from the right way in order to feed the sinful desires of their flesh, some of whom then give lip service to God to give an impression of all goodness, while they lie and cheat, and do their evil.
But Jesus Christ taught that to come to him we must deny self, take up our cross daily (die daily to sin), and follow (obey) him. For if we hold on to living in sin and for self, we will lose our lives for eternity. But if we deny self, die daily to sin, by the Spirit, and we walk in obedience to our Lord and to his commands, in his power, then we have eternal life with God. For not everyone who calls him “Lord” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one DOING (obeying) the will of God (see Luke 9:23-26; Matthew 7:21-23).
For by God-gifted faith in Jesus Christ, which is not of our own doing, we are crucified with Christ in death to sin and raised with Christ to walk in newness of life in him, no longer to live as slaves to sin but as slaves to righteousness in walks of obedience to God’s commands. We are no longer to permit sin to reign in our mortal bodies to make us obey its desires. For if sin is what we obey, it results in death. But if obedience to God is what we obey, it results in sanctification, and its end is eternal life with God (see Romans 6:1-23).
[Matthew 7:13-14,21-23; Luke 9:23-26; Romans 6:1-23; Romans 8:1-14; Galatians 5:16-24; Ephesians 2:8-10; Ephesians 4:17-32; Ephesians 5:3-6; Titus 2:11-14; 1 John 1:1-10; 1 John 2:1-6; 1 John 3:4-10; Acts 26:18]
So, please know and live the truth. For your eternity depends on it.
The Heart of Man
Based off Matt. 15:1-20; Mk. 7:1-23
An Original Work / April 4, 2012
Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love
Listen to me ev’ryone and
Understand this teaching of Christ:
Why do you break the commands
Of God for the sake of tradition?
When you follow the ways of man,
And don’t obey the words of Christ,
You nullify the words of God,
And you hold to the ways of man.
What comes out of a man’s mouth is
What makes him unclean and dirty.
The things that come out of the mouth
Come from the heart, from within him.
The heart of man is so sinful;
From his nature, out comes evil:
Lying, cursing, greed and malice,
Lust and lewdness, deceit, slander.
Jesus calls us to obey him;
Turn from our sins; follow His ways.
Yet, his people honor him with their lips,
but their hearts not with Him.
Their worship of God is in vain.
Their teachings are rules taught by man.
Jesus calls us; gently leads us
To return and follow His truth.
The Desire of The Sluggard
An Original Work / February 6, 2026
Christ’s Free Servant, Sue J Love
Walking Wounded 