Good morning. Behold then the kindness and severity of God;
to those who fell, severity, but to you, God‘s kindness, if you continue in His
kindness; otherwise you also will be cut off. Of course that would not sit well
with today’s culture. “how could God be so cruel?“ And they also, if they do
not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God is able to graft
them in again. This could make some Gentile believers jealous. After all the
Jews rejected Jesus; why should they get another chance? For if you were cut off
from what is by nature a wild Olive tree, and were grafted contrary to nature
into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these who are the natural
branches be grafted into their own olive tree? For I do not want you, brethren,
to be uninformed of this mystery – that a partial hardening has happened to
Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; and so all Israel will
be saved. If this hardening had not happened, where would we be? It sounds like
there’s going to come a point in time when the hardening will be done away
with, and all Israel will accept Jesus as Lord. Father go with the reader.
During this very busy day, help him/her to keep his/her eyes on You and not on
all of the distractions going on at work and in his/her life.
Therefore I exhort you, be imitators of me
Good morning. Paul then gives a list of a lot of things that he has gone through as an apostle. I do not write these things to shame you, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For if you were to have countless tutors in Christ, yet you would not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. There could be many people that you listen to either in church or through the Internet or other means; but there was only one person (as a general rule it was a person) that lead you to Christ. Therefore I exhort you, be imitators of me. He was saying that just like a child imitates his or her father, they were to imitate him. He says that again seven chapters later. Since it is easy to forget some things about people we have not seen in a while, Paul says that he sent Timothy to them to remind them of his ways which are in Christ, just as he taught everywhere in every church. Some have become arrogant, as though I were not coming to you. I shall find ou...
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