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A Lot of Joy from God!

Oleksandr Zhabenko

🇬🇧 Glory be to Jesus Christ! 🌞

Dedicated to Emma Kok.

(Romans I, 18-27)

Romans I, 21 – ‘εματαιωθησαν’ – ‘emataiothesan’ - from ‘ματαιοω’ – ‘mataioo’ – ‘to be futile, foolish, vain’.

Romans I, 22 – ‘εμωρανθησαν’ – ‘emoranthesan’ – from ‘μωραινω’ - ‘moraino’ – ‘to become foolish; to lose taste’.

He wrote about the same thoughts of Paul in other works:
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I wrote about what happened to the Gentiles who, instead of knowing God, gave themselves to the service of creation in the work here:
https://oleksandr-zhabenko.github.io/uk/Homosexuality1.html

As for the Revelation of God, I will say that it is necessary to cognise God. But it is important that God gave it to people.

Romans I, 20 is well explained, in particular in the works:
19052023.html

https://www.facebook.com/Oleksandr.S.Zhabenko/

It is important to emphasise that there is a certain distance between ceasing to seek God and giving in to passions and sins. So, not everyone who stopped seeking God immediately became very sinful, but on the other hand, all such people were influenced by this tendency to decay.

Paul means that even if it is difficult for a person to recognise God’s work in what is happening in his or her life, he or she is nevertheless completely free to seek that work, and nothing should stand in the way. And this is what everyone needs to do. More about this freedom can be found in the article here, as well as in the sources cited there:
https://sites.google.com/view/rozdumy23/home/isnuvanna-piznaemo-virou

(Matthew V, 20-26)

Matthew V, 24 – ‘εμπροσθεν’ – ‘emprosthen’ – in front of the face, before.

The reading is about harmlessness, meekness, gentleness as a Christian virtue.

It is directly related to yesterday’s and the day before yesterday’s readings:
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Anger makes a person a participant in God’s judgement (but not a judge there!), insulting someone makes him/her a subject of God’s judgement or the Highest Court (in the Church it is the judgement of the Ecumenical Council), prideful contempt makes a prideful and arrogant person spiritually dead. The degrees of falling into the sin of anger, wrath, condemnation and resentment, harassment, bullying, contempt, and others are clearly visible. Often translations add the word in vain, but it is not in the original.

Someone might say: Then how do you deal with other people’s sins?. We can say: the same way as God struggles. Righteously. Do not sin yourself and be a good example in this. If you see someone really hurting another, do not hurt that another person, but do good, which may mean protecting them. Similarly, defenders, particularly in Ukraine, do good when they protect civilians from attack by foreigners. But if the defenders were filled with rage, prideful disdain, and the like, they would be guilty according to the words of the Gospel.

Hence the need to be at peace whenever possible, if it depends on you, as Paul says in his Epistles.

Forerunners:
(2 Corinthians IV, 6-15; Matthew XI, 2-15)
See here:
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Matthew XI, 6 – ‘εμοι’ – ‘emoi’ – ‘Me’.

Matthew XI, 8 – ‘ημφιεσμενον’ – ‘emphiesmenon’ – ‘clothed’ – past tense of ‘αμφιεννυμι’ – ‘ampiennumi’ – ‘to be clothed’.

Matthew XI, 10 – εμπροσθεν – emprosthen – before the face, before.

Glory be to Thee, our God, glory be to Thee!

Source:
https://www.facebook.com/Oleksandr.S.Zhabenko/

List of Used Sources