Are you unmindful or actually ignorant [of the fact] that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repent (to change your mind and inner man to accept God’s will)? – Romans 2:4, AMP

When we sin and “get away with it,” we can come to the false conclusion that God doesn’t really mind that we are doing what we are doing.  We are especially susceptible to this kind of thinking with regard to the “little sins” of life, and we can easily come to behave as if our sinful actions are exempt from the requirements of God’s holiness.

The reason, however, that God sometimes allows us to “get away” with our sins isn’t because He doesn’t care about them. It is because He cares about us.  In Romans 2:4 (AMP), the Apostle Paul teaches that when God holds off on punishing us for our sins, He does so in the hope that His kindness will lead us to repent (which means to refuse to love our sin anymore and, instead, to choose to love His will for our lives).  God wants us to come around to His way of thinking on our own, and He mercifully allows us to “get away with our sin” so that we can learn, through experience, just how destructive and unprofitable sin can be.

We should not fool ourselves, however. Even though God may choose to give us time to realize the stupidity of our sin and to repent of it, He will still hold us accountable for our poor choices.  As Paul writes to the Roman Christians in Romans 2: 5, 6 (AMP)

5 But by your callous stubbornness and impenitence of heart you are storing up wrath and indignation for yourself on the day of wrath and indignation, when God’s righteous judgment (just doom) will be revealed.

6 For He will render to every man according to his works [justly, as his deeds deserve]:

These verses, along with 1 Corinthians 3:11-15, teach us that even though born-again Christians are guaranteed to spend eternity in Heaven, born-again Christians will be judged and rewarded according to both their good works and their bad works.

If you’ve been engaging in sin that God has seemingly let you “get away with,” don’t be fooled. You are not getting away with anything. He is keeping a record of your actions in Heaven, but He hasn’t yet put the hammer down on you for your sin because He wants you to come to His way of thinking on your own.  If you don’t come around on your own, however, His patience will someday reach its limit. When that happens, the spiritual spanking you thought God wouldn’t give will indeed come upon you.

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