Virtues and Vices Pt B
As listed in Virtues and Vices Pt A, the seven deadly sins are
lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride
The seven heavenly virtues are
chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness, and humility.
Everyone agrees that virtues are good and vices are bad. However, that is relatively meaningless unless everyone also agrees upon which behaviors are virtues and which behaviors are vices. Satan will be the first to tell you that virtues are good and vices are bad. Many assume that Satan never goes to church; whereas Satan sits in the first pew and preaches from the same pulpit. Evil cannot exist unless there is good; and good cannot exist unless there is evil. Without opposition, there is nothing, and everything would appear as lifeless. Satan’s job is not to change good to evil and evil to good. That is an impossible task that even God cannot do. Good is absolute and Evil is absolute. God is absolute good, and Satan is absolute evil. That can never change, else God is a changeable being. If God were changeable, he would cease to be God. For that matter if Satan were changeable, he would cease to be Satan. Satan is Satan because he is absolute evil and will never change. By his own will he is incapable of change.
For example, Paul tells us
“That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us.” (Hebrews 6:18)
In the same way John tells us.
“Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.” (John 8:44)
Lying is such a serious sin, John the Revelator informs us,
“But the fearful, and the unbelieving, and the abominable, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolators, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.” (Revelation 2:8)
All virtues are absolute and cannot be changed by man through common consent. Government may determine what is legal and what is illegal, but government cannot determine what is good and what is evil, what is moral and what is immoral, what is a virtue and what is a vice. That is one of the great misconception of our day, that by legalizing a behavior, an act, a substance, an operation, a performance, a custom, a practice or a principle, it makes it somehow right or acceptable to society or to God. Government may legalize sin, but government cannot alter the consequences of sin beyond the pitiful powers of the fluctuating courts. The laws of nature and the laws of God are absolute, governed as they are by the law of justice and are not affected by the courts of the land. The law may release a prisoner from jail or from a fine or from some legal judgment, but a court cannot release a prisoner from the law of justice or from the bonds of his own captivity which are far worse than the revolving doors of man’s puny prisons.
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