26A23.     Ezekiel 18:25-28.    When the Lord calls us before his judgment seat, how do we stand in the eyes of the Lord?  We cannot rest on the laurels of the many good deeds we have done but rather what is our moral, spiritual stance at the moment of judgment.  In other words, judgment is not a ledger or balance sheet of additions and subtractions but the person we have become to present to the Lord at the moment of judgement.

Matthew 21:28-32.   The contrast is between an empty ‘yes’ that is without its corresponding action AND a rejecting ‘no’ that is followed by an action that in turn rejects the ‘no’ and does God’s will.  We are saved or lost by the person we really are and the life we actually live and not by what we say or by what we would like to think we are.  The chief priests and elders who knew the will of God but did not obey it did not enter the kingdom of God; the tax collectors and prostitutes did.  The Jewish religious authorities thought of themselves as the epitome of righteousness and of the tax collectors and prostitutes as the scum of society.

Philippians 2:1-11.   “Have in you the same attitude that is also in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God,” “he emptied himself,” “he humbled himself, becoming obedient  to the point of death, even death on a cross.  Because of this, God greatly exalted him.”  The cross we are called to bear is to give up our will by surrendering ourselves to God’s Will so to bring to fulfillment the image and likeness of God in which we were first created.