Q&A Home > J > Our Lord Jesus Christ > Accepting Him

Why are some people righteous and some aren’t? What is it inside man that makes him either responsive or unresponsive to God’s Word, teachings and precepts?

God gives every single person the chance to know Him.  God ‘does not wish for the death of the sinner, but that he should return and live.’ It all comes down to the subject of "choice". It is up to our own free will to accept or reject the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not whoever receives the Holy Spirit; because some people receive the Holy Spirit, but do not allow Him to bring about changes in their lives.  St. Paul warned us "Do not quench the Spirit" (1 Thes 5:19). Thus we pray in the Third Hour of the Agpeya prayers  ‘Your Holy Spirit, O Lord whom You sent forth upon Your Holy disciples and honored apostles in the Third Hour, do not take away from us, O Good One, but renew Him within us’.

Those who reject the Lord think they know better. "There is a way that seems right to a man, But its end is the way of death" (Prov 14:12).  Such people are usually wise in their own eyes "Do not be wise in your own eyes; Fear the LORD and depart from evil" (Prov 3:7). "For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in" (Rom 11:25). It is pride, and lack of wisdom that lead a person, by his own choice, to reject our Lord.