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Safeguard Your Christian HopeChoosing the Best Way of Life
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“Certainly if, after having escaped from the defilements of the world by an accurate knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they get involved again with these very things and are overcome, the final conditions have become worse for them than the first.
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Safeguard Your Christian HopeChoosing the Best Way of Life
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33. (a) What changes may a person make upon coming to a knowledge of the truth? (b) Why is a return to the ways of the world a very serious matter?
33 Why could the apostle Peter say this? Once a person gains accurate knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, he begins to see the need for making changes. He may give up heavy drinking, a life of immorality, gambling and other vices. By cleaning himself up to conform to what is expected of a disciple of Jesus Christ, the individual flees or escapes from the “defilements of the world,” from practices that he has come to know as being divinely disapproved. However, on again becoming entangled in God-dishonoring practices, he deliberately throws aside what he knows to be right. His knowledge of Jesus Christ and his Bible-trained conscience initially served as a restraint against wrong conduct. When breaking free from that wholesome restraint, he may well become even worse than before he took up the way of Christian discipleship. He may go beyond what men do who have no knowledge of the path of righteousness. This is because his conscience has become contaminated, or even seared—like dead tissue. (Compare 1 Timothy 4:2.)
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