“Here is my servant, the one I support. He is the one I chose, and I am pleased with him. I have put my Spirit upon him, and he will bring justice to all nations.
“But suppose good people stop doing good and do wrong and do the same hateful things the wicked do. Will they live? All their good acts will be forgotten, because they became unfaithful. They have sinned, so they will die because of their sins.
“Again, those who do right may turn away from doing good and do evil. If I make something bad happen to them, they will die. Because you have not warned them, they will die because of their sin, and the good they did will not be remembered. But I will hold you responsible for their deaths.
If I tell good people, ‘You will surely live,’ they might think they have done enough good and then do evil. Then none of the good things they did will be remembered. They will die because of the evil they have done.
“I wish one of you would close the Temple doors so that you would not light useless fires on my altar! I am not pleased with you and will not accept your gifts,” says the Lord All-Powerful.
“Here is my servant whom I have chosen. I love him, and I am pleased with him. I will put my Spirit upon him, and he will tell of my justice to all people.
But he does not let the teaching go deep into his life, so he keeps it only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the teaching he accepted, he quickly gives up.
The Good News shows how God makes people right with himself—that it begins and ends with faith. As the Scripture says, “But those who are right with God will live by faith.”
These enemies of Christ were in our fellowship, but they left us. They never really belonged to us; if they had been a part of us, they would have stayed with us. But they left, and this shows that none of them really belonged to us.