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(1 Thess. 4:1–12; Luke 11:42–46) The Lord begins the reproach to His contemporaries with the fact that they “are negligent about the judgment and love of God.” The drying up of truth and love is the root of all disorder both in society and in every person. It itself comes from the predominance of pride or selfishness. When selfishness takes root in the heart, a whole horde of passions breeds in it. It itself strikes truth and love, which require self-sacrifice, and passions, they generated, drive out all other virtues. And a person, due to the structure of his heart, becomes unfit for anything truly good. He can still give “a tithe of mint, rue and all kinds of vegetables,” but he does not find the courage to do anything more significant. This does not mean that his external behavior is ugly. No, it is brightened up in every possible way by decency, only in himself. “like hidden tombs, over which people walk and do not know it” (Luke 11:44). The beginning of self-correction is the beginning of the emergence of self-sacrifice in the heart, after which righteousness and love are restored, and from them then all other virtues begin to revive one after another. In terms of the structure of his heart, a person then becomes handsome in the eyes of God, although to people, on the outside, he may sometimes seem not entirely attractive. But human judgment is not an important matter, as long as God’s judgment is not against us. You might be interested in: