Matthew 24:48–51

The word is against leaders who spend their time in luxuries. For he named the careless teacher a bad and wicked slave, who, because the judge is absent and not seen through long-suffering, strikes those under his hand bitterly and mixes with flesh-lovers. For those who sin sin as if the judge were not present and as if they were not reckoning on judgment. By some of them being struck he shows those harmed in soul by the leaders’ luxury, as the apostle says: “Thus sinning against the brothers and striking their weak conscience.” So he threatens those living in luxury with undergoing the last things. For he splits him and divides him from himself with pains by his living word — from the Spirit united to him in the age, that is, the divine gift. Those who pretend to think right things but do not think as they ought, wearing virtue only by outward shape, will be cut in two on the fearful day of judgment, which is lasting alienation from the Spirit. For now, even if it has not been mixed into the unworthy, it somehow seems present to those once sealed, awaiting the salvation that comes from their turning. Then it will be cut off from the whole soul that profaned its gift, and his portion will be set with the hypocrites. By “hypocrites” he means those who try to teach what is right, yet through what they do harm the disciples more. So, he says, for those who will not use in the present life as they ought the ministry entrusted to them by the Lord, he will not only add nothing further, but taking away the participation in the Spirit already come to be in them — which they obtained when appointed to church ministry — he will thus hand them over to punishment. For it is not possible for someone to be handed over to punishment together with the Spirit; he does not hint a bodily cut, but the stripping of the Spirit’s adoption. So they are punished for what they were laughing at, and they will “gnash their teeth,” reckoning the end of the pain and the excess of the