I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I wasn’t making that statement about myself, lest you should think I’m entirely lacking in humility. Although, that statement, “I’m a really good person”, I think a lot of us have made at some point in our lives. And even if we haven’t directly spoken it, we may have thought it to ourselves.
No doubt, most of us like to believe we are good people. And many of us are to the extent that we want to do what’s right. Most of the time when we tell ourselves that we are a good person, it’s after we have done some truly magnanimous act. We have reached out to someone, or extended friendship to another, or sacrificed something of ourselves for someone else’s benefit. Many people volunteer and give of themselves for the benefit of the less fortunate, or their community at large. And it’s good that many of us do those things. Where would our world be without the pillars of our communities who stepped out to lend a helping hand to better society as a whole? Many people volunteer with things like the Peace Corp or practice medicine in a poor nation because they have a burning desire to right the wrongs in life. They see the injustices of society and are compelled to take action and have a positive impact in other’s lives. And that’s a commendable thing.
But let me ask you this question: Can this also be a dangerous thing? Are these acts purely good? Or can it be a cover for our real condition? One thing we often miss is that we can do a lot of good things for a lot of the wrong reasons. Our outward acts aren’t necessarily a reflection of our heart. We see these types of things every day. It’s displayed when a wealthy businessman gives a large endowment to a university, but the intent is to only improve his own public image, or have a building named in his honor. He may even do it just to feel better about himself. That’s not to say that his gift doesn’t benefit a lot of people. I’m sure it does. But what does that act do for the wealthy businessman, other than provide a smokescreen for the true condition of his heart. Doing a lot of good things and acting in good ways can sometimes have a negative effect on us.
Then there are people who are truly trying to do good, with the best of intentions. Yet they find themselves hopelessly falling short. How do you explain the likes of Martin Luther, the father of the Reformation? In his early days, he was known for self-punishment by beating himself, and freezing himself in the snow for actions that didn’t reconcile with his faith. I think most people would have called him a ‘good person’ in the worldly sense. So, why did even he feel like he didn’t measure up? The thing that we often miss is that we can do a lot of good without actually being good. So, how do we address this?
I will start out by saying this. It may be a bold, and also a confusing, statement to some. But here it is: When we come face-to-face with our own human depravity, we are in a really good place. I’ve become convinced that the greatest and most pervasive deception we face as people, and a society, is that we can truly be good in and of ourselves. Yet at the root of this deception, we make a grievous error in missing the fact that we have a sin problem that has to be dealt with.
AV Romans 3:10: “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:” This is a bold statement, and there’s no ambiguity about it. This pretty much puts us all in the same boat. So, we all have the same problem. None of us can rightly believe that we can be good in and of ourselves. We all need an outside intervention to resolve this issue in our lives. It can’t come from us.
AV Colossians 3:23: “And whatsoever ye do, do [it] heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men;” One reason that we can’t be good in our own strength is because the focus never gets taken off of us. As long as the focus is still on us, we can never do what is truly good because the focus is never on that which is good. One thing this verse makes clear is that our focus should be on God. Whatever we do should be done with a focus on Him, not thinking of ourselves or other people’s perception of us. But how do we do this?
AV Luke 5:32: “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” Jesus made clear the reason He came to this earth. He says here that He came to call sinners to repentance, not the righteous. What did He mean by this? Well, he wasn’t saying that there were some people who were righteous. What He was saying is that there were some people who thought they were righteous. He was speaking of the likes of the Pharisees and Scribes—the religious people. These were the people who gloried in their own religious acts. But Jesus rightly described their true condition in another place in Matthew 23:27: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead [men’s] bones, and of all uncleanness.” Jesus just exposed the true condition of someone doing outward acts with no inner change taking place. And by repentance He means to confess and then turn, or go in the other direction, from sin in their lives.
Who are the most affected ones? Men above the age of 45 get the effects as the body is unable to http://appalachianmagazine.com/2016/10/27/kentucky-police-arrest-church-treasurer/ order viagra remove the drug in time. They include both in-car training and classroom training to provide both theoretical and practical experience to learners. canada viagra During this time, the key ingredient of musli power xtra is safed musli, the nature’s solution for appalachianmagazine.com purchase generic cialis your needs and budget. Whenever there is health issue, people are advised http://appalachianmagazine.com/2019/03/21/pocketknife-superstitions-never-fold-a-knife-someone-else-opened/ cost levitra lowest to buy drugs online because it is the convenient way to treat the ED. AV Romans 7:24: “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Even the great Apostle Paul realized the struggle we have with the flesh. The great thing is that he recognized it. He was like Martin Luther in that he came face-to-face with this reality. But how did they both deal with it?
AV 1 John 1:9: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us [our] sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” The reality of our situation requires for us to have a change in our hearts. We need a heart transplant. Because when we come to God through Jesus, confess our sins, and repent, He gives us that new heart. This is known as being born again. And Paul shows us that we still fight against sin and our flesh once we are saved. But as we grow and learn to live according to our new heart, we gain victory over these things. And this is when our outward acts of good become a true reflection of our inner hearts.
AV Romans 3:10: “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:”
AV Colossians 3:23: “And whatsoever ye do, do [it] heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men;”
AV Luke 5:32: “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
Matthew 23:27: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead [men’s] bones, and of all uncleanness.”
AV Romans 7:24: “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”
AV 1 John 1:9: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us [our] sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”