![]() I have a friend who has been dealing with doubts about Christ for several reasons I won't go into detail in at the spot. Their doubts come from the fact that this person grew up in a secular home with a familiar sentiment, which is that "people are basically good". This friend believes that unbelievers are "good people". Because of this belief in "good people", my friend does not want to believe that if an unbeliever dies, they will be punished by God eternally in Hell. The Bible has a lot to say on this topic of whether there is such a thing as a “good person” and what is considered a “good person”, of course, and I intend to get into that later on. My friend’s struggles come from the fact society tell us that if people do not commit abominable crimes such as pedophilia or rape or murder, they are basically good. In other words, if you have never stolen a car or robbed a bank, you are doing just fine by the world's standards. But you have to wonder at this sort of logic when you put it against the Bible’s logic and you have to ask yourself: if you have to do something really bad like: rape, murder, ruin someone’s life, etc. to be considered a bad person, doesn't that mean, by this logic, that all people are basically good? Mmhm, perhaps. This is what the Bible has to say about that: Matthew 19:16-17 (NIV) Just then a man came up to Jesus and asked, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life? “Why do you ask me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.” These verses by themselves answer three questions: 1. “Are human beings basically good?” 2. “Can good works get you into heaven?” 3. “Can good works (or the lack of ‘evil deeds’) make a person ‘good’?” When I read the verse, I could imagine Jesus saying “why do you ask me about what is good” as though it was pretty obvious that no one and no deed and no single thing in this world is good. Then he states that there is only One who is good. Here he is talking about God, the Father. Only He is righteous and perfect and good, right? But why, despite this, do we persist in the belief that human beings are basically good and therefore, do not deserve eternal punishment? Why do we have trouble grasping the fact that the unrighteous are, in fact, not righteous?
Isaiah 64:6 All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away. What a revealing verse. So in this verse, Isaiah states that our righteous deeds are like rags before God's feet because of our sins (our uncleanliness). Wow. Think about that. If you wanted to impress God, and you die to yourself right? You decide to move to India in order to work at an orphanage and evangelize to the kids and you join a leper colony, that would be pretty righteous by any person's standards. BUT according to Isaiah, it would not make you righteous before God because your “good” works compared to God and who HE is, are filthy, dirty rags! Wow! What a contrast. Think about that. Considering this verse and the way in which Jesus answered the man matter-of-fact-ly, stating that there is only One who is good, it makes a bit more sense. If a personal sacrifice to go to a foreign land to teach and minister to lepers is like rags at God's feet, this must mean that God has some really high standards and that God is so Holy that it is hard to comprehend. But even though those things are true, why would God reject our sincere efforts to please him with good works? This all has to do fundamentally with the fallen state of man (Romans 3:9-20, 3:23-26). However, this is still really hard to wrap our brains around and it’s really hard to believe. I’m not a bank robber and I’m sure you’re not one either. And ministering to the poor and disabled is probably the best thing a human can do. So what exactly does the Bible mean when it says that our righteous acts are like rags? Looking back at Jesus's words, he states that the rich man should keep the commandments; however, it is impossible to keep the commandments (Romans 3:20). The Commandments are only a mirror in which we hold up to see how we actually are. So considering the Ten Commandments, all of us are liars, (because we’ve lied at one point in our lives), most of us, if not all, are adulterers at heart (Matthew 5:28), we covet what we don’t have, we disrespect & disobey our parents, and according to God since we have broken his laws, we deserve punishment. But it goes a bit farther than that, if the laws of Moses (the 10 commandments) are a mirror, are we still good after realizing we've broken those laws? Is there such a thing as a good person? Once again, when you think about it according to the Ten Commandments, the answer is a resounding NO. This makes Jesus’s answer to the rich man, the matter-of-fact tone it had, all that more understandable. We are not good and we know that because the Ten Commandments (which we haven’t kept and cannot perfectly keep) show this to us. God is the only One who is good because he has never sinned. This brings us to the third question: do good works make a good person? Jeremiah 17:9 “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” One thing that my friend may not have considered is that God does not judge the way we judge. I mean this to say that, He sees what we do not see – I’m talking about the heart. We cannot know a person's heart and to an extent, we do not know our own as well. God sees the heart and He judges according to what He sees in the heart. We are not blind and we do see people's actions & outside appearances, however, we cannot read their inner thoughts, we cannot see what people do in privacy when no one is looking so how can we judge anyone? Are we truly apt to judge? When you look around the world and see the inequality, the disparities, the injustices all over the world, including the injustices in the American Judicial System, you see flaws, you see mistakes being made and people being executed for crimes that didn't commit or being sentenced to life in prison without much validation, you also see people being let off for committing serious crimes such as murder. I don't need to name examples because we can think of such people. But when you think about the fact that the people handing out the sentences, the Judges, are highly trained, the best of the best, (apparently). And you think about the jury, which is composed of everyday people, it really opens your eyes to how clearly we judge and how truly apt we are to hand down sentences. Me and you are not trained like the judges in the courtrooms and we are no better or worse than the jury. So if the American Judicial System, one of the best functioning systems, is the best we can do and we still make mistakes, how does that make you or me any better at judging one another or even family members or friends? We are imperfect, fallen. And by that definition, we are imperfect at all we do and cannot judge correctly 100% of the time. We are NOT apt to judge, and so when we say that so and so is a "good person" where do we get the evidence for that conclusion? From their good deeds? Do good deeds truly make a good person? You think about it and realize that good deeds do not show what is in a person's heart which is foundation on which God's judgement rests. The human heart. 1 Samuel 16:7 But the LORD said to Samuel, "Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart." God looks at the heart and He judges rightly, perfectly, and justly. He is the Just Judge, and He will judge all of us one day perfectly. Despite the fact that this realization can be a bit scary, let us keep in mind that Christ died for our sins and payed the price for our imperfections on the cross. We need not worry because although we know that we fall short of the glory of God because we have all broken God's laws and sinned (Romans 3:23). We also know that Jesus Christ justified us before God, something we could not do ourselves. He made us clean and pure by spilling his blood for us, and defeating death, a symbol of how we can also defeat sin (the poison in our lives) and come to life for eternity. By Christ's sacrifice and His free gift to us, we are now His children, and we serve Him by loving others. The best way to love others is to tell them about Christ and how He has saved us because we are not good, but through the cross, we are renewed and we are made righteous at last and we are forgiven by our Judge. The debt has been paid thus we do not need to pay it! Amen! This is the Gospel, the Good News of Christ Jesus. In Him, Evangeline
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