But I'm A Good Person

 For some, learning about the true basis of Christianity raises more questions. It’s easier to accept the misconceptions about Christianity; they fit into our comfort zone. We like the idea that some of us are better than others. We like to think of ourselves as good people, earning the right to heaven. We’ve seen free gifts abused by people, like lottery winners who lose all the money by the end of the first year.  We don’t like to see bad people get set free. This true Christianity, based on grace and not merit, doesn’t make any sense.

If all we need to do is accept the free gift – then anyone can become a Christian, even a bad person? Yes, that’s the basis of Christianity. Our problem comes in our view of good versus bad. Upon what do we base our evaluation? What makes a person “good” and another “bad”?  Who sets the standard for that? Who determines the qualifications for good or bad? If not a fair and unbiased God, who else do we trust to decide?

And God has decided. He declares “all have sinned and fall short.” (Romans 3:23) There are no good people. “There is no one righteous, not even one” (Romans 3:10) “All our righteousness (goodness) is as filthy rags”(Isaiah 64:6). Even our best falls short of God’s standard. Knowing that, I don’t want to be judged on my own strengths, because I’d always fail. Christianity isn’t based on doing good or who does the most good. If we were to be judged by that standard, we’d never see heaven.

Within this good/bad way of thinking, we’ve set up a hierarchy of goodness and badness, believing that the higher our good the better off we are. Certainly different behaviors have different consequences within our human point of view. Murder has more consequence than anger or even theft. Unfortunately, from God’s point of view, this hierarchy is nonexistent. The concepts of doing “more good than bad” or “at least I haven’t done that” do not figure in to God’s forgiveness. Whether we’ve murdered someone, or thought about it, or been angry enough to do so are all equally sin in God’s view. Drug addict and goody two shoes are equally sinners in God’s sight.

But that’s not fair!! It is if you see sin as God sees it. We are all born with a sin nature – broken. And that nature works through us all. It’s the nature, not the results of it, that sets the stage. We all live out that nature differently, some of us heroes and some of us villains. But heroes can be selfish and prideful. It’s the nature that needs purging for us to be free from sin. We can’t purge our own nature. Whether our nature shows in a “basically good” person or a “wretchedly bad” person, both people have a sin nature, and neither can meet the standard of goodness God demands. 

I think we can all see that, but we still hold on to our hierarchy. We want to be better than. We pride ourselves in being better than. And too many times we convince ourselves that we don’t need a savior because we are already saved by our assumed goodness. Unfortunately, none of us are good enough. And pride is a sin. We can’t ever meet God’s standard; we all fail because, regardless of where we place ourselves on the man-made hierarchy, we still sin. If “all have sinned” that means even the best of us missed God’s mark.

Being a Christian is based on God’s forgiveness of our sin nature and that nature’s fruit. Jesus paid God’s price for all sin, past, present and future. That includes your sin and mine. When God looks at us, He doesn’t see a “good” or “bad” person. He sees people who accepted His gift of forgiveness or those who haven’t yet. Both groups are still sinners, but one group has forgiveness, not based on their own merit, but based on Jesus’ having paid the price for all of us. What we do or don’t do, how good or how bad we are, none of that matters; it’s what we do with God’s gift.

If all we need do is accept this free gift, then I can go about my business and not worry about my thoughts or actions any more, right? If I’m already forgiven, and my sin is no longer an issue, what is to stop me from “doing bad” in the future (or keep doing bad)? I’m already forgiven, right? If the burden is no longer on me, I can do anything I want now.

Technically, maybe so. But why? If I truly understand the weight of my sin and my need for a savior, I will want to have change in my life. I will want to feel the ease of the burden. I will want to be better. But not better on my own strength (which was the problem in the first place), but to learn to rely on God to work out His goodness through me. It's the vine and the branches, once connected the vine's energy and life can now flow through me. I can be better than any form of human goodness, when I give control of my life to God. This is not a once for all like our forgiveness. Letting God control and live out His goodness through me is a day by day, all of life process until I reach heaven.

If I have a cavalier attitude about sin (what does it matter if I sin or not), then I am showing I don’t understand the cost of my forgiveness. In the story of the woman anointing Jesus’ feet with her tears and the judging Pharisee Simon’s attitude about her and Jesus’ acceptance of her – remember, Jesus says the one who loves most is the one forgiven the most.  It’s not that from God’s perspective we are forgiven more or less than others – remember sin is sin, no hierarchy – but from our perspective, if we don’t think we have much sin to forgive, we will love the Forgiver less.  I need to understand the magnitude of my sin’s offense. Even if there had only been me to forgive, it would have required the penalty be paid by someone else. How do I honor that payment, that sacrifice? By not continuing to act like nothing has change.

Part of that change is a growing relationship with God. God’s whole purpose in paying for our sin was to renew relationship. He wants a relationship with me. He came and died in my place in order to make that happen. Why would I want to throw that in His face? Knowing I’ve been forgiven makes me want to come in to deeper and deeper relationship with Him. That doesn’t come by my behaving like He isn’t in my life, but by knowing He is very much involved in all I say and do. I want to honor Him with my life. And I do so by giving Him the controls and allowing Him to create in me the goodness and behavior I am incapable of doing on my own, due to my nature.

All of this wreaks havoc with our biases – we view people by their goodness or their badness, and if all are forgiven, what does that do to my criteria of good and bad? We measure ourselves by a good/bad meter as well. We also have this view that Christians should somehow be perfect, sinless creatures, and since we quickly see that they are not, we assume, if we aren’t one, that Christianity is a sham, or if we are one, we must be a failure. But we are looking at the wrong things. We carry our sin nature with us to the grave. But God isn’t judging us any more by that nature. We have been forgiven, and in that forgiveness, the power of sin over us is tremendously weakened. We can experience moments in life free from those chains.

The book of I John talks about how we can walk in the light or in darkness, it’s a choice. We can live by God’s power or our own. When we choose to walk in the dark, we lose our connection with God (not our salvation, but our relational experience). We can regain that with confession of where we veered off, and a renewal of our connections. This becomes our daily, moment by moment experience. While we are in the light, controlled by God’s Spirit, we can’t sin. We only produce the Spirit’s fruit. When we step back into the darkness, we can only produce our own fruit- and the fruit of a sin nature is sin, regardless of how spiffed up it looks.

Because I understand the cost of my forgiveness, and the enormity of God’s love for me to purchase my forgiveness, I don’t want to sin. I don’t want my nature to be in control, even though it can still be, and I do still sin. I want more and more of my life to be under God’s control so that I can bring Him glory and thanks for all He’s done for me. I want a relationship with God. I want to walk in light. Having experienced moments in fellowship with God, I want more. Do I still sin, I absolutely still do. It’s in my nature. I am learning to trust in and rely on God more. Some days I succeed and some days I fail. Such is the life of a sinner saved by God’s grace.

More on Misconceptions

 I’ve written a lot about misconceptions of Christianity. People assume it’s about doing and not doing, following a set of rules, being good. Since we all fail at “being good” at some point or another, Christianity is viewed as, at best, fake or weak, and, at worst, a lie. My nephew would be quick to point out all the sexual abuses perpetrated by religious leaders. Once he brought up something he’d read about Ted Bundy becoming a Christian right before his execution. My nephew wanted no part in a belief that would allow someone as awful as Ted Bundy into its ranks.

You’ve probably heard all the complaints about Christian hypocrisy dating back to the Crusades. Christians are every bit as messed up and broken as everyone else. We may not be a sexual predator, or a serial killer, but we all have our own struggles with being consistently what we think of as “good”. We’ve spoken harsh, hurtful words. We’ve been green with envy. We have bullied, laughed at, jumped on those who have done the same to us. We’ve broken hearts. We’ve lied. We may even have hated. We have all done at least one bad thing in our life, and I’ll wager we’ve done a lot more than one. And we’ve done many of those things since becoming a Christian.

So yes, Christians do bad things, sometimes very bad things. The main difference between a Christian and someone who's not - the Christian has accepted God's gift. Period.

This is good news, we don’t have to be “good” to be a Christian. We don’t even have to do or not do things to be a Christian. All we need to do is accept God’s free gift of grace. There are no other hoops to jump through, no tests to pass and no other work to be done. 

Don’t get me wrong. God does hate all sin. Sin always bears consequences and the biggest consequence is separation from God. Sin keeps us from having a relationship with our Creator. Sin demands payment, a wage, and the Bible tells us that wage is death, our death, physically but most importantly, spiritually. Yet God desired a relationship with us, and through Jesus’ dying in our place, we can have that relationship. He wanted that relationship so much He paid the price of sin for us. When Jesus died, as crazy as it sounds, He took on Himself the sin of the entire world, past, present and future. God accepted His sacrifice. The resurrection of Jesus proves this acceptance. And the issue of sin becomes moot. All sin was forgiven on the cross – ALL. The issue isn’t what good things we do or don’t do, or even what bad things we do or don’t do. The issue is what will you do with the gift God has given you?  Accept or reject, no other work is demanded. God did all the work for us.

Once the gift is accepted, there should come some changes, but not of our own accord. As we learn to give more and more of our lives to God, His Spirit in us will help us live a better life. We can bear the fruit of the Sprit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness and self-control. Those are indeed good things. Will we still sin? Yes. We still have that nature in us, so we can still sin – and in sinning do some pretty awful things. But those awful things have already been forgiven.

Doesn’t that give us the license then to just go out and sin more? If it’s all forgiven, who cares, free pass to heaven and all?  A true believer would care a lot. We care because we understand what that forgiveness cost, the amount of love given us by God to free us from sin. That understanding compels us to do better. It also helps us see we cannot do better on our own ability, we need to turn the control of our life over to God to create in and through us what we cannot do on our own. Sin is that powerful, left unchecked, even in a believer’s life, horrible things can result. We need to hand over the keys to God, and let Him control our life. It doesn’t happen all at once, but the more we allow God to rule in our life, the less sin becomes an issue.

Regardless, sin, the broken bad stuff we do, is not what keeps us from being a Christian. And, if we could be “good”, being good doesn’t make us a Christian. What makes a Christian is acceptance of Jesus’ sacrifice in our place. If we put our faith and trust in what Jesus did for us, we are a Christian. You might think, that’s too easy. But is it?  First of all it requires admission that we need saving. That's not very easy. We think we haven't done anything that bad to require that kind of saving. Yet the Bible says we have all sinned and fall short of what God requires. Even the best of us need saving. 

Then comes the issue of control. Most of us don’t want to give our lives to anything or anyone else. We want to have total control. By accepting God’s gift of forgiveness, we are at the same time admitting we can’t save ourselves, we need a savior. All the control we think we have and want doesn’t really exist. The Bible says we are “slaves” to sin. The only freedom comes when we let go of trying to save and fix ourselves and accept the work God has already done through Jesus.

When people say, “I think I’m a Christian.” “I hope I’m a Christian.” “I’m trying to be a Christian.” That isn’t Christianity. We either are or are not a Christian – no thinking, hoping or trying. It’s a relationship, like a marriage. We either are or are not married. Or a status like citizenship, we either are or are not a citizen. We either are or are not a Christian. It’s not something we keep working for. It’s not something we need to hope for. If we place our trust in God and accept His gift of forgiveness, we are in, we are a Christian – no need to hope, wish, work for or wonder any longer. You are a Christian.

Paul said, “I know whom I have believed and am persuaded (convinced) that He is able to keep (guard) what I’ve entrusted to Him (my life) until that day (I reach Heaven or He returns).” II Timothy 1:12 

I know and am persuaded – rather than I do, try, fail and try again. God is able. It’s His work and His gift and He is able.