When Being Good is BAD!
Why even a good atheist is not right with God.
“Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is
that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God,
but not according to knowledge. For, being ignorant of the righteousness of
God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s
righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone
who believes.” (Romans
10:1–4 ESV)
Paul the apostle was Jewish. He was a profoundly devout orthodox Pharisee Jew. By the effectual intervention of God he
was brought to the gracious conclusion that whatever he had counted as good was
actually skubala (garbage,
manure). The best of his goodness
was far from pleasing to God. He had to come in faith to Jesus Christ. He had to come to the cross. Only Jesus is able to save. Jesus is the Savior.
In the passage above from Romans, Paul is expressing his
strong desire that his fellow Jews would find Jesus as he did. He admires their zeal, but notes that
the big problem is that they are going about it all wrong. They are rejecting the death of Jesus
Christ for them, and seeking to establish a righteousness of their own. Their attempts at being good were
actually an act of rebellion. They
were not submitting to God’s righteousness. Their being
”good” was bad.
One time these same religious people came up to Jesus and
had this interchange with him: ““Teacher,
we wish to see a sign from you.” But he answered them, “An evil and adulterous
generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of
the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the
belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights
in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with
this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah,
and behold, something greater than Jonah is here. The queen of the South will
rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for she came from
the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something
greater than Solomon is here.” (Matthew 12:38–42 ESV)
The point is that God revealed his righteousness in Jesus
Christ and his death, burial and resurrection. If you ignore him you have rebelled against God. This is evil.
The call of God to all men is to repent of their sins and
turn to Jesus Christ alone for salvation.
This call is for the religious and non-religious alike. Sincerity and goodness will not please
God. This is not just some technicality either. We must be saved from our sins. We cannot do enough to earn God’s mercy. He has provided the one way of
salvation for all men.
Jesus, the Lord of heaven and earth, is the savior to all. Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will
be saved. You need the infinite
value of Jesus to save you. If you
try to pay the debt on your own, you pay forever and never actually touch the
principle.
