There's No Such Thing As A Good Person

“But I’m a good person.”

I’ve heard it plenty, and thought it myself often enough. Yet here’s the cold, hard truth folks:

There’s no such thing as a good person.

There, I said it. It’s out in the open. Let the hoards of angry comments abound. But let it sink in, and really think about it…because it really is true. There's far more evidence on earth for the existence of bigfoot than there is for the notion that any human being is actually a good person.

One of the most difficult things to convince this generation of is the reality of sin, of just plain human nature in general. You would think it would be fairly easy to prove. After all, what the Bible says about human nature much of philosophy, the sciences, and history agree on. Yet so many have been raised in the church on Biblical morals, and so many who weren’t raised in the church have at least been raised on solid Bible-based moral values, so that they tend to believe they’re good enough to be in a position where they don’t actually need a savior. Apparently we can somehow reach God by being like God (even though we're actually nothing like Him) without the actual help of God. Or perhaps we’ve been taught God doesn’t exist, and that we’re pretty much our own gods, but we should still live moral lives for the sake of the survival of our species, because as it turns out, if we all give in to our nature, we’ll all die. That’s how bad we are.

We are such an “advanced” society, and yet in reality, many of us haven’t even remotely exceeded the ancient Egyptians in our thinking that our entrance into God’s presence depends on some sort of scale in which God measures our hearts by weighing out the good against the bad, where the best you can do is stand there thinking to yourself “Come on, come on. No whammies. No whammies!” and hope that you can come out okay. Still more think that God has some sort of criteria based on the person of someone like Hitler, where if a person’s heart exceeds the goodness of Hitler’s they have somehow merited eternal life. And then there are those who think that God will let them off the hook if they just point out that He never gave them enough evidence that He even existed, or that He was the one, true God among all the others.

When you really put it into perspective, what foolishness this is. God is a good and holy judge, and yet we have made him out as if He is a fool and a crook with little or no expectations of His creation. As if He's too much of an idiot to know the real motives of our hearts. The low expectations we have of him concerning the account of our own lives we would never stand for in the court of law. If a man came on trial for murder in our court system and used the excuses we use before God, the jury wouldn’t even hesitate to convict him, and we would all cry out “Injustice! Corruption!” if they failed to. Just imagine our excuses in a courtroom setting:

“Yes your honor, I did commit murder, but look at all the good things I’ve done.”

“Yes your honor, I killed a man. But that’s nothing in comparison to someone like Hitler.”

“Yes, I did it. But did you SEE what that guy over there did? He killed TWO people. Shouldn’t you let me off and convict him instead?”

“Your honor, you must excuse this offence. After all, I was under the impression that I was getting a different judge. I was hoping for someone a little less…just.”

“Sure I did it. Clearly there’s no hiding it. But surely you can’t hold me accountable for it. After all, you never even gave me enough evidence that you existed. I had no idea there’d be a judge proceeding over the trial! If I knew there was a judge, then I'm sure I would have been completely different from the rest of mankind and wouldn't have done it out of disobedience. So this is all really kind of your fault.”

What lousy excuses. If our defense would never hold up in a court of law, what makes us think it would stand up to the one and only Lawgiver, the one whose very character is the standard by which we are judged? If even Nietszhe and Twain can not deny the sinful nature of man, how is it that we’ve blinded ourselves from it? Twain says, "[M]an is what he is--loving, toward his own, lovable, to his own,--his family, his friends--and, otherwise the buzzing, busy, trivial, enemy of his race--who tarries his little day, does his little dirt, commends himself to God, and then goes out into the darkness, to return no more, and send no messages back--selfish even in death." There is no escape from our selfishness. When we give, it is only so that we will receive---whether it be accolades, a gift in return, or a pat on the back…anything to feed our pride in the humility we have demonstrated. When we love, it is only on the basis that we will in turn be loved. When we forgive, it is only to free ourselves of the burden of a bitter and resentful heart, for a spirit of unforgiveness harms ourselves far more than it harms the one who has offended us. Everything we do and say is motivated by selfishness. Any instances of true selfless love we display are certainly too few and far between for God to ever consider them to be of any merit, and if those instances even do exist, they were most likely the work of God, not us.

It’s easy to fool myself into believing I’m a good person. It’s easy to think I could somehow, someday actually merit God’s love or mercy. After all, I go to church every Sunday, I say my prayers, I serve students, I give to the poor, I’m just an all around nice, moral person by the world’s standards. And yet, if I were to sit down and write every instance of sin in my life from birth till now, the weight of it all would be too great to bear. I would be crushed. When we take account of every lie, every ounce of pride, every hateful and murderous thought, every instance of lust and laziness and gluttony, and every motive that has driven even our “good” deeds, our good deeds become nothing more than filthy rags in the midst of a pile of refuse. I hope you still don’t think you’re a good person…because no matter how moral you are, in the grand scheme of things, and particularly in the presence of a good and holy God, you’re filthy.

I’ve heard far too many people shake their fist at God and ask, “How can a good God allow anyone to go to hell?” It’s a question that is often asked out of a compassionate heart, yet it’s also a question that falsely thinks very highly of humanity. If you take humanity for what it really is, then the question we should all be asking isn’t “How can a good God allow anyone to go to hell?” but instead “How can a good God allow anyone who is less than good into heaven? How can he allow anyone at all? How could He possibly allow ME?”

And that is where the beauty of the God of this universe simply astounds me, for He is so vastly different from any of us. Thank God the fate of the universe is not in our hands. Unlike us, He loves those who do not love Him in return. Unlike us, He gives and asks nothing in return. Everything He has done for us has been done out of a selfess love, and every command He has given us is for our own protection. He shed His own innocent blood to pay for the sins of an undeserving human race, all so that we might be reconciled to Him and know firsthand not just what true, selfless, abiding love is…but WHO it is. We were made to know Him and to live with Him eternally, and He's done everything in His power to pursue us and see that it happens, even if we don't want Him in return. If he were simply just, He would have destroyed us all a long time ago. If He were no more than merciful, He would have never created us at all. Yet because He is also loving, He carried out His mercy by pouring out His justice and wrath upon Himself, so that by believing in Him, our debt would be paid in full. There is no more tarrying for God’s approval when the cross is before us, for it has been given to us through the blood of Jesus Christ. He alone is the evidence of the good and loving God that we all long to know. He is the evidence that we demand of a personal God who cares. He is God’s promises revealed, His faithfulness proven, His character observed, and the hope of eternal life and no condemnation because of what HE has done, not us. Truly there is no one good but God.

If you turn to the natural world to discover truth, you will certainly find truth, but it will be the truth of humanity---a hopeless truth. You will come face to face with your own inescapable selfish nature and the meaninglessness of life without a God. Your origin will be determined by nothing more than an educated guess, your morality will have no solid foundation on which to stand, and unless the dead themselves have spoken to you, your fate lies in the dark abyss of the unknown. The only thing you will ever know with certainty is that you will die, and that you will die a selfish person. There is no hope for anyone apart from God.

But if you turn to the Word of God to discover truth, you are faced with a truth that sets you free. Yes, you are faced with the same selfish nature of man that not even the sciences can overcome, but you are also given hope, worth, love, grace, and eternal life in the midst of it. The filthy, stained, battered and bruised heart that no man, machine, nor religion can repair, God can make anew. He changes us. He declares us good in His sight and it is His love that in turn makes us good. I’ve studied many a religion and irreligion, and I have yet to hear anything better than the Gospel, nor see anything proven more true, and I certainly have yet to have experienced anything greater or more powerful than the love of Christ. Trust me. After all, why shouldn’t you? I’m a filthy, dirty sinner with little credibility to my name...

But I’ve been made new, and have found true freedom in Christ. If you envy me for anything let it be for that, and I beg of you to grasp a hold of it for yourself. Please, take all the grace that you can. I can promise you He’ll lavish you in it. What the world would never forgive, He has forgiven in full.