"Good"

Bear with me in my honesty and hear me out: I recently saw a woman at the grocery store I'd known a few years ago.  She's a nice lady that does nice things, and she was buying backpacks and filling them for homeless children for a charity.  But as we walked around the store and people asked her what they were for, I saw her take pride in telling them what it was about.  I was put off by her seemingly self-righteousness (I know her and better than those strangers and had been on the other end of some of her not-so-nice actions at one time!).  Faults are so easily apparent in others, but hard to see in ourselves.  Seeing it in her, however, helped me realize the same of myself-of the pride I know I have felt of being a “good person” when doing nice things for others, like helping our widowed, disabled refugee friend or filling shoeboxes full of gifts for the poor.  Even as I write a post on this topic, I know I am still growing in it myself. 

It is so easy to feel like you're "good" when you do good things, but that's not what the Bible tells us. The Bible tells us that our own righteousness is like filthy rages before the Lord (Isaiah 64:6), that we are dead in our sin-dead, not needing help or to do more good things to outweigh our bad things, but dead (Colossians 2:13).  Jesus even said, "No one is good-except God alone" (Mark 10:18).  This is why we have to preach the gospel to ourselves everyday: That Jesus lived a perfect life, died on the cross for my sins and rose again to give me new life.  It is His righteousness that I have when I stand before God one day, not my own.  And it is in Him I will boast, not in my own self. 

We are not saved by good works, but for good works (and thank goodness, its a joy!).  But because we're legalistic by nature we want to believe who we are is based on what we do, not on what Christ has already done for us.   As the hymn sums it up: "Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to Thy cross I cling." 

The true gift we should reflect on (and even give to others) during this season is this message: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.  For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world, though Him, might be saved." John 3:16-17.  What a Savior!