Nobody is Perfect Blah, Blah, Blah
When forced to give account for some wrongdoing, the first words out of the mouth of many are, “Well, nobody is perfect.”
Ok. Fine. Noted. Appreciate the clarification, though I'm not sure why you gave it, since there was never the slightest suspicion you are perfect. But while we're on the subject, let's drop down a notch or two to ask: Are you a good person?
Dr. George Barna and the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University found that most Americans feel that mankind is “basically good.” This view has been embraced for centuries. When explaining it a bit, people do acknowledge their flaws, and are quick to point out they are certainly not perfect. Yet, all things considered, they do think they're mostly good.
For precisely this reason, Barna reports, most people don't think they're going to hell. If the good in them outweighs the bad, they reason, they don't have to worry about the afterlife.
Perhaps these people imagine a scene just outside the pearl gate where a gracious God sandpapers their soul a bit, smooths out some rough spots, fills in some gouges here and there, applies an attractive coating, before then stepping aside to welcome them into a glorious Heaven.
However, people who think this way, and there are millions of them who do, will be totally shocked to learn, too late, they don't have one good work to their name. Not one!
Therefore, what they had been counting on to get them into Heaven doesn't even exist! This is why there will be no scales outside the pearl gate of Heaven—because there will be nothing to weigh. Jesus said as much in the Sermon on the Mount when he taught, “A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit” (Matthew 5:18).
For the longest time I couldn't understand this verse at all. Because, to my young mind it seemed that there were some people in church who weren't all that good, and there were some people outside the church who were living commendable, exemplary lives. So how could this saying of Jesus be true?
What helped me to see how it is true is to learn what constitutes a good work in the eyes of God. A.W. Tozer said, “To be good a deed must pass three tests: What? How? And Why?”1
In his book, Truths That Transform, Dr. D. James Kennedy set forth the answer to these three tests. According to Scripture, he said, no deed done by man is ever going to be deemed good in the eyes of God unless all three of these criteria are met.2
Consistent with Scripture
First, the deed if it is truly good, must coincide with the commands of Scripture. This criterion answers the question, what? Since the Bible is unequaled in its authority, it makes total sense to say that any deed contrary to what Scripture sets forth is not good, regardless of what tradition, religion, and popular opinion have to say.
The kind of thinking that talks about the morality of the twenty-first century makes as much sense as comparing an elephant with a tube of toothpaste on the basis that neither one rides a bicycle. Really? What do any of these things have to do with each other?
Ethics doesn’t vary with time! Just as God doesn’t change, his laws, which are a reflection of who he is, never change.
C.S. Lewis observed: “God may be more than moral goodness; he is not less. The road to the Promise Land runs past Sinai.”3 Therefore, good is what God says it is. New decades and new polls determine nothing—except perhaps the extent of our ignorance and the fact of our rebellion.
Produced by Faith
The second criterion for establishing a work to be good is that it must be achieved through the exercising of faith. This criterion answers the question, how?
Hebrews 11:6 says that without faith it is impossible to please God. Romans 14:23 insists that whatever is not of faith is sin. John Hunter said that “a quality of ‘goodness’ independent from God is sin!”4
All of life, therefore, is to be a series of faith transactions, whereby God is trusted to energize the good we do. Never should the believer depend on his own efforts—which Jesus said profit nothing (John 6:63).
The Old Testament illustrates this principle in a clear but shocking way. Proverbs 21:4 says that the plowing of the wicked is sin. To understand what is being said here, get a picture in your mind of good ole' “Silent Sam,” a hardworking farmer who gets up before the sun does and labors under its heat, day in and day out. Then, long after the sun sets, this hardworking man comes home, eats a bite or two, then tumbles into bed, and into the arms of sleep, before doing it all over again the next day.
While Sam isn’t a Christian, he is diligent in taking care of his family, and often helps his neighbors, too. Nevertheless, though the hard work Sam does is consistent with the first criterion (Scripture’s command for a man to work), the fact he does this without faith in God means he is only sustaining his rebellion, and therefore his isn’t a good work!
Even if Sam were a Christian but undertook this labor independent from God, it still wouldn’t be a good work. Having done this work with human energy and not divine, it will be rejected by the Lord on that last day (I Corinthians 3:12-15).
Motivated to Give God Glory
The third criterion of a good work is that it be done for the glory of God. This criterion answers the question, why?
I Corinthians 10:31 says “… whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” Similarly, Colossians 3:17 says, “… whatever you do in word and deed, do all in the name of the Lord, giving thanks to God ....” Colossians 3:23 offers a similar point of view, “And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men.” F.B. Meyer declared, “The service may be great or small, conspicuous or obscure, but the glory of God must be the supreme passion.”5
In illustrating this point, Abraham Kuyper, the Dutch theologian, invited us to picture two very expensive yachts. One yacht may appear just as valuable as the other. But what would happen if the rudder of one of the yachts were wrongly directed? If not corrected, this yacht would smash on the rocks! So, given this eventuality, it is the other yacht that is much preferred.
Similarly, when others view what appears to be a very splendid work, they may not see what God sees—the real motive inspiring it. Just know that motive is always critical to God’s definition of a good work. If motive isn’t directed toward the glory of God, even that lifetime work that received accolades from others will smash on the rocks of God’s judgment.
Thomas Boston, the early eighteenth-century Reformed pastor from Berwickshire, Scotland, summed up this point well: “A man’s most glorious actions will at last be found to be but glorious sins, if he hath made himself, and not the glory of God, the end of those actions.”
With probing insights, F.B. Meyer pressed this point, determined that we should see if our work really is for God’s glory:
For if not—if in your secret soul you seek the sweet voice of adulation, if you are conscious of a wish to pass the results of your work into newspaper paragraph or the talk of men—be sure that deterioration is fast corrupting your service, as rottenness the autumn fruit.6
Could it be that we have been too soft on our self, too unfocused in the way we examine our works, too willing to trust our opinion rather than God's revelation?
Confusing Good with Evil
Distinguishing good from evil is an issue with a long history of bad answers. During the time of the Judges, for example, it was said that each man did what was good in his own eyes (Judges 17:6; 21:25). And was it good? No, God said they did evil, continuously (Judges 3:12; 4:1; 6:1; 13:1).
Likewise, Proverbs 21:2 speaks of the rationalizations of men and how—lo and behold! —all that they do is right in their own eyes. But Isaiah 5:21 pronounces woe against those wise in their own eyes, those who call evil, good and good, evil.
We can go all the way back to Genesis to see an example of this. Cain became downright enraged, infuriated, incensed when he gave God what Cain thought was good, but it was rejected.
Unfortunately, what happened in the beginning of history will also happen in the end. Jesus said, “Many will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord'— the double designation indicating complete surprise— “have we not prophesied in your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in your name?” (Mathew 7:22).
See what they were trusting? Their good works! John Gerstner, a twentieth-century professor of church history, wrote, “The main thing between you and God is not so much your sins; it’s your damnable good works.”
What you trust to save you may in fact condemn you. The Bible says we are saved by faith and not by works (Ephesians 2:8). That's why Jesus said to those who approached him in this way, “depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness” (Matthew 7:23). What they called good, the Master labeled lawlessness.
Oh, the calamity that comes to those who don't understand good! To trust your good work is to distrust Jesus' good work, the only work that can save you. The law was supposed to be your schoolmaster and bring you to Christ (Galatians 3:24). So, refusing to go there is lawlessness.
Definitions matter, especially when the needed outcome depends on accuracy. Just as the pharmacist must be precise when filling a prescription, and the aeronautical engineer has to be precise when constructing an aircraft, and the accountant has to be precise when entering numbers on a spreadsheet, so, too, theology has to be precise when defining good.
Now, since goodness is rooted in God, and since he alone knows all its ways and ramifications, turning to the expert is really not a bad idea—especially when taking into account man’s proclivity to rationalize moral choices, warp ethics, and plunder holiness.
Such ineptitude on man’s part necessitates a good God revealing the standards by which man will be judged. Just here, you must know that, contrary to secular thinking, a trustworthy standard does exist. And because God is good, he isn’t going to stay silent about a subject where the stakes for us are sky-high.
Good isn't what we think it is. One of the brainiest brains ever, having studied Scripture diligently for decades, finally came to see this. Paul admitted that he didn't know how to be good (Romans 7:18); and didn't understand bad, either (Romans 7:7). Not, that is, until he became humble and teachable enough to cast off his own opinions and get God's revelation on this issue.
It was only then that he began to see what he was really up against. C.S. Lewis observed: “No man knows how bad he is until he has tried very hard to be good.”7 And by that he meant, good as God defines it.
The big question, then, is this: How can any of us be confident we are a good person until we first understand how God, the embodiment of good, defines good?
Notes:
- A.W. Tozer, The Price of Neglect, (Camp Hill, PA., Christian Publications, 1991), p.53.
- D. James Kennedy, Truths That Transform, (Old Tappan, Fleming H. Revell, 1974), p.109ff.
- C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, (New York, The MacMillan Company, 1972), p.65.
- John E. Hunter, Knowing God’s Secret, (Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 1974), p.71.
- F.B. Meyer, Tried by Fire, (Fort Washington, PA., CLC Publications, 2001), p.154.
- F.B. Meyer, F.B. Meyer, Christ in Isaiah, (Fort Washington, PA., CLC Publications, 2001), p.43.
- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, (New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1977), p.124.
