A few days ago, I left you on a sour note. I pretty much called you (and me) Hitler. But of course, that was in the context of what God’s doing in the world.
So not to put you off, let me start then by making it clear that by a general human standard, there are many wonderful people in this world. I would even say, a large majority of people are actually kind and generous in most respects. Who doesn’t help their neighbor out, or at least wave a friendly “hello” every morning? Or maybe shovel their sidewalks or mow a lawn. Lots of people smile and hold doors open for the next guy. And they give millions a year to charity and volunteer countless hours at hospitals, nursing homes, and local food banks too.
And millions, if not billions go to churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques. Or they don’t. They worship the gods of their belief – or they live confidently in their unbelief – sincerely, diligently, and with kindness to their fellow men and women.
There’s no question that the world is filled with good people – to a certain standard.
But that still doesn’t make us “good.”
I ended part I by criticizing my own analogy: “But what I’m telling you – and oh, I know this is an incredibly unpopular (and certainly misunderstood) position (that’s why this is only part I) – is that if you have any sense of yourself and God, you’d think that ‘X’ was Hitler’s best friend. And that would be on a piece of paper the length of a football field. It’s a poor analogy, and not because it hurts your feelings. It’s a poor analogy because it still doesn’t get us to the truth.”
It was an analogy designed to show the overwhelming distance between our perception of ourselves and the reality of God. It didn’t get us to the truth because it implies there was a line upon which we could travel until we’d reached the level of Jesus. This is really more Buddhist than Christian if you think about it – to work through multiple lifetimes to arrive at the one where you finally get it right. You’ve reached a state of enlightenment and are released from the cycle.
And so yes – it’s a poor analogy. But the intent of the writing was to point out that we give ourselves a pass because we compare ourselves to the worst of society and so think we’re in pretty good shape.
But like I said, the analogy still doesn’t get us to the truth. The reality is much worse. There is no line along which we can travel in our lifetime(s) where our good works pile up to outweigh the bad (and thus earn us a better position on the line). There is a line, but it simply divides the “yes” and the “no” of salvation. It is set by God in this way: either we are righteous and holy, able to come into his presence, or we are not. There are no levels or grades where there will be an eventual point where we ourselves have done enough to earn our way in. Like I’ve said – we are poor judges as to what would be a passing score. It’s for just this reason that some people believe Donald Trump was sent by God to save us, while others liken him more to Satan in what he’s done.
And so, the purpose of Jesus coming to earth was not so that he could sit at the far left of our line as an example to which we might strive. As good as it would be to model our lives after him, we can never be completely like him because we will always struggle with our nature. No, the purpose of his coming was to be the way out of this very difficult puzzle: How can a perfectly holy and righteous God be both perfect in justice and perfect in love? How can a perfect judge forgive someone who breaks a law that demands a payment that no lawbreaker can pay?
Our problem is that we think he just measures our good works against our bad and makes the call from that – thumbs up, or thumbs down. And so, we end up thinking we’re in pretty good shape again. Like I said at the beginning of this writing, we’re all “good” to some extent.
But this isn’t how God judges us. Jesus himself proves that.
The foundation of the Christian faith is that Jesus died on the cross and was raised on the third day. The heart of the gospel (the good news) is that he did this so we may be reconciled to a God whom we have rejected. He didn’t go to the cross to show us what a good guy he could be. He didn’t suffer excruciating pain and an undeserved separation from God so we could look to his example and aspire to be like him (especially in that respect). He lived his life perfectly on earth, following God’s law so that when he went to the cross, he was able to pay the penalty that we and anyone else deserve for breaking that law. In light of this, we only compound our guilt in thinking that we can move our “X” to a point sufficient to satisfy God’s requirements. This puts us in quite the quandary actually, because if we could do it ourselves – if we could get to heaven by piling our good works up higher than our bad – then Jesus’s torture, suffering, and death on the cross was pretty much pointless.
So God judges us by this simple standard – and this we see through Jesus – that we are either perfectly righteous and holy, or we are not. No amount of good works can make up for even the singular bad we may do in a lifetime. While we may feel there are gradients of imperfection (a scale on which we can be called “bad,” “fair,” or “good”), there are no gradients of perfection. One perfect thing cannot be more perfect than another. Our problem is that we keep grading our levels of imperfection and calling the results “good enough.”
And this is what makes the story of Jesus meaningful to us. Not that he’s someone on a line, but that he is someone who made a way for God to be both perfectly just and perfectly loving. It is simply this – coming to him and trusting in him to take your punishment while clothing you in his righteousness is the only way a perfectly just God can allow us into his presence.
And in this the Bible is quite clear: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). He solved the puzzle by paying the penalty himself. And he did it in the person of Jesus, who is both God and man. And here, the Heidelberg Catechism (questions 16 and 17) is helpful. It teaches us that Jesus “must be a true man because the justice of God requires that the same human nature which has sinned should pay for sin” [and] “he must be a righteous man because one who himself is a sinner cannot pay for others.” But Jesus must also be God “so that, by the power of his divinity, he might bear the weight of God’s anger in his humanity and earn for us and restore to us righteousness and life.”
This is how we cross the line from hopelessness into hope — from living in rebellion against a holy God by claiming our own goodness is good enough, to coming into fellowship with him in Christ Jesus. God offered this at great cost to himself, but to us it is free. And all we have to do is trust him for it.
I’ll leave you with a little joke I heard long ago to illustrate our lot. It was about two brothers who were the most cruel and wicked businessmen in a community – they cheated, they lied, they stole, they’d sell their grandmother if they thought they could make a buck. When one of them died, the other went to the town preacher and put the pressure on him, offering $1,000 if the preacher would say something nice about his brother at the funeral. The preacher was torn, but took the deal, and at the funeral he said, “here lies a man of abysmal moral character. He cheated us. He stole from us. He was one of the worst human beings to ever walk the face of the earth.”
“But compared to his brother, he was a saint.”
This is the best we can do without Christ — a few words at a funeral. But with him, we’ve crossed the line.
“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Romans 6:23
