Grading On The Curve
Scripture
The Lord looks down from heaven on the entire human race; He looks to see if anyone is truly wise,
if anyone seeks God. But no, all have turned away; all have become corrupt. No one does good,
not a single one!
~Psalm 14:2-3, NLT
Quote
Our attitude toward the unfortunate is a reflection of our attitude toward the LORD Himself.
~John Philips
My Thoughts
There are a lot of verses in the Bible that state the fact that man is a sinner. Ecclesiastes 7:20,
“There is not a just man on earth who does good and does not sin.” Isaiah 64:6, “All our righteousness are like filthy rags.” Genesis 6:5, “Every intent of the thoughts of his (man) was only evil continually.” Jeremiah 17:9, “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.” Romans 3:23, “All have sinned {missed the mark} and come short of the glory of God, {the perfection we see in Jesus}. The essence of our sin is found in Isaiah 53:6, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have each turned to his own way.” The essence of sin is selfishness or vanity. Even when we do good things we do them for the wrong motive. We human crave attention, recognition, credit and praise. We love to be admired. Sometimes we give to impress others. Sometimes we do good deeds to be seen of men so that we will be praised for our goodness. But this is the point, our goodness is badness because of our vain motive.
This why we are depraved. The fall left us with a vain and selfish heart and everything we do is tainted with that vanity and pride. Depravity simply means our righteousness is tainted. Nothing we present to God will be accepted due to our corrupt motives. This leaves us bankrupt; like Cain, we have nothing that God will accept. Many people including me believe that Cain worked for hours even days on his offering. It was a work of art. A cornucopia of the fruits of his labor but this is not what God requires. Abel knew that the fruit of his labor or the works of his hand would not be enough. He understood his depravity and offering a lamb, a blood sacrifice.
Still today, folks do not understand the Cain and Abel thing. I have heard preachers say, “It had nothing to do with a blood sacrifice.” I am always stunned when I hear this: it had everything to do with a blood sacrifice. Abel was acknowledging his sin and his inability to offer an acceptable sacrifice. The lamb was a foreshadowing of the LORD Jesus Christ who is our propitiation, our acceptable offering. Cain is the father of humanism, self-will and religion. Religion is what we do for God; Christianity is what God did for us.
So technically, there are no good people: only God is purely good, but there are some who are worse than others. There is a level of wickedness that you and I will never know because we are restrained by the blessed Holy Spirit. We are not going to abduct children and sell them to sexual predators. We are not going to rob banks and murder people. There is a deeper depravity that men can sink to, but due to grace we do not have to go that far. Molesting a child, that is pretty low. Jesus said to those folks, “You deserve a mill stone tied around your neck and tossed into the deepest part of the sea.”
Just remember one thing: God hates pride. When you do something good and then brag about it or swell up like a dead dog; your sin of pride and taking glory that belongs to Christ is as repulsive to God as the sins you see and hate in others. Some folks are like the old Pharisee, they go around with a blinking sign on their forehead that reads…Thank God I am not as bad as you! Little do these hypocrites know…their sin of pride and self-righteous is worse.
Extra
Have a good day, thanks for reading the blog which probably has errors because I did it this morning.