Luke Scallon
Pastor, Faith Baptist Church of Danville

Published in The Des Moines County News on September 29, 2016.

God knows I’m sincere and doing my best, right?

None of us are perfect; we have a stark awareness of our sins and failures.  And certainly nobody has to tell us that our children are naughty at times.  While we work hard to do what’s right, and we teach our kids to be moral, what if it’s not enough?  Does God award sincere effort?

Surely Jesus would understand.  However, he set the standard for “good enough” by saying, “For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20).  In case you’re not aware, the Pharisees were the religious rulers of Jesus’ time.  They exaggerated all the rules to keep a buffer around God’s law.  Jesus said they didn’t qualify as “good enough”; you had to be better than them.

What hope is there then?  I am persuaded that was exactly Jesus’ point.  There is no hope for any of us to be good enough.  Jesus says shortly after that, “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).  Our best is not good enough; even a little sin will keep us shy of God’s perfect standard.  That puts us all in big trouble:  “All have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

Imagine cooking a meal for someone.  You put your heart and soul into it:  careful preparation of all the ingredients, just the exact amount of each thing.  Simmered to perfection at the right temperature.  However, in the course of preparation, you accidentally spilled a little bit of poison in the food, and it cooked into everything.  Would you still serve it?  After all, you did your best.

Our sin has the same adverse, poisonous effect.  We might have only a little… we probably have a lot more than we realize.  But God cannot accept us in our sinful condition, because He is holy and hates sin.  But, He loves us!  “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).  Our hope is not in being “good enough,” but in trusting a God who is supremely good, a God who is perfectly holy and perfect in love.  Jesus himself says that there is great joy in heaven over one sinner who turns to Him (Luke 15:7).

We completely miss God’s wonderful gift when we think we can’t take it unless we earn it.  The Bible says, “the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23).  I will gladly take God’s gift rather than my earnings!  Coming to Jesus produces a changed life, but trying to be good enough to get to heaven is Christianity without Christ.  Jesus is the wonderful gift that God offers to us.

Will you trust Jesus instead of your own efforts to get to heaven?