{"id":710,"date":"2014-10-07T04:07:51","date_gmt":"2014-10-07T09:07:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/focuspressblog.com\/?p=710"},"modified":"2014-10-07T04:07:51","modified_gmt":"2014-10-07T09:07:51","slug":"q-im-a-good-person","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tampaseo.expert\/focus\/2014\/10\/07\/q-im-a-good-person\/","title":{"rendered":"?Q: &#8220;I&#8217;m a good person.&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>This article is another installment of our <a href=\"http:\/\/focuspressblog.com\/category\/questionable-quotes\/\">Questionable Quotes (?Q)<\/a> series, where we aim to take popular, commonly used quotes about the church, God, and the Bible and put them under the microscope to see if they really hold up to the truth.<\/em><br \/>\n&#8220;I&#8217;m a good person.&#8221;<br \/>\nIt\u2019s one of the saddest things a person can say about their relationship with God. It\u2019s also based on the faultiest of foundations of just about any statement ever made in human history. But, \u201cI\u2019m a good person\u201d is something a massive number of people say when confronted with their sins. \u201cGod wouldn\u2019t send me to hell, I\u2019m a good person.\u201d \u201cYeah, I\u2019ve sinned, but I\u2019m still a good person.\u201d \u201cI think God just wants us all to be good people.\u201d \u201cI\u2019ve done more good than bad.\u201d<br \/>\nA couple of weeks ago I wrote on a Questionable Quote that\u2019s probably most common among regular churchgoers, <a href=\"http:\/\/focuspressblog.com\/2014\/09\/25\/q-im-not-good-enough\/\">\u201cI\u2019m not good enough.\u201d<\/a> The irony is that both \u201cI\u2019m not good enough\u201d and \u201cI\u2019m a good person\u201d stem from the same root. Both completely misunderstand the nature of sin. When people admit their defeat and say \u201cI\u2019m not good enough\u201d and worry that such an admission will keep them out of heaven, they unintentionally imply that it\u2019s possible for any of us to be good enough to overcome our sins.<br \/>\nOn the other hand, when someone says, \u201cI\u2019m a good person,\u201d they agree with the person who feels inadequate in that they both think sins can be overcome by meritorious work, but they go one step further by being arrogant enough to assert that they are strong enough in themselves to do so. At least the \u201cI\u2019m not good enough\u201d crowd understands the difficulty of the task set before them.<br \/>\nThis belief in our own goodness is just another sign that there is a lot of confusion about the nature of Christianity in the world today, and sin is at the center of a great deal of it. People can only say things such as \u201cGod won\u2019t send me to hell, I\u2019m a good person\u201d when they clearly haven\u2019t been taught what the Bible says about sin. When people declare themselves to be \u201cgood,\u201d they don\u2019t understand what they\u2019re saying. They\u2019re making four disturbing, uninformed claims about God and His word: first, that sin isn\u2019t that big of a deal, second, that Jesus didn\u2019t need to die for their sins, third, that God didn\u2019t really know what He was doing when He sent Jesus to die, and fourth, that all the verses in the Bible about God\u2019s justice and the payment for sin aren\u2019t actually true, verses like &#8211;<br \/>\n\u201cAll of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; The Lord has caused the iniquity of all of us to fall on Him.\u201d \u2013 Isaiah 53:6<br \/>\n\u201cFor all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God\u2026 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.\u201d \u2013 Romans 3:23, 6:23<br \/>\n\u201cAnd you were dead in your trespasses and sins.\u201d \u2013 Ephesians 2:1<br \/>\n\u201cFor while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.\u201d \u2013 Romans 5:6<br \/>\nSome simply don\u2019t know that the Bible gives those strong condemnations of all sin. Unfortunately, there are somehow still others who look at those verses and admit that they have sinned but still believe that they can do enough good to tip the scales back in their favor. What do those verses say, though? Sin = death. Sin cannot be paid off with good deeds, church contributions, or any number of assigned prayers. Sin can only be paid off in one of two ways: your soul being given over to the second death (hell) or the blood of the spotless Lamb of God. That\u2019s it.<br \/>\nMost seem to find this unfair, yet they forget that the most unfair thing that ever happened was Jesus dying on that cross for them, so that they could be forgiven a lifetime of not being good people.<br \/>\nPeople are carrying this inadequate excuse with them into the judgment on a daily basis, and they are going in unprepared. We can\u2019t continue to let people think of themselves as \u201cgood\u201d in the sight of God when they haven\u2019t even recognized their sin \u2013 not to mention addressed it by submitting their lives to Him. And, lest we get overly confident in looking at how others have misunderstood sin, Christians can\u2019t fuel this notion by pretending to be good people in our own lives, either. As great as the temptation may be to present ourselves as well put together, \u201cgood\u201d people, we need to remind them that our sins are constantly being cleansed. We need to have the attitude of Paul, who had no problem referring to himself as the chief of sinners. We need to show them the heart of the tax collector in Luke 18, constantly begging, \u201cLord, be merciful to me, a sinner!\u201d<br \/>\nThe truth is, you\u2019re not a good person. I\u2019m not a good person. The best person you know isn\u2019t a good person. Only God is good (Luke 18:19). We are all sinners who deserve every ounce of the wrath of God. You can either accept that and submit your life to the One who can make you clean in the sight of God with His blood, or you can continue to delude yourself into thinking that you\u2019re a good person. Either way, you\u2019re going to find out the truth in the end.<br \/>\n<strong>By Jack Wilkie<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This article is another installment of our Questionable Quotes (?Q) series, where we aim to take popular, commonly used quotes about the church, God, and the Bible and put them under the microscope to see if they really hold up to the truth. &#8220;I&#8217;m a good person.&#8221; It\u2019s one of the saddest things a person [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20,59,28],"tags":[368,369,265,370,23,371,372,287,29],"class_list":["post-710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all","category-christian-living","category-questionable-quotes","tag-cross","tag-good-person","tag-heaven","tag-hell","tag-jack","tag-judgment","tag-payment","tag-questionable-quotes","tag-sin","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - 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