ZA MAGAZINE // seek truth.

There are a lot of people who do a lot of good in this world. Sometimes Christians like me don’t want to admit that. We don’t want to admit that the atheist down the street is giving more money or time to noble causes, because WE’RE supposed to be the good guys! People are supposed to look at US, see the love of God in US, and become Christians…how can these people do good things without having a God to believe in?

But like it or not, it is the truth. Wealthy billionaires are huge philanthropists. People who just want to make the world a better place will go out and attempt to do so. But if you’re one of those people who are doing it without God, be warned. In the Bible, God has stuff to say about good deeds done apart from Him, and it’s not pretty. Let’s get into it.

Isaiah 57:12
I will declare your righteousness and your deeds, but they will not profit you.

Buried in the middle of the Old Testament is this nugget that gives us some insight into God. The fact that God says “I will” indicates a time in the future and, based on the context of the passage, we can apply it as a principle to anyone who stands before God in judgment at the end of his or her life.

The fact that God will declare our righteousness and our deeds implies that God knows everything that we do. Remember that! He is everywhere and all-knowing, so we can’t run and hide from God, ever.

The most important part of this verse is that whatever righteous things we do (and righteous in this sense merely means virtuous or morally right things), whatever deeds we commit, good or bad, they don’t profit us, they don’t do us a bit of good when we’re standing before God at the end of our life. In fact, it’s not that our deeds don’t profit us, they even work against us!

Isaiah 64:6 (CEV)
We are unfit to worship you; each of our good deeds is merely a filthy rag. We dry up like leaves; our sins are storm winds sweeping us away.

Preacher and author Francis Chan offered commentary on this verse in his book Crazy Love:

“The literal interpretation of ‘filthy rags’ in this verse is ‘menstrual garments’ (think used tampons … and if you’re disgusted by that idea, you get Isaiah’s point). It’s hard to imagine something more disgusting that we could brag about or put on display. But compared to God’s perfect holiness, that’s how our good deeds appear.”

Wow. Can you see why I chose to quote that instead of just dropping it in like it was my own idea? I don’t want to be solely responsible for putting that image into your head! But it’s truth, and it really drives the point home. Let’s say you held a door open for someone, or bought someone a meal, or tipped a little extra after the meal. Maybe you even did a summer trip to build a house for a poor person or did a benefit walk to raise money for cancer patients. Whatever it is, if you try to parade those good deeds around before God as your proof that you deserve heaven, God will be disgusted by that!

So this is bad, right? In our human state, anything we try to do is going to be seen as a filthy rag before God; it won’t do us any good when we’re looking to escape the wrath of God and enter into heaven. What do we do, then?

Isaiah 57:13b
But he who takes refuge in me shall possess the land and shall inherit my holy mountain.

This is a continuation of the first verse we looked at. Taking refuge in God, what does that mean? Well, if you’re in a really heavy storm, you’ll take refuge indoors. You’re drenched, you’re afraid that you’ll get hit by lightning…you can’t take it anymore! So you flee the storm outside because you realize that you can no longer stand up to it, and you go to a place where you know you’ll be dry and safe.

Going inside requires humility. You have to admit that the rain has gotten you soaked and that you need to get inside. You have to admit that you can’t try to wait it out because there’s no end in sight. You have to admit that the only way to get dry and warm again is by going in that house! And that’s the idea here, part of our answer to the filthy rag problem. We have to humble ourselves and submit to God, realizing that His ways are better than the sin that the world offers.

So part of the answer is to run to God and seek His shelter from the sins and misdeeds of our life. But this is incomplete, because while it gives us a destination, it doesn’t give us directions. What does it take to take refuge in God? When we decide to seek shelter from the sin that we’re stuck outside with, what does it take to open the door?

Perhaps we need a key.

Philippians 3:8b-11
8  For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ
9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—
10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,
11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Jesus is the key to heaven, the key to righteousness, the key to exchanging our filthy rags with a beautiful, dazzlingly white robe that we can wear and enter into the bliss of heaven with! Paul, in this passage, declared that his righteousness, his virtue, his awesome moral conduct, and anything else good about him had nothing to do with him. He realized that his good deeds by himself were just filthy rags, but when he gave it all up and chose God’s righteousness, he was able to enter into fellowship with God and attain the resurrection of the dead along with Jesus!

There’s one more step, though. if obtaining the righteousness of God is what it takes to enter into heaven at the end of our lives, how do we get it? Paul says in verse nine that it is all about faith in Christ. We need to believe in Jesus, not only that He existed and not only that He was a good teacher, but also that He died on a cross so that He could take the punishment for our sins on Himself. In doing so, this frees us to follow God and have His righteousness placed on us, but only if we accept Jesus as our Savior.

I tend to ramble a bit and make things complicated, so to close, I’ll summarize what you just read really briefly:
1) God knows our deeds, the good and bad things that we do.
2) Our deeds don’t matter at all when it comes to getting into heaven.
3) In fact, if we were to try to get into heaven based on what we’ve done, that would disgust God.
4) To avert the disgust of God, we must humbly realize that we don’t want to sin anymore and seek refuge in God.
5) Refuge in God comes from believing in the saving grace of Jesus, which makes us righteous in the eyes of God.

This is truth, truth that myself or anyone here at ZA would die for before we denied it. If you are a Christian, then I hope you’ll read this and remember that the good you do has nothing on the good that God does through you. If you are not a Christian, I urge you to stop trying to do good on your own and accept this free (but not cheap) gift of grace that God has given you. If you want to know more about salvation, feel free to contact us!

Grace and peace,
Brendan