It’s Always About Me
I was in Bible study yesterday where we are studying the Gospel of John and two asides came up. One was about good works and the other was about how much faith is saving faith?
As I wrote earlier, the good works we do are only viewed by God as such because of Christ’s death on the cross. The discussion in Bible study centered around a Jewish families’ kind acts toward some members of the Ku Klux Klan (I can’t recall the exact story). How could this not be a good work? It was a selfless act for someone with great hatred toward another. Surely God must view it as a good work. It’s probably more selfless than anything that I’ve ever done. And that’s where I think the problem lies. We want to think about our works as good and see others whose acts are greater and more selfless. I have to say what the other person did was a good work or my good deeds, which pale in comparison, couldn’t be a good work either. I wonder if I should just think of works like I do people. Both are conceived in sin and are fallen. Only Christ makes either of them good. Have to talk to pastor about that one.
On the topic of how much faith is saving faith, one of the elders asked if someone open to the possibility that Christ died for them was enough for salvation. Pastor said there is no scriptural evidence pointing to such a thing but pressed the elder on why he wanted to look for this “opening.” The elders response was something to the effect that he wanted to know that he had done his job in evangelizing the person. This point, once again, to our self-centeredness. We want to know that we’ve done our job, that we are making a difference. The fact is, we do know objectively if we have done are job in evangelizing by whether we have proclaimed the Gospel to someone. Whether there is some outward sign or evidence is immaterial.
Misunderstanding scripture and doctrine, like everything else, comes from our sinful nature. We want everything to be about “me” when the only proper use of the word is as the object of a preposition as in, “Christ for me.”
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