DO-GOODERS DON'T DO GOOD ENOUGH

Any who are devoted to life in Jesus must become alert to the subtle mistake of becoming full of self-righteousness.  Nothing offends the nostrils of community like odor of a church-ee or church-ette parading how good we are at being good.

This has been one of my most regretful mistakes.  Learning about God and His style is incomparable in delight to anything I have ever studied.  Accounting was my game. I loved it; and still do.  But to learn about God has distracted me from all other themes.

Yet, the trouble with any like me is that I took what I had learned into an area God never promoted; let alone endorsed.  I became arrogant as to how many things I believed and practiced that made me more right than others.  I did better than others at being the best believer ever; so I mistakenly assumed.

It seems one of God's holiest themes is to call every individual to take on the righteousness of Jesus simply because ours isn't good enough.  Note: ours is not good enough.  I had so assumed it would be.  

Oswald Chambers points out our glare when we try to justify ourselves before God and others by marking just how good we have been.  Beware of justifying yourself when God alone is the justifier.  If ever I can justify myself, I make God unjust.  If I am right and morally based in all I do and say, I do not need a Savior, and God is not justified in the extravagant waste of sending Jesus Christ to die for me.

Indeed, it is extravagant waste by putting Jesus through all of the extreme suffering if we find that being good enough....is enough.

Somewhere along life's path we must reach the end of our conclusive rope that we can pull salvation off by self-effort.  It is beyond our reach.  We can't get to heaven without Jesus anymore than we can fly to LA without a jet.  We must enter Him, like at baptism, that He might get us to our destination.  All of our attitudes, platitudes, and do-goodness mean nothing.

May our confidence increase in Jesus and decrease in self.  Nothing we do makes us right with God except Jesus.  Way to go Jesus!