To Encourage You

2 Corinthians 3:6 “For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”

Are you a good person?  How do you know?  What’s the standard against which you are measuring yourself?  Some time ago, a technician was checking out my furnace, which was malfunctioning. He had a meter with which he tested the components.  He knew the measurements that each component should give if it was good, for there was a standard to measure that component against.  So, what’s our standard. What are we to measure ourselves against? 

In Mark 10 we have the account of a man who came up to Jesus and called Him by the title “good master” and asked Him what he must do to have eternal life.  To this, Jesus replied, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.”  In other words, Jesus was stating that God was the standard for goodness.  Furthermore, if Jesus was indeed “good” as the man had stated, then He was also God (which was true, although the man may not have realized it).    Then Jesus laid out the standard for “goodness” with these words: “You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your father and mother.’”  In other words, Jesus was laying down the 10 commandments, the Law of God, as the perfect standard by which “goodness” is measured.  To this the man replied, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.”  Sounds good, doesn’t it?  Could you have said that? I know I couldn’t have, for I know from Jesus’ teaching elsewhere that there’s far more to God’s law than at first might meet the eye. 

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus had proclaimed that anyone who held anger towards another had actually committed murder in his heart. The same with lust, for God sees lust as adultery done in the heart.  You see, men can violate the Law of God with their hearts and minds, regardless of whether they have committed the physical act.  Nevertheless, let’s give the man who came to Jesus the benefit of the doubt. 

But what does Jesus say next?  He exposes the “badness” of the man’s heart with the following words: “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”  And the man’s response: “Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.” 

You see, the man’s view of the law of God was very flawed as was his evaluation of what “goodness” is. His first statement demonstrated that he thought that he was good, but his response to Jesus’ command about money demonstrated that he loved money rather than God. It was an idol to him, a clear violation of the Law of God. 

So many people think they are good, but they have a flawed understanding of the standard by which goodness is measured.  If they’ve conceived their own standard, that standard is faulty, for no one is good but God alone, so any standard that doesn’t proceed from Him is fundamentally flawed.  But then anyone who thinks they are “good” based on God’s law is missing the mark as well, for by claiming goodness on this basis, their judgment of that standard is flawed, just like the man’s judgment in the account from Mark 10.  Thus, the statement in the verse above from 2 Corinthians 3, that “the letter kills.” By “the letter” Paul is referring to the written law of God. Its purpose was never to give us a standard by which to live and earn favor with God. Rather it was given to expose our fallenness by providing the perfect standard by which to measure ourselves.  Romans 3:20 puts it this way: “For by the works of the law no human being will be justified in His sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.”  Furthermore, in Romans 3:23 we are told that on the basis of this perfect standard “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Then Romans 6:23 tells us that “the wages of sin is death.” In other words, the letter always kills. 

But thankfully, the story doesn’t end there, for “The Spirit gives life.”  That is, by confessing our sins to God, admitting that we have missed the mark and have no goodness in and of ourselves, and by receiving the death of Jesus as the penalty that satisfied a holy God as our sentence for that sin, we can be “born of the Spirit,” the Spirit that gives life in spite of our failure to keep the Law of God.  That’s the message of salvation. That’s the means by which we receive the free gift of eternal life. And that’s the means to a transformed heart that loves the Law of God and seeks to obey it from a motive of gratitude for the wonderful things that Christ has done. 

So again, are you a “good person?”  Well, no matter what you think, “the letter,” i.e., the perfect Law of God, reveals that you and I are not. But thanks be to God that “while we were yet sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8), and although “the wages of sin is death . . . the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23).

Praise the name of the Lord!