Good Enough
Many people live their lives believing that they are “basically good”. Sure, we all know there are cases where we could have done something better but people cannot be expected to be perfect! After all, we all make mistakes.
With this view, God (if one even acknowledges his existence) must grade on a curve. After all, nobody seems to be capable of a perfect score and there are some people who are clearly more sinful than others. Maybe we lie a bit or lust from time to time but we never committed murder or anything like that! Even for those who have, we need only to open a history book to find those who have done so more.
On top of that, look at the times when we made up for it! Maybe we were charitable with our money or time. Perhaps we even risked harm to ourselves to protect someone else. Surely that makes up for the times we did wrong!
Our Duty
In Luke 17, we find an account where Jesus is teaching his apostles how to think about our service.
“Will any one of you who has a servant plowing or keeping sheep say to him when he has come in from the field, ‘Come at once and recline at table’? Will he not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, and dress properly, and serve me while I eat and drink, and afterward you will eat and drink’? Does he thank the servant because he did what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’”
Luke 17:7-10
The servant is expected to perform his service at all times. He doesn’t get to kick back and act as master because he did his job for a little while. In like manner, those who serve God are doing only what is required of man and we don’t do it correctly all the time!
Instead of the standard being a balance where we just need enough good to outweigh the bad, the standard is perfect service and we are all unworthy servants! Instead of expecting a pat on the back for the times we did what God requires of us, we should understand that as the minimum requirement.
Of course, that is also the maximum requirement, as the good works God has prepared for us to do are the best use of our time that there is! There is no room for anything less than perfection if we’re going to be counted worthy by the works we perform.
Gospel Perfection
By now, some readers must be thinking that there can be no hope with such a standard. If every good thing we do is simply our reasonable service to God and everything short of that is another mark against us, how can any be worthy?!
The bad news is that this is the accurate understanding of our service to God. We owe him perfection and we fail to deliver it constantly. The good news is God knew all of this from the start and had a plan. While all of us have been unworthy servants and have no way to redeem ourselves, God took on humanity in the person of Jesus and lived the perfect life we could not.
He then suffered the punishment we deserve so that the cost of all the failures of those who believe in him have already been paid. While our required service is still to live a perfect life, there is another who lived it on our behalf. Though we constantly fail to do what is our duty to perform, the punishment has already been dealt for all of those who accept that Christ paid for them.
Proper Perspective
Some hear that Jesus died for their sins and assume that his death made sin no longer matter. However, that’s a morbid perspective! Christ suffered because of that sin.
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
Romans 6:1-4
Others understand our obedience to be a way for us to pay him back for what he’s done for us. This view is also wrong, because it assumes that our obedience is something God earned.
Christ’s sacrifice didn’t “earn” him our obedience. We already owed him that. His righteousness doesn’t nullify the need for our obedience, we still owe him that. He has made a way, at great cost to himself, for those who have failed to render their due service to be counted as if we had to save, for himself, a people.
We will always be indebted to God and he graciously loves us anyway. Everything we do right is simply our reasonable service. Every time we fall short we can be grateful to Christ that he has done for us what we could not have done ourselves.
