This Just In: Man Declares Himself God! Filthy Rags Galore!

At the heart of man (and women) is the desire to justify himself and to proclaim his own righteousness before God and other men. Our lives, our goals, and our ambitions all rely on this desire. We are hell-bent on establishing our own way of life and seeking to glorify the works of our hands. All of the highest forms of man’s insights including intellectualisms and religions bask in the idea that these are the ways to Life, the path to exaltation and ultimately the road to heaven, and the basic foundations behind all these succumb to the lie of the serpent that we can become like a god in our “knowledge of good and evil” or simply our intellectual knowledge of what is virtuous and what is despicable. This lie of the serpent, originally spoken in the Garden speaks today to the heart of man. Man fell at this point because of the most “virtuous” of all sins, the sin that Satan perfected: pride. Pride says that man doesn’t need God to be happy. Pride says that man can pull himself up by his bootstraps to the point of godhood. Jesus declares that we have no boots. Pride essentially says that man doesn’t need the imputed righteousness of the blood of Jesus Christ to atone for his life of unrighteousness, because that man is “basically good” and simply needs to trust in his own power to live a “basically good” life because this is the highest moral realization of man’s life on Earth.

This pattern of pride and self-righteousness does not only occur with non-Christians but with those who profess to be real Christians. Often we fall into this trap of thinking that God somehow develops more love and favor for a person who does a lot of good things. Certainly God does delight in seeing his people love one another, but he also judges the motives behind a person’s actions, which is where the heart of the matter lies. If a man acts “good” by doing charity work for example, but his heart only seeks the praise of men for him being such a great guy, he has missed the entire point of being a Christian. He thinks that by doing such and such that he is somehow made into a better person and justified by God, but the knowledge of his good works merely puffs up to the point of pride, which says that he is a good Christian because he does good works.

I, along with the Apostle James, would stress that the opposite is true: we do good works because we are Christians! And we love each other because we are enabled through the reconciling work of Jesus on the cross. He reconciled us to Himself and he also reconciled us to one another by this great Event. The heart of the gospel is right here. Man is not justified by the works of the law or good deeds, but instead by faith in Christ alone for the forgiveness of sins. There is no way for a man to pull himself up by his bootstraps when he has no boots. Often a Christian will think that if he sins that he will be rejected by God. This is a classic mistake and one that every Christian, I’m sure, if he is honest with himself, will find himself having committed. The fact is that we need the righteousness of Jesus imputed to us by grace through faith in Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection that accomplished salvation for all who believe.

The Book of Romans explains that the most “righteous” of Jews could uphold the law to the most minute of details. All this and yet they missed the point entirely. They believed that a man was justified by fulfilling the requirements of the Old Testament law, but Paul exclaims that no man is justified through this law or through the shedding of an animal's blood (speaking of the works of the law) but through the law of faith and the perfect sacrifice of Jesus, the umblemished lamb of God. It was written that “the righteous will live by faith.” This is congruent with Paul’s exhortation to the law-abiding Jews, and he actually refers to this statement in the Old Testament.

Now, in the culture of America I recognize that a majority opinion claims that a person is basically good and leans towards doing good works, such as throwing money at the poor, helping old ladies across the street, and basically being a “good person.” I look at these attitudes and I can’t help but be immensely cynical. A teaching ripe throughout Scripture is that all men have fallen short of the glory of God; and none are righteous, not even one; and the heart of man is deceitful above all else and beyond cure. It’s clear that even the "best" dudes in the Bible often have serious moral hang-ups and are constantly struggling with sin (i.e. David and Bathsheba). The heart of man needs the sanctifying work of God to transform this evil nature of man into that of His Holy Son. Second, and perhaps less obvious, is the place of the characteristically American mind in the minds of history since Jesus. The American epistemology is a remarkable result of many years of influence from different cultures and eras of human thought. From the Puritan ideal of a Christian nation where a man can worship God free from religious oppression, to a postmodern time where truth no longer exists, there lies a rocky path of intellectual schism and dead-end meanderings of reason and philosophy. Where we are today is a pluralistic culture where “anything goes” and nothing is held sacred and true. We have reached a very individualistic culture only concerned with Self-Esteem, merely an old sin with a new and improved, Satanically inspired label: pride. I am pushed to agree with my culture because the trappings of a sinful worldview look so attractive and the people who adhere to such opinions seem to be so smug and confident in their ideas. Don't fall for this crap. In such a culture where morals practically do not exist in the mainstream audience, I would be bold to say that our morals do not exceed those of the Jews by a long shot. The Jews’ entire life revolved around the law. Their whole focus of life was on the law, it constantly being on their minds through the words of prophets and scribes. They designed their lives in such a way as to fulfill the law to the furthest possible degree. The reason the Jews were viewed in such an odd light (and still are) by other nations and cultures was that their attention to the law was so peculiar that it stood out and was “set apart,” or holy, in this sense. It is true that they succeeded with great stature and reputation as the center of an ancient moral lifestyle, but to the point of horrendous legalism displayed infamously by the Pharisees, a group of Jewish religious nuts in Jesus’ day. There is, however, a great lesson to learn from Jesus’ encounter with these zealous freaks. Jesus said that if your obedience to the law did not surpass that of the Pharisees then you are hopeless for entering the kingdom of heaven. (Not to say the Pharisees had it right but that the law holds the standard for what is righteous and wicked) What a sad day it will be when people stand before God and declare that they have lived righteously, nearly comparable to that of Jesus they may say. But God will declare that He never knew them.

God repeatedly declares that no one is righteous, not even one. Not even the moral, religious acts of the Pharisees are acceptable in God’s eyes. In fact, He regards them as bloody menstrual rags! If you’re disgusted by this remark, you have interpreted the passage correctly! The Sovereign Lord God states that “all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.” (Isa. 64:6, NIV) (Actually, Isaiah said it, but it was God also.) I propose you do a word study on the word “filthy” as most translations render it here (though it loses its effect really). You can go here to view one. The graphic language here indicates the disgust God has for sin, especially that of self-righteousness. God the Father, as I've heard it put, turned His back on the Son when he was on the cross because "His eyes are too pure to look upon evil." (Hab. 1:13) At the moment of his crucifixion, "he bore our sins in his body," (1 Pet. 2:24) and was forsaken of his Father.

When our life becomes about religion and morality, the best we can do is become self-righteous, which is the sin Satan was kicked out of heaven for. The objective of life is not religion, it is not morality, and it is not living a “basically good” life. It is Jesus! The sacrifice of Jesus for the sins of his people imputes the righteousness of Jesus, the righteousness of his entire sinless life, the life we could never lead, to those that love God and “have been called according to His purpose” (Rom. 8:28). How easy it is to get caught up in trying to live a moral life. Don’t fall into the same trap the Pharisees did. Love Jesus and he will give you His righteousness freely because He’s a good Dad.