Our Good is Not Ever Good Enough

Isaiah 64:6 tells us that all our righteousness or all of our good works has nor earns any merit from our heavenly Father.  Somehow we believe that God's goodness or grace toward us is dependent on how well we perform.  Not so!  God's merit towards us dependent upon the sacrificial atonement that was met by His only begotten Son.  The same grace that was needed for our salvation is the same grace needed for our works or fruit as His children.

John Owen, known as the prince of Puritan theologians, wrote these words way back in 1657:

"Believers obey Christ as the one by whom our obedience is accepted by God. Believers know all their duties are weak, imperfect and unable to abide in God’s presence. Therefore they look to Christ as the one who bears the iniquity of their holy things, who adds incense to their prayers, gathers out all the weeds from their duties and makes them acceptable to God."[1]

In his quote, Owen speaks of Christ bearing the iniquity of our holy things—that is, the sinfulness of even our good works. As another Puritan preacher was reputed to have said, “Even our tears of repentance need to be washed in the blood of the Lamb.” So our best works can never earn us one bit of favor with God. Let us then turn our attention from our own performance, whether it seems good or bad to us, and look to the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is God’s provision for our sin, not only on the day we trusted Christ for our salvation but every day of our Christian lives.^[2]

May we continue to depend upon the grace of God for all that we are and do as believers. 

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[1] John Owen, Communion with God, ed. R. J. K. Law (Edinburgh, Scotland: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1991), 117.

^[2] Jerry Bridges, The Discipline of Grace: God's Role and Our Role in the Pursuit of Holiness (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2006), 44.