Why ‘Good’ Isn’t Good Enough
Isaiah 5:20-23; 6:1-5; Romans 3:21-26
“If this is God, then I don’t have a clue.”
I’ll never forget that quote from a friend as he related to me his conversion experience as a 20-year-old at Clemson. He had grown up in a Christian home, but his faith was empty.
His roommate, though, was an authentic Christian and tenacious in his witness. He kept asking my friend to read a certain book. The roommate’s persistence finally paid off, and my friend picked up A.W. Pink’s “The Attributes of God.”
“I sat down one afternoon to read that – just me in that dorm room,” my friend said. “It broke me. I saw God and who He is and who I was in relation to Him.”
Many Christians – or those who, like my friend, call themselves Christians – have, in a similar manner, seriously underestimated the seriousness of sin and overestimated their own goodness. The reason, I believe, is that we take too lightly the glory, righteousness and holiness of God.
Sure, we easily quote Romans 3:23, and we affirm “for all have sinned.” But do we really grasp the fullness of what it means to have “fallen short of the glory of God”?
Isaiah 6 is a powerful text for many reasons, not the least of which is how clearly it validates Paul’s point in Romans 3. As this prophet is confronted with a vision of God in all His glory, Isaiah cries out, “Woe is me.” Isaiah knows that without immediate divine intervention, he will die. His goodness – even that of a prophet – was not enough.
Isaiah realized the truth of what Jonathan Edwards once wrote: “Since God is of infinite honour, infinite majesty, and infinite holiness, the slightest sin is of infinite consequence. The slightest sin is nothing less than cosmic treason when we realize against whom we have sinned.”
This is why our good isn’t good enough. Sure we live in a world, as the prophet states in Isaiah 5:20, that calls evil good and good evil. But when you see God for who He truly is in all His fullness, you begin to understand what true goodness is – and how far we have missed this mark.
Cribb– Lessons by Bryan Cribb, assistant professor of Christian studies in the College of Christian Studies at Anderson University (www.auministry.com). Cribb holds a Ph.D. in Old Testament theology from Southern Seminary.