Assumption

"All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags..."

Isaiah 46:6

Assumptions. 

We all have them.  Some we carry knowingly, some we carry unknowingly until we are confronted with them.

Over the course of the last week, I heard the same assumption over and over. 

ASSUMPTION: I must do good works to make myself right with God.

This assumption can be expressed and played out in many ways.  At it's core is the idea that we have to work to be good for God.  It's the idea that God will not love me unless I somehow become good.  It's the idea that I have to settle a score with God.  I must do enough good things to balance out the bad ones that I have done.  If I want to please God, then I have to work to make myself right with him. 

The Bible says that our righteous acts are like filthy rags.  Dirty, stinking, disgusting rags to God.  They do not please God.  They do not make us good enough for God.  They don't make us good.  There is nothing we can do to make ourselves right with God. 

ASSUMPTION: I must do good works to make myself right with God. 

REALITY: God's grace is the only thing that makes me right with him. 

The reality is that we can do nothing to make ourselves right.  Our good works don't make us right or good.  Only the grace of God expressed in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus makes us right with God. 

We don't do good works to make us right.  We do good works out of a deep appreciation and gratitude for what God has done.  We do GOOD in response to the GREAT thing he has done in forgiving us through the blood of his Son, Jesus Christ.

Why do you do good?  To earn God's favor or in response to his favor?