Good, But Not THAT Good #1b

Hello, my friend, and welcome to another episode of The Truth Pulpit.

We're so glad that you joined us. And I know that many of you have recently signed up for the podcast looking for the series that I told you about called Building a Christian Mind, and that series is going to start on February the 5th. February the 5th for Building a Christian Mind.

Until then, here's the next episode of our teaching as we look to God's Word and as we continue our commitment to teaching God's people God's Word on The Truth Pulpit. You cannot offset your sin with a good work. You can't go out and cancel out the debt of sins as a believer by doing good works as a Christian.

That's what we mean by that. Your works may be good, but they're not that good. They don't cancel the debt of sin. We're so glad you've joined us on The Truth Pulpit with Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Hi, I'm Bill Wright, and we're continuing our series, Breaking the Bonds of Legalism, with part two of a message titled, Good, But Not That Good. Last time, Don introduced a vital truth as put into words by the theologian Louis Berkhof. Quote, when we speak of good works in connection with sanctification, we do not refer to works that are perfect, that answer perfectly to the requirements of the divine moral law and that are of such inherent worth as to entitle one to the reward of eternal life. Today, Don will address the question, why don't our good works count even a little toward salvation?

Let's join him now in The Truth Pulpit. When I say your good works as a Christian are not that good, what do I mean? Because Scripture speaks about good works.

What do I mean when I say they're not that good? Here's what I mean. Again, we're defining terms. A Christian's good works are not meritorious.

That's a really important word. They are not meritorious. Our good works, your good works, are not enough to obligate God to you in response. Standing alone, standing is something that you yourself have done, your good works merit nothing from God.

When you hear that for the first time, it may sound really stark to your ears. You say, wait, this sounds new, but these are things that are woven into the great confessions of the Christian church. This is what good Christians have been saying from God's Word for hundreds of years.

We're not saying anything new here today. When we say a Christian's good works are not meritorious, let me be a little more technical here. The theologian Louis Berkhof says this, when we speak of good works in connection with sanctification, we do not refer to works that are perfect, that answer perfectly to the requirements of the divine moral law, and that are of such inherent worth as to entitle one to the reward of eternal life. Let me say this again, beloved, if you don't see it now, trust me, we're talking about something that is absolutely essential here and has great ramifications for your spiritual life henceforth going forward.

So I'll repeat the definition and add to it with something else he said. When we speak of good works in connection with sanctification, we do not refer to works that are perfect, that answer perfectly to the requirements of the divine moral law, and that are of such inherent worth as to entitle one to the reward of eternal life. What he's saying is is that there's nothing that we do that is so good that it entitles us to internal life. That's not the nature of Christian good works.

They're not that good. They're comparatively good, they're relatively good, they're pleasing in God's sight, but strictly judged, absolutely judged, they're not worthy to the glory that's going to be revealed to us. Birkhoff goes on and says, the good works of believers do not by their own intrinsic value make God a debtor to those who perform them. In strict justice, the good works of believers merit nothing.

Now let's unpack that. You may not believe it at the moment, but there is there is a wonderful liberty wrapped up in what I've just said to you. There is a wonderful freedom wrapped up in what you have just heard, and if you think biblically, you will see that this must be the case, that our good works do not make God our debtor. They do not put God in a position where He owes us something.

That could never be the case, as we will see. They do not put us in a position where where we could offer a perfect good work to God, and let me let me show that to you with a simple illustration. Even if you could never give God a perfect work that was not flawed, you could never give him something that was not subject to being flawed.

So let me give you a perfect example. Let's say that you're walking along, and you come across a believer who is struggling. You realize there's a financial need, and you can meet it. You realize that Scripture talks about about ministering to those who are in need within the body of Christ, and you ascertain the need, and you give them what they need.

You give them a couple of hundred bucks. You fix their car or whatever it is, and you're saying, I'm doing this because I love Christ. I'm doing this to minister to them in the name of Christ.

I'm with my eye on Christ. I want to do this to the glory of God, and it delights my heart to do this, and even if you were doing it with perfect motives, you do it, you go out, and you do that, and you could say, yeah, that's a good work. And then, is that a perfect work?

Well, think about it this way. Think about it this way, and see how subject to sin the best of what we do is. Five minutes later, after having done that good work, you meet a friend and say, hey, you want to hear what I just did?

You know what I just did? So-and-so had this need, and I gave him $200, and I fixed their car, and I feel really good about it, and all of a sudden you violated Matthew 6, keep your righteousness quiet before men. And even if that prior work was perfect, you went out and defiled it by your boastful attitude. We're subject to sin in so many ways, what we do is so prone to being flawed. Biblical obedience is important, we saw that last time, I'm not going to repeat it here today, but what we're saying here today is something different. What we're saying is is that your obedience to God, your good works as a Christian, lack the intrinsic value to obligate God to you, to force his hand so that he must deal with you in a particular way. Job was blameless, and God allowed Satan to sift him.

It doesn't work on that legalistic principle. How can we say that your good works do not obligate God? Well, let's start here with point number one.

Point number one. Your good works do not merit the pardon of your sin. Your good works do not merit the pardon of your sin.

We started with these two principles. We are sinners in need of Christ. To say that we are sinners is to say that we fall short of the glory of God, that we do not measure up to his standard. And even as believers, though we have been declared righteous as a practical matter, there is still remaining sin that needs to be purged out of our lives. And so, beloved, when you sin, you cannot offset your sin with a good work. You can't go out and cancel out the debt of sins as a believer by doing good works as a Christian.

That's what we mean by that. Your works may be good, but they're not that good. They don't cancel the debt of sin. And when we say a work merits pardon of sin, what we mean is this, is that the good work brings God into the believer's debt. That a good work somehow makes it so that God must pardon your sin in response to the good work.

It doesn't work that way. Your works may be good, they may be pleasing to God, but they're not that good. They don't obligate him to forgive sin, they are not the basis upon which God forgives your sin. Our works, beloved, if we're honest with ourselves, if we're honest in the light of God's Word, our works are never perfect, are they? If nothing else, if nothing else, they can be done with a mixture of motives. For example, I can preach to the best of my heart's desire to the glory of God, preach in response to my salvation, preach in response to the Word, preach because the Word says, preach the Word, and do that, but in the act of preaching have unworthy thoughts, in the act of preaching have unmixed motives, saying, boy I hope they like what I'm saying, have a manward focus on what should be a vertical aspect of worship to God alone, so that even while it is good and done in faith and done by response to the Word of God, it's still flawed.

That's true of all of us. That if nothing else, and there's a lot more, if nothing else, the problem of mixed motives, of doing things externally without our hearts fully engaged, leave it so that they're not absolutely perfect, not with absolutely perfect motives. Let me remind you of something, beloved.

What we're doing here is we're just kind of working out the implications of what we already believe. Let me remind you of something as we talk about this point, your good works do not merit pardon from God. Beloved, please remember, please remember that the teaching of Scripture is is that God did not pardon your sin because of something in you. God pardoned your sin for the sake of Christ. He pardoned your sin for the sake of His shed blood. 1st John 1-7, the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.

We are immediately humbled by that. We were immediately brought to a recognition that nothing I could do could compare to the infinite merit of a single drop of the immaculate blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing I do compares to the innocence and the infinite value, the infinite righteousness of the blood that was shed for my salvation. And so you think about your good works in the context from the perspective of what really cleansed my sin.

The eternal Son of God becoming incarnate 2,000 years ago, going to the cross and voluntarily giving up His life, shedding His blood, bearing the wrath, going to the grave. My little piddly act in time and space for my imperfect life doesn't merit the pardon of sin. What brings the pardon of sin is an act of infinite righteousness of infinite grace by an infinite glorious Son of God and nothing I do compares to that.

There may be a place where my works could be called good in a comparative sense, but whatever else you say about your works, they're not that good. They're not as good as the blood of Christ, and it is only the blood of Christ that washes away sin. And so you think about these things and you realize, okay, I'm pleased to serve God, I'm glad to do good works, but I realize there's a limit to how good it is, and even at my best there is an infinite gulf between what I do and the precious blood of Christ. You are a sinner. You cannot work off the debt of sin by what you do. Christian, your works may be good as a Christian, but they're not that good.

They're not that good. At our hypothetical best, you can approach this from another way, turn to the gospel of Luke chapter 17. Luke chapter 17 verses 9 and 10. And as a preface to this, let's just remember that we have life only because God gave it to us. We have physical life only because God imparted it to us.

We have spiritual life if we are Christians and only if we are Christians, and we have it only because God imparted that life to us as well. In grace He saved us. He gave us life and then He saved us.

And what does that require? By right of creation, by right of redemption, we owe God our all. We would not exist apart from Him, we would not be saved apart from Christ. And so in verse 10 of Luke chapter 17, Jesus said, when you do all the things which are commanded you, say we are unworthy slaves.

We have only done that which we ought to have done. God, even when I even when I did my best, even when I even when I maxed out my effort for the gospel of Christ, maxed out my life for for the glory of Christ, did everything that was called for, the best that I could say was that was just my duty to do that. After receiving the gift of physical life, after receiving the gift of spiritual life, being completely on the receiving end, what have I given, Lord, except what you first gave to me? If I if I give you an act of strength as my obedience in this day, what am I doing it except from strength that you've already first supplied to me?

I don't mind being personal. If I teach the Word of God and if I teach it rightly, if I teach it in the proper spirit, what have I done except to use a mind that God has given me to explain a word that He gave to the world? How does that make me somehow the creditor and God the debtor? How does that make God the one who owes me?

It doesn't work that way. And so we have to think fundamentally about where we stand in the order of creation and where we stand in the order of salvation. God, if you have saved me, then anything that I can do is only a response to what you've already first done. I serve you from the strength which Christ supplies. If I speak truth, it's not anything that I came up with. It was your truth, your revelation, and why am I so animated about this?

Why do I get so exercised about this? Because right here is the dividing line between humility and pride. We look and we say, you know, this was... look what I did, and puff up over it because we forget we're sinners or come to a place of renewed humility that says Christ is all that matters. Christ is the one who's glorified. Christ is the only one whose glory matters here.

I'm an unworthy slave. I'm a sinner saved by grace, nothing more. It's no secret that I'm a lover of Martyn Lloyd-Jones even though he's been gone for 37 years now, and at the end of his 50-some years of ministry, many years, 30 years at Westminster Chapel in London, at the end of his life he's talking with his biographer Ian Murray. This is recorded in the two-volume biography, and they're talking looking back over his life.

He was ill, life was going to... didn't hold out much more time. This great man, so greatly used by God, whose works are more influential now than they were while he was alive. This man who had preached without compromise for decades, been sought around the world for his counsel and his teaching, comes to the end of his life, looks at his former assistant, the writer of his biography, and says, I'm just a sinner saved by grace.

That's the spirit. Nothing that a sinner could offer to God in response would compensate for the guilt of sin. Nothing that the sinner could offer to God could merit eternal life. We can't offset one sin by doing something good. I remember as a teenager, having been very naughty on Saturday night, showed up at church on Sunday and someone commented, I'm surprised to see you. I said, yeah, I had to make up for what I did last night.

That was my mindset. Sin one night, go to church, balances out, you're still okay. No, that's not it. One writer said this, hear me beloved, this is the heart, this is the vibrating heart, this is the pulsating heart of experimental experiential Christianity. Believers owe their whole life to God and therefore cannot merit anything by giving God simply what is his due. I'll say it again, I don't mind repeating myself here, believers owe their whole life to God and therefore cannot merit anything by giving God simply what is his due. Do you see that? Do you understand that? Is that woven into your self-perception?

You can take it another step. You think about it this way, Jesus said apart from me you can do nothing. Even when you're doing good works in the name of Christ to the glory of Christ, doing it by faith, you're doing it by a strength that he's given you, you're doing it by the power of an indwelling Holy Spirit that Christ has given to you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit apart from the vine, so you cannot bear fruit apart from Christ. And so if there's any fruit to my ministry, if there's anything good that comes out of it, I look at that and I say but that's only because of what Christ was doing in a hidden unseen way.

It couldn't have been me, believe me. No matter what we do in the best of our efforts, we're just giving what's due and if we're giving what's due, we're giving it by a strength that is supplied to us by Christ. There's no merit in that that accrues to our account independently of Christ.

There's no obligation to God to reward that. If the help of Christ was necessary, we cannot claim independent merit to what we have done. The testimony of these things, the testimony of my pulpit, the testimony of any Christian seeking to serve Christ is I was not good enough on my own.

I was not strong enough on my own. If something happened good as a result, all praise and glory to Christ because it could have only been His strength, it was His Word, it was His grace that saved me in the first place. You can see this illustrated. Turn to Revelation chapter 4. I had two points today, I'm only going to finish this one. The spirit of what we are talking about is that if there is anything good that comes out of our lives as Christians, we quickly run to give Christ the glory for it. Not to put our name up in lights, not to put our name on the sign. Heaven forbid. Heaven forbid that as a Christian, there would be some desire within us that that grasps after glory for ourselves rather than the one who gave us life, both physical and spiritual.

God forbid. And you see the spirit of this in Revelation chapter 4. When the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to Him who sits on the throne, to Him who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders will fall down before Him who sits on the throne and will worship Him who lives forever and ever and will cast their crowns before the throne.

Taking the reward that God had given them and rather than keeping it to themselves, they fling it like a Frisbee at the feet of Jesus. And say, worthy are you our Lord and our God to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things and because of your will they existed and were created. God you rewarded me, my immediate response is to throw it back to Christ, to give it to Him because without Christ apart from Christ there would be nothing to merit, there would be nothing to reward. Lord I was all along, I was just a sinner in need of Christ and in love, mercy, grace, patience, and goodness, God my God you gave Him to me, you sent Him and not only do I not keep any of the glory, God I gladly surrender it to the one who gave his all for me. No merit of my own, his anger to suppress, my only hope is found in Jesus blood and righteousness. And so we offer God a life of obedience, yes absolutely, but we realize when it's all said and done my obedience merits nothing from God. My obedience comes if it comes at all, it comes through the strength of Christ and it's to his glory and if when I've done my best God all I've done is done what I should have done to begin with is to live my life for you.

Since we owe everything to Christ all glory goes to Him as Scripture reminds us our righteousness is as a filthy rag. Pastor Don Green will continue his message good but not that good next time here on The Truth Pulpit so don't miss a moment. Right now though Don's back here in studio with some closing words.

Hi friend, as we close today I just want to make something available to you. You know as you listen to these radio broadcasts they have to fit into a 25-minute format and we're very grateful for the opportunity the Lord's given us to do just that. But the radio messages are born out of a longer sermon message that contains more information, more background, a fuller explanation of the passage and what we're able to do on radio. So I encourage you to go to our website and find the link that says follow Don's pulpit. That'll lead you to a podcast that gives you the full length sermons from every Sunday and every Tuesday from my pulpit. I really think that it'll minister to you over time to hear the full length messages so we make that available for free and we would love you to join us in that way as well. Thank you Don and friend to take advantage of what Don just mentioned simply visit thetruthpulpit.com. That's thetruthpulpit.com. I'm Bill Wright and we'll see you next time for more from the Truth Pulpit.