Why Your Best Isn't Good Enough

"But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; we all fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away." - Isaiah 64:6 (NKJV)

Sin isn't just breaking the Ten Commandments, though it includes that. James 2:10 says if you break one commandment, you're guilty of breaking them all. It's like hanging over a fire by a ten-link chain. How many links have to break for you to fall? Just one.

But there are actually three ways we sin. First, we do things we shouldn't do. Second, we don't do the things we should. James 4:17 says, "To him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin." The third one trips people up: human goodness without God.

Proverbs 21:4 says even "the plowing of the wicked" is sin. That's regular farm work, but when wicked people do it, it becomes sin. Isaiah 64:6 says our righteousness, not our wickedness, is like filthy rags.

Adrian Rogers once said,

Our righteousness is as filthy rags, and do you know what that word “filthy rags” literally means? It described the bandage that wrapped the oozing, running putrefying sores of the leper, that loathsome thing that you would burn. God says, “In my sight, that’s not what I think about your so-called badness, that’s what I think about your so-called goodness.” Well, you say, “I don’t understand that. How can it be a sin for a man to plow a field?” Because an unsaved man is in himself wicked and therefore everything he touches he contaminates. Do you like a fruit salad? Fresh fruit, oranges, bananas, grapes, apples? Who of us doesn’t like a fruit salad? I want you to imagine a beautiful fruit salad with me today, but I want you to imagine the person who’s mixing that salad for your dinner with vile open sores on his hands, mixing you a salad. Do you want it? You lost your appetite? Nothing wrong with the grapes. Nothing wrong with the bananas. Nothing wrong with the apples. There’s something wrong with the cook. Nothing wrong with plowing, but the man who plows contaminates everything he touches. His righteousness is as filthy rags. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, the worst form of badness is human goodness when that human goodness becomes a substitute for the new birth. [1]

That's how God sees our good works when we're unsaved. We contaminate everything we touch because sin has corrupted our very nature. An unsaved man is himself wicked, and therefore, he contaminates that which he touches, even if that which he touches was good and wholesome.

Many church people trust their moral behavior to get them to heaven, never realizing that even their best efforts are tainted by sin in God's sight. People can be raised in church, socially cultured, well-behaved, and even knowledgeable of the Bible, yet die and go to hell because they never understood that they are lost without Christ. They display so much goodness, and live such morally clean lives, they simply never acknowledge their depravity. We must understand that we have a disease plaguing every part of us called sin. Only then will we cry out for the cure which is only found in Jesus. When we call on Him, Romans 10:13 says we will be saved. We say, "Jesus, be my Lord and Savior!" He will forgive us and make us clean, inside and out. Reminding ourselves of these truths, as Christians, causes us to praise even louder, "Thank You, Jesus! What a Savior!" Hallelujah.

Dear Heavenly Father, I see now that even my best efforts apart from You are like filthy rags. Help me stop trusting in my own goodness and rely completely on what Christ has done. Show me any pride in my own works that might be keeping me from fully depending on Your grace, in Jesus' Name, amen.

[1] Adrian Rogers, “The Simplicity of Salvation,” in Adrian Rogers Sermon Archive (Signal Hill, CA: Rogers Family Trust, 2017), Ac 16:23–31.

This is adapted from The Vanishing of the Gospel: https://a.co/d/09DKujRi