But I’m a Good Person!
The LORD observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth, and he saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil.
GENESIS 6.5
The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?
JEREMIAH 17.9
The LORD looks down from heaven on the entire human race; he looks to see if anyone is truly wise, if anyone seeks God. But no, all have turned away; all have become corrupt. No one does good, not a single one!
PSALM 14.2-3
Have you ever seen a TV interview of the friends and family members of someone who has committed a terrible crime? They often say to the interviewer, “I don’t know how this happened! He’s really a good person!” They see the greed that drove the person to steal or the hate that pushed him or her to harm someone as a surprising exception to the person’s basic character and natural tendencies.
But is that really true? Are we basically good people who occasionally do bad things? Or are we thoroughly bad people who occasionally do good things?
The Bible is like a mirror that we look into, and it shows us how we really are. And while we want to think that we are basically good, so that we can save face and feel good about ourselves, the Bible says that we are “totally evil,” “desperately wicked,” and “corrupt.”
But the Bible also has very good news for bad people. If you’re a bad person — if even the best things you’ve done have been tainted by your own sinful motives and thoughts, then you are the kind of person Jesus saves. But if you see yourself as a basically good person who may have made a mistake or two — if you are a person who deep down believes that God is lucky to have someone like you on his team — you are saying that you really don’t need a Saviour. To believe you are a good person is to think you have no need for God. To acknowledge that you are no good on your own is the first step toward becoming someone who can enjoy receiving the goodness of Jesus.
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