Romans 3:20 Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.
Your Weakness Should Always Drive You to Christ
My daughter is currently taking a class on bioethics, which is essentially the study of whether we should do everything that we scientifically can do. One of the most interesting questions is regarding a group who is trying to extend life as far as possible. They even use words like “eternal.” I don’t know how serious this is, but they are serious about it. I think the desire to extend life is wonderful, but I also think there is an assumption among many people today that our main problems are those that limit life like sickness, disease, poverty, and so on. They totally overlook the fact that sin is the root problem in this world.
In other words, would the average person want to scale the life they now have to one or two hundred years? Eternal life as the Bible speaks of it is not just a matter of quantity; it is a matter of an abundant life that God alone can give. Nobody is going to be able to make a perfect world no matter how long any of us live because sin is a universal condition.
Romans 3:9 says it this way, “What then? are we better than they? No, in no wise: for we have before proved both Jew and Gentiles, that they are under sin; as it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.”
Notice words like, “not one,” “no one,” “all,” and “both.” Whether you are Jew or Gentile, rich or poor, young or old, we are all sinners. That is the problem. It is not that we have a social construct that is faulty or that we have some kind of disease that we cannot cure. The problem is sin.
Would you want to scale the normal life expectancy for the worst person on the planet to three hundred years? Well, clearly, no. Well, what is the difference between you and the worst person on the planet? Truthfully, what we all have in common is our nature to sin. Some of us have more practice than others, but the problem that the world just seems to intentionally ignore is that we are born with a sin nature.
Doing good after we have already done bad is not the answer. The Ten Commandments are not God’s path to Heaven. Romans 3:19 says, “Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.” The Ten Commandments were not given to justify anyone. They were given to condemn us. They were given to help us see how great our need is and therefore how great God’s grace is. As long as we think we are okay by extending life, creating comfort, or doing the best we can, we are never going to change anything of eternal consequence.
In short, until I realize I can’t attain to God’s level of perfection, I’m not going to trust the One Who has, the Lord Jesus Christ. Your weakness should always drive you to Christ.
You are saved by faith, so walk that way. What we do so many times after we come to Christ to save our souls is to attempt to strong-arm our way through our own problems. Friends, if God would give you His Son in order to secure your salvation, what is it necessary for your salvation that God would begrudge? The answer is nothing!
The two things you need today are humility and faith. Why? It is because your weakness should always drive you to Christ. Humility is realizing that you have a need, and faith is realizing that He has grace, supernatural enabling. This is a decision, not a feeling. Feelings may follow, but this is a decision. If you can trust Jesus Christ with forever, why not depend on Him for today? Your weakness should always drive you to His grace, strength, and enabling for salvation and for life.