Doing good for goodness sake!

Sometimes we Evangelicals get so carried away with our doctrinal position on sin that one would think we believe that man was made in the image of the Devil instead of God.

Don't get me wrong. Man is a sinner that can only be rescued by Divine Grace—but on the other hand, Man is not all bad, either. There is still a little virtue left in the human race.

For example when the Rich Young Ruler came to Christ with the very serious question of what must he do to inherit the Eternal Life, Christ replied in essence, “You have done well—there is nothing else for you to do, except to now go sell all you have and follow me.” (Luke 18:18-23)

My contention is that he was not far from the Kingdom because there was still a whole lot of good left in him. Of course, we all know that being good is not good enough. We must believe and follow Christ wholeheartedly to enter into His Kingdom and inherit eternal life.

Now, on the other hand there was still a lot of dignity left in the man. For he, like all of us, was created in the likeness of God—Christ, the Scripture says, even looked at him lovingly.

That to me, showed Jesus’ respect for the young man. For as the Scriptures plainly teaches, we demonstrate our love for God by how we treat one another. (1 John 4:20) And, in this case, Christ demonstrated His love of the Father by expressing His love for this young man.

A good friend of mine once said, “Jim, I judge a man by how well he treats little children and animals.”

I thought, ‘How true!’ We express our character by how we treat His creation, especially those that were made in His image.

In closing, may I ask you, when is the last time you prayed for the Taliban? Do the souls of those in error deserve any less love than the Rich Young Ruler or one of us? Do you love those that despitefully treat you, or is it pure hatred? Well, I’ll answer that for most of us, revenge not love is the emotion that is front and center. The old adage, however, is still true that we must love the sinner and hate the sin. We mustn’t confuse the two, either.

My prayer is that we will pray for those that persecute us (Matt. 5:44) and remember that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).