How Good Is Good Enough?

I did not actually plan the songs that we have just sung, but I certainly couldn’t have planned them better if I had picked them myself, because the truths that we have sung about in these opening songs of praise—particularly the first two—speak to the very heart of what I want to bring before you before these baptisms take place this evening.

There will be some who are here tonight, and this is all a new experience for you, and you are wondering just exactly why it is that we would do what we do and why, perhaps, your friends or work colleagues or family members have decided to take what would seem from your perspective to be a somewhat strange step in being baptized. And it would be possible, if one was not careful, for the focus to be so diverted to that that we might miss the opportunity of explaining what it is that underpins the symbolism of the baptisms that are about to take place. And at the very heart of it is this essential question: How is it possible for men and women to be put in a right standing with the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ?

Now, admittedly, that may not have been the question that was uppermost in your mind upon your arrival, nor, even in my stating of it, will it necessarily strike you as of fundamental importance. And there are a number of reasons why that may be the case. I don’t want to state them all, but one of them is simply this: because you have actually decided that you know the answer to the question. And the answer to the question that satisfies you to this point in your life goes something like this: A good God is bound to accept good men and women who are prepared to do their best. A good God is bound to accept good men and women who are prepared to do their best.

Now, for those who grant credence to the existence of a personal creator God, who are prepared at the same time to recognize that all is not well with our individual circumstances, who at the same time recognize that there needs somehow or another to have the bringing together of these two parties which are alienated as a result of man’s rebellion, still it is a fairly normal response to find people saying, “Ach! Well, a good God will probably be quite beneficent towards good men and women, provided they’re just trying to do their best.”

How good do you have to be to make sure that you are good enough to be accepted by this good God who grants credit for doing your best? Martin Luther, the Roman Catholic monk, was consumed with that notion, and consumed to the point of anguish in his own life. He could not solve the problem for himself until one day, reading in the book of Romans in an earlier chapter (in fact, in chapter 1), he discovered that “in the gospel”—that is, in the good news—“a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faith.’”[1]

At the very heart of baptism is this essential question: How is it possible for men and women to be put in a right standing with the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ?

Now, the reason that this struck him so forcibly was because he was consumed with being righteous. After all, he was a monk. He was a religious man. He loved God. He served God. But he had no assurance that God was pleased with him. He had no conviction that somehow or another, his sins had been atoned for, and he could be welcomed into the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ, whom he sought to know. And he was convinced at the same time of what is said in the verse before us in Romans 3:10: “There is no one righteous, not even one.” And he knew that he wasn’t, and that was why he was trying to be. But the harder he tried, the more hell seemed a reality, and the more his own inabilities came to the fore.

Until he suddenly saw it: The righteousness that God requires to put a sinful man in a right standing with a holy God is not a righteousness that a man or a woman engenders but is a righteousness which God, in his grace, freely gives. And said Luther on that occasion, “When I realized this I felt myself absolutely born again. The gates of paradise had been flung open and I had entered. There and then the whole of scripture took on another look [for] me.”[2]

Now, if it was that radical of a discovery for Luther and has been for others down through the corridors of time, I want to bring it before you and us this evening so that we might think it out. And I just want, in the brief time that I have, to be as precise as I may. And you can pray that I will resist every temptation to make tangential runs from my notes.

The Reality of Human Sin and Divine Judgment

This is of vital importance, particularly because of two realities.

First of all: the reality of human sin. The reality of human sin. “There is no difference,” says Paul. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” The fact of human sin is universal. It crosses all barriers of race. It deals with every intellect and every person that has ever lived. None of us is able to avoid the fact in our experience. All of us have made a mess of our exercise books, if you like. And no matter how many times we may seek to tear out the pages of our sinfulness, we cannot eradicate the fact of our failure.

And that, I suggest to you, is the reason why so many people live in such despondency. It is actually the root of a tremendous amount of depression that is, even in its very basis, clinical depression. It is the foundation of so much anger and strife and bitterness. Although men and women are not aware of the fact, they wonder, “Why is it that I am the way I am—especially when I have tried so hard to turn over a new leaf? I have torn so many pages out, I’ve put masking tape around chapter after chapter, I’ve started a new morning and a new week with a clean page, but I still, still stain and blot and mar my life story.”

One of the myths that goes along with the verse that I mentioned—that a good God would be kind of kind to good men and women who were trying to do their best—another myth that goes along with that is simply this: that the passage of time eradicates sin; that as long as you can live long enough to have almost forgotten it, then it’ll be gone.

Those of you who have read C. S. Lewis will know that he has a wonderful little paragraph on this. He says,

We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. I have heard others, and I[’ve] heard myself, recounting cruelties and falsehoods committed in boyhood as if they were no concern of the present speaker’s, and even with laughter. But mere time does nothing … to the fact or … guilt of … sin.[3]

Now, if you think of that, it makes perfect sense. And that is why when you’re driving in your car one day, unless you have discovered an answer for sin, some of the most heinous things from your past—regrets and disappointments—will rise up and accuse you. It is as though they appear on your rear mirror. And you either have to turn the stereo up, or you have to roll the window down, or you have to think in some other way, because you know that that is actually true, and you have no assurance that it has been dealt with.

So, you see, sin cannot be eradicated merely by the passage of time, nor can it be eradicated by power of self-exertion. Martin Luther, in a monastery, sought to do that. And if he couldn’t do it in a monastery, it’s unlikely that you or I can do it in our homes and in our streets.

This is such a crucial notion, first of all, then, because of the undeniable nature of human sin; secondly, because of the inevitability and the inescapableness of God’s judgment upon sin. Romans 3:19: “Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God.”

How does God measure our accountability? Well, he holds us and measures us by his own standards. And since his standard is absolute perfection, which of us, then, would stand and say that we can pass the test, or we have passed the test? The staggering fact is, as Paul says later on in Romans 14:12, that “each of us will give an account” to God himself—“will give an account of himself to God.” That’s a staggering thought: that every man and woman and boy and girl in this room this evening will one day stand before the God who made us and will give an account of ourselves to him. Now, this truth is absolutely abhorrent to modern man, who has embraced the idea that salvation comes by self-effort, by hoping to be good enough to satisfy a good God who will look favorably upon those who are doing their best.

What It Means to Be Right with God

The second thing I want to point out is not simply the necessity of what it means to be set right with God but the meaning of what it means to be set right with God. Because there is so much confusion in the minds of people when they think about this. Is it, then, that God just lets us off? That somehow or another he changes his mind—that he was thinking about it in the Old Testament, and then in the New Testament, he changed his mind and came up with another plan?

God holds us and measures us by his own standards. And since his standard is absolute perfection, which of us would stand and say that we have passed the test?

No. In 2 Corinthians 5:21, the apostle Paul says this: “God made him”—that is, Jesus—“God made [Jesus] who had no sin to be sin for us.” Now, think about that for a moment. Theologians refer to it as the Great Exchange. Here we have Christ, who is absolute perfection, God incarnate, without sin, total purity, kept the law flawlessly, never offended, nothing in him that is a blemish at all. And God made this Christ, who knew nothing of sin, to be sin for us.

Now, that’s the significance, you see, of what happens on the cross. Because why is it that a perfect man would die on the cross? “Oh,” say people, “to show us how much God loves us.” That’s a strange way to manifest love if that was the only reason. It would be like me saying, “I love my wife. I’m jumping off the bridge down there at West 25th Street just to show her how much I love her.” People would say, “That’s no evidence of love.” But if I were to jump from the bridge in order to save someone down there, then it may be an expression of love. And when Christ hanged upon the cross, he who was absolutely sinless was made “sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”[4] We, who are all flawed and goofed up and messed up and cannot write the page clean, with no prospect of ever getting into God’s presence as a result of our goodness, are totally stuck—unless someone comes on a rescue mission. And, of course, that is exactly what took place.

The Lord Jesus Christ, by dying on the cross, accepted in his own person the penalty that was due to us, on account of which God the Father declares guilty sinners immune from punishment and righteous in God’s sight. Jesus bears the wrath of God that is meted out upon sin as our representative and as our substitute. In the cross, sin is not overlooked or condoned. In the cross, God’s holy antagonism toward sin is affirmed. Hence the hymn writer says, “Bearing shame and scoffing rude, in my place condemned he stood.”[5] When we look upon the cross, we see where we deserve to be. And despite Christ’s personal innocence, he was treated as a guilty man.

You see, it doesn’t make any sense, does it, that a good God would look kindly upon good men and women just trying to do their best when he has gone to the very essence of what is involved by taking his one and only Son and sending him to live life on earth in absolute perfection in order that he might become the Sin-Bearer and substitute and the one who dies in our place and bears our penalty and secures our pardon?

Again, Martin Luther: “Our most merciful father,” writes Luther,

sent his … Son into the world, and laid upon him all the sins of all men, saying: be thou Peter that denier: Paul that persecutor, blasphemer, and cruel oppressor: David that adulterer: that sinner which did eat the apple in paradise: that thief which hanged upon the cross, and briefly, be thou the person which hath committed the sins of all men.[6]

You see, Christ in the cross emptied himself of all his righteousness. Why? So that he might clothe us in it; so that we who hadn’t a hope in the world of knowing God and being accepted by God, who could never assume that we could make ourselves good enough to tip the scales in our favor, that we would come and take off all the filthy rags of our own rebellion and our own indifference and our own religion and our own good deeds, and we would cast them at the foot of the cross, and we would be granted a robe of Christ’s righteousness, in metaphorical terms, and God would look upon us in his Son and say, “She’s okay.”

When we look upon the cross, we see where we deserve to be.

And incidentally, when people were baptized in the first century, they stepped down into the water, and they took off their outer garment, and they cast it aside, and they were baptized, and they came out on the other side, and they were given a new, white, glowing outer garment robe to wear. And as they walked off down the street, the symbolism was complete: All that was represented before of their dependence upon themselves and their own good deeds and their attempts to get into heaven had been left on the other side of the river, because Christ had borne them safely through. And they weren’t going to walk around and talk about themselves or how wonderful they were or what they had done, but they were going to talk about Christ. Because all of their sins had been reckoned to Christ—the theological word is imputed to Christ—so that he bore God’s judgment on them. And in virtue of that, his righteousness is imputed, or reckoned, to us, so that we are pardoned and accepted and given a righteous man’s status for his sake.

This is an abhorrent notion to those who are working their way to heaven. ’Cause it really rattles your cage, does it not? I remember sharing this with a taxi driver in Chicago, and as I had an opportunity to tell him this, he says, “Oh, I could never believe that. If I believed that, then I might do what I want. If you’re telling me that all of my sins have been cast on Christ, past, present, and future, then maybe I’ll just accept that, and then I can go out and sin like crazy.” He was smarter than he realized! Because that’s the inevitability of the truth, is it not? If you would come to Christ and trust in him, gone are the old rags of sin. Granted is a new robe. Your security in heaven is certain on the basis of nothing you have done and nothing you are about to do. “Well,” says somebody, “well, in that case, maybe I’ll go out and sin like crazy.”

Aha! Paul already anticipated that in Romans 6.[7] He says, “Now, if you were to do that, then what you would be declaring is the fact that you never understood the wonder of forgiveness in the first place.” It would be like waking up every morning and slapping your husband’s face just to give him an opportunity to forgive you. And every time he forgave you, you would say, “And what a wonderful, forgiving husband I have!” It’s totally incongruous, is it not? It’s a stupid idea—so that we would be forgiven all of our sins, and then the one who has forgiven us all at the expense of his death, we would then spit in his face every Monday morning when we got up.

You see, it is on the basis of this, despite all of our shortcomings—of which we are so very conscious—that we may be sure of eternal salvation, that we may rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. And justification, which is what we’re talking about, is not subject to degrees. It is not possible to be more or less justified. How easy it is to fall into the trap of assuming that we only remain justified so long as there are grounds in our character for justification! Listen: Nothing we do ever, ever, ever contributes to our justification. It is not that God helps us a wee bit, and then we do the other 40 percent. It’s not a joint venture. Christ has done it all.

The Only Way to Be Justified

And then the last point is simply this: “Well, if what you’re saying, Alistair, is true, that is a staggering revelation to me. Because you actually hit the nail on the head at the beginning. I have been thinking that for most of my life. I have been thinking that a good God will probably be fairly gracious to good men and women as long as they’re trying to do their best.” And your reasoning goes something like this: “Are you then telling me that the only way in which I can enter into the benefits of this justification which Christ has made available will come about when I recognize that I am hopelessly and helplessly guilty?” Yes.

Luther had to come to that. He had to realize that he could not make himself accepted to God. And the more he tried to do that, the more the day of judgment loomed in his thoughts, and the more intensely, he says in his writings, did the fear of hell sear his soul. But when he came to see that Christ’s righteousness is the only ground of justification and that it is only by faith that we lay hold on Christ, so that his righteousness becomes ours; and when he discovered that the faith, the very faith, has no value in itself—it’s not the means whereby this is generated; it is the conduit through which it comes—then he and all who have followed him bowed before Christ and acknowledged that any act and every contribution that we might think to make towards our salvation is absolutely and unequivocally shut out. “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”[8]

And the gift of justification must be seen and received as a blessing that is dependent wholly and exclusively on Christ alone and on who he is and on what he has done. It is only on the ground of his obedience as our substitute and as our Sin-Bearer, and that alone, that this righteousness is reckoned to us, and our sin is canceled.

What does this mean? Well, it means that our failures and our disappointments do not change his divine verdict. It means, in the words of the hymn writer, that our “faith has found our resting place not in device or creed,” but we “trust the ever-living one,” and “his wounds for me [must] plead.” And

I need no other [sacrifice];
I need no other plea.
It is enough that Jesus died
And that he died for me.[9]

You would think, would you not, that sensible men and women, thinking through at least the logic of this theology, would immediately run to Christ. But they don’t. Because if this simple statement of truth was enough to change behavior, then nobody would smoke cigarettes at all. The facts are undeniable. And the thing that will keep a man or a woman tonight from receiving the gift of God in the Lord Jesus Christ is pride. It’s the kind of sentiment which says, “I am not going to go to anybody—even Christ himself—and fall on my face and admit myself to be hopelessly and helplessly in need of his rescue.”

Then your pride will continue to separate you from God. And if you stay in that condition until the day you die, then you will be separated from God through all of eternity. And that is hell. And you will never be able to say that you were not here and you did not hear. And therefore, if you have ears to hear, do not harden your hearts.[10]

Let us pray together:

O God our Father, we pray that the solemnity of these thoughts may grip our souls—the wonder that you make us whiter than snow,[11] not because of our ability to scrub up and clean up and by religious zeal endear ourselves to you but because of the wonder of the sacrifice of your Son. Drive home this truth, we pray, as we listen to those who tell us now of the wonder of your redeeming grace within their lives, and grant that in hearing we might understand and that tonight may be a night of salvation in many a life. For the glory of your Son we ask it. Amen.

[1] Romans 1:17 (NIV 1984).

[2] Martin Luther, preface to Latin Writings (1545), quoted in James Atkinson, The Great Light: Luther and the Reformation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968), 20.

[3] C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (1940), chap. 4.

[4] 2 Corinthians 5:21 (NIV 1984).

[5] Philip Paul Bliss, “Hallelujah! What a Savior!” (1875).

[6] Martin Luther, A Commentary on Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (London: Mathews and Leigh, 1807), 188.

[7] See Romans 6:1–2.

[8] Romans 6:23 (KJV).

[9] Eliza Edmunds Hewitt, “My Faith Has Found a Resting Place” (1890).

[10] See Psalm 95:7–8; Hebrews 3:7–8, 15; 4:7.

[11] See Psalm 51:7; Isaiah 1:18.