Are you a Christian? Let me guess how your average day goes.
- When you start the day, if you can get some time for prayer in, you feel pretty good. Devotions? Check.
- When you get to work, if you’re able to casually bring up the fact that you went to church this weekend, you feel pretty good. Witnessing? Check.
- At lunchtime, you take a few minutes to surf the internet on your phone. If you can avoid clicking on the links that will get your mind going in the wrong direction, you feel pretty good. Purity? Check.
- You go home and eat dinner, and if you do the dishes for your wife, you feel pretty good. Being a good husband? Check.
- If you read the Bible with your kids, and pray with them before bed, you feel pretty good. Being a good father? Check.
- You look at your email before bed, and there’s something in your inbox from a relief organization about feeding starving kids in Syria. They can’t feed these kids without your help. If you click on the Donate button, you feel pretty good. Generosity? Double-check!
You crash into bed, and if you’ve checked off enough boxes, you feel really good about your day. But it’s all because of what you’ve done. It’s not at all because of what Jesus already did for you.
You stumbled over the stumbling stone. You joined all the religious people across the globe who “pursued a law that would lead to righteousness [but] did not succeed in reaching that law. Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the stumbling stone” (Rom 9:31-32).
Billions of people around the world — Christians, Catholics, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, and Hindus — have this feeling way down deep that God’s love for them is based on their obedience to him. Most of them have average days that look almost exactly like yours! They believed they were pursuing righteousness too, but “they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works.” They thought they were glorifying God like you did, but they were just glorifying themselves.
Go ask ten random people in Hawaii if they think they’re going to heaven. We don’t have many atheists on this island, so all ten of them would probably say yes. But then ask them why they think they’re going to heaven. Most of them (including many who call themselves Christians) would say something like, “Because I tried to live a good life. Because I donated money to charity. Because I volunteered.”
How many of them would say, “I’m going to heaven because Jesus Christ gave me his righteousness?”
As Paul describes religious people, “Being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes” (Rom 10:3-4).
In other words, Christ is the end-goal of the law for everyone who seeks righteousness. When God gave us all the commandments in the Bible, it was to show us that we just can’t keep all the commandments in the Bible. That’s why we need Jesus. The one person who kept them perfectly. We can’t find righteousness on our own, so we need Jesus to give us his righteousness.
When you crash into bed tonight and review your day, there’s only one box to check. Relied on Christ for everything today? Check.