Most People Are Not "Bad" Enough To Be Saved

 Most People Are Not "Bad" Enough To Be Saved

 

It is a strange irony that the gospel of grace in Jesus Christ and His blood atonement requires the recipients of this infinite mercy to conceive of themselves accurately and honestly--as completely wicked sinners.  After all, the Blessed Redeemer did not come here to earth to rescue "good" people who do not "need" Him.  Instead, He arrived on this planet to save wretched people who desperately need Him.

 

In the Fall of Adam, we sinners have become our own worst enemies.  God holds out perfect clemency and peace to us in His Son Jesus Christ; and we, in our stupidity, pride, and ignorance think we are too "good" for this mercy.  On the Great Day of Judgment, all the damned will fully realize that their salvation was a close to them as their hearts and mouths--and yet they refused it, being willing instead to trust in their own "righteousness."

 

No one can be born again or is born again who believes that he or she possesses any spiritual "goodness" within him- or herself.  Elect sinners come to God with nothing in our hands--indeed, we come to Him acknowledging that everything in our "hands" is evil and corrupted by our sin.

 

If all this is true, (and it is), then is it not the case that sinners outside of Jesus and His gospel grace do not see themselves as "bad" enough to be saved?  This is certainly the case.  What is interesting is this: that those blessed sinners who, by grace and through the Spirit's conviction, realize how awful they are, become beautiful in God's sight in Jesus Christ.  And, conversely, those sinners who trust in their own "goodness" are putridly gross and disgusting in His (God's) holy sight.  They are like the haughty adulteress who, as Prov. 30:20b relates, " . . . eats and wipes her mouth and says, 'I have done no wrong,' " (ESV).

 

A lot of religious sinners strongly object to God's insistence that they understand themselves to be thoroughly vile; and sometimes they concoct clever arguments to try to counter the gospel's requirement.  These include sophisticated efforts to twist the word of God into making it seem to teach moralism or works- or law-righteousness.  Others, deliberately pretending to not understand the gospel's call on us to reckon ourselves as hopelessly lost sinners, say things like this, "Oh, but your doctrine encourages me to behave as wickedly as I want to. You are promoting a form of antinomianism." . . . But none of this is true; and all of these tricks and sleights of hand will amount to nothing on the Day of Reckoning.  

 

Only those who are devoid of themselves and full of Christ have any life.  Everyone else is still "dead in trespasses and sins," (Eph. 2:1).

 

Is it not a miraculous gospel enigma, that only those who recognize their complete inability to do any good, are the only ones who actually do perform any "good," (and all of this is because Christ is present with us in the Holy Spirit's work within us)?  No one else ever does any spiritual "good" whatsoever.

 

Someone out there might be thinking, "This gospel message is just too 'weird' for me; I simply cannot understand it."  If this is the case, ask God to show you your true heart.  If He does this, through the gospel's call, then you will understand.  You will call out for mercy; and you will find it only and abundantly in Christ.

 

The Apostle Paul, who was undeniably an eminent saint in God's church, had this to say about the gospel and himself, in 1 Tim. 1:15: "The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am foremost," (ESV).  May we, by grace, be able to own the same thing about ourselves, and God's grace to us in Jesus.

 

Rev. Mark J. Henninger

Treatise #144

26 October 2026

https://theologicaltreatisesinretirement.blogspot.com

https://henningerdevotions.blogspot.com/

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