Stop trying to be good (1) – By Femi Aribisala

“Goodness cannot be found in man. Goodness is a fruit of God’s Holy Spirit”.

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If God asks you to do something, do not do it. Ask Him to do it for you. God will never ask you to do what you can do. He will always ask you to do what you cannot do.

Let us be instructed by the psalmist who says: “I will cry out to God Most High, to God who performs all things for me.” (Psalm 57:2).

If God performs all things for us, then we have no free will.

For example, Jesus says: “Give to him who asks you.” (Matthew 5:42). But no man has ever obeyed this simple command. Indeed, no man can. We do not always give to him who asks us. Who only do so sometimes.

Jesus knows we cannot do it on our own. He tells us: “Without Me, you can do nothing.” (John 15:5).

How about this one: “Be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48).

Has anyone achieved this? No!

“If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” (Matthew 19:21).

Did the man do it? No!

So, I repeat. If God ever tells you to do anything, do not even try to do it. Ask Him to do it for you. He will do it through you.

Stop trying

Stop trying to be good. You can never be what you try to be. You cannot be what you are not. You can only be what you are.

God says: “I AM WHAT I AM.” Paul says: “By the grace of God I am what I am.” (1 Corinthians 15:10).

We are what we are and not what we try to be. So, stop trying to be good. You are either good or you are not. Goodness is not amenable to effort. A man can only be good if God makes him good.

Goodness is not in man. Goodness cannot be found in man. Goodness is a fruit of God’s Holy Spirit. Therefore, a man can only be good if he is born of God and is vested with the Holy Spirit.

Jesus says: “Make the tree good and its fruit good, or else make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for a tree is known by its fruit.” (Matthew 12:33).

But only God can make the tree good and its fruit good. A man who is born again is a good man by the grace of God. He must be careful not to fall from grace by trying to be good.

A woman is a woman

A woman is a woman because God made her a woman. She does not have to try to be a woman. She does not have to prove she is a woman by getting pregnant. If her boyfriend asks: “How do I know you are really a woman? I cannot marry you unless you first get pregnant for me.”

Tell him to take a hike: “BYE, BYE!”

The devil told Jesus: “If you are the son of God, jump down from this high place.” Do not bother with him. “My jumping will not make me a son of God. I am either a son of God or I am not. My jumping will just make me a dead son of God.”

Righteousness of man

According to man, the righteous man is the man who does good works. This is nonsense because we are not what we do. We are what we are.

Man, in his ignorance, says the good man is good because he is eager to lend a helping hand. He is generous. He is respectful. He gives money to the poor. He does not fight. He goes to church regularly. He is faithful to his wife. He takes good care of his family.

But all these good deeds are dead works because it is a man who does them. A man can never do anything good. Man is congenitally bad.

Jesus says we are evil: “Brood of vipers! How can you, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” (Matthew 12:34). He says furthermore: “Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts.” (Matthew 15:19).

Jeremiah concurs: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” (Jeremiah 17:9).

This ensures that the righteousness of man is unrighteous to God. The Bible says the Lord is righteous in all his ways. (Psalm 145:17). But man is completely different: “We are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags.” (Isaiah 64:6). “As it is written: “‘There is none righteous, no, not one.’” (Romans 3:10).

Jesus told the scribes and the Pharisees who brought to Him a woman caught in adultery and asked if she should be stoned to death: “He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.” (John 8:7).

Nobody could stone her because nobody is without sin. “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23).  

Only God

Jesus says: “No one is good but One, that is, God.” (Matthew 19:17). But Jesus Himself claims to be good so He must be God: “Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with my own things? Or is your eye evil because I am good?” (Matthew 20:15).

That is why we must not receive praise from men. No man deserves praise. Only God is praiseworthy.

Nothing a man does pleases God because man is imperfect and God only wants perfection.

I have discovered that absolutely nothing I do impresses God. I have tried repeatedly to please God by doing righteous things: but I have never been able to impress him. Nevertheless, I have seen people who do bad things, and they are full of testimonies about God. And I know they are not lying.

We get no commendation from God for doing even what He tells us to do. Jesus says: “When you have done all those things which you are commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do.’” (Luke 17:10).

Frank Sinatra sang a million-dollar song: “I Did It My Way.” Nothing is further from the truth. There are only two ways. We either do it God’s way or the devil’s way. Man’s way does not exist.

Since I met Jesus, I have discovered that what I call good is bad. What I call right is wrong. Solomon says: “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.” (Proverbs 14:12).

Like Job, we must surrender to God and acknowledge that it is unwise to pontificate about things we do not understand. It is unwise to talk about things that are too wonderful for us to know.

God is always right, even when we think He is wrong. He is always fair, even when we think He is unfair. He is always kind, even when we think He is unkind.

Men do not know what it means to be right or wrong, fair or unfair, and kind or unkind. We must leave all this to the Holy Spirit to decide for us.

God’s ways

The ways of God are not the ways of man. “The Lord does not see as man sees.” (1 Samuel 16:7). What makes a man good in the eyes of men makes him evil in the eyes of God.

Jesus says: “What is highly valued among men is detestable in God’s sight.” (Luke 16:15).

You are busy making up, doing your hair, putting on lipstick. You are wearing exquisite clothing and expensive jewelry because you want to look good. But God, your Bridegroom, is not interested. He is only looking at your heart.

Therefore: “Do not let your adornment be merely outward — arranging the hair, wearing gold, or putting on fine apparel — rather let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God.” (1 Peter 3:3-5).

Good and evil

We say this one is a good man: and that one is a bad man. But it is all poppycock. The man we call a good man also does evil. And the man we call evil also does good things.

Every man has the good and the evil in him. But God’s standard says, for a man to be good, he must be good all the time: “The person who keeps all of the laws except one is as guilty as a person who has broken all of God’s laws.” (James 2:10).

For a man to be good, there must be nothing evil about him. To be good, we must do the right things at all times. But no man can do this. To be good, we must always be good. We must not change. We must be good yesterday, today, and forever.

James asks: “Can a fig tree, my brethren, bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Thus no spring yields both salt water and fresh.” (James 3:12).

But man produces both salt water and fresh water. We have all eaten the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil. Therefore, we cannot be good because we are good for one minute and bad for the next.

Jesus says: “Every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.” (Matthew 7:17-18).

Therefore, a man cannot be a good tree because men bear bad fruit.

This is how the Bible presents the predicament of man, even regenerated man:

“I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice.” (Romans 7:18-19).

“I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:22-24).

Only Jesus can deliver us.

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