How hard it is for us to accept our need for grace! Somehow, we have the idea that by acting in our own strength, we can live a morally good life. While some may seem to achieve this, if we were able to look into their hearts and minds we would find a different picture. Keeping our thoughts and motives morally pure is much more difficult than guarding our actions.
Selwyn Hughes quotes Dr Martin Lloyd-Jones in Every Day with Jesus, explaining why the moral man isn’t a threat to us, but Jesus is.
“The world, in a sense, likes the moral man. It never hates him because it realises that he is acting in his own strength, and in that way he is paying a compliment to fallen human nature. The world hates the true Christian because Christ Himself and the true Christian condemn the natural man in a way that nobody else does.”
yet how often do we, as christians, try to be moral men? and in doing so, think that we are being “good christians”?
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Yep, we do it a lot. Maybe it is because we too like to act in our own strength.
We like to think we’re setting a good example. But a lot of the time we’re too proud to show weakness and we don’t want to show weakness because we represent God and so we want to give an impression of being cool, calm, collected, got it together, everything’s okay.
and a lot of people think Christians are up themselves
and a lot of people think Christians are up themselves
So Trav, what do you think? You know a lot of Christians, do you think generally speaking Christians are up themselves?
yes, trav. i’m curious. let your emergent thoughts shine. good to hear from you on something of this nature.
hmmmm goes like this.
God’s is good. Therefore a lot of Christians want to be seen to be Good because hence we’re reflecting God.
Unfortunately we often find ourselves being good by taking ‘moral high ground’ which generally means avoiding issues in which real people are involved in or connected with. Christians don’t want to talk about homosexuality, they don’t want to talk about lust, they don’t want to talk about alcohol. They take the ‘moral high ground’ as an escape because they have so little knowledge of the issues and so little experience of anyone involved in them. So us ‘good’ Christians look like we are up ourselves because we avoid real issues.
Now i believe to be ‘good’ you have to do something good not just avoid something bad. I don’t think Christians are up themselves most of the time. I think a lot of the time they give the impression they are up themselves.
Do i make sense?
absolutely and i agree with you one hundred percent. in fact, i am engaged in a conversation of this nature at present with some members of my home church. your quotes are like water in a dry land.
thank you.
it has been something i have struggled with myself growing up in the church and later on getting to know people who come from outside the “good” mold. and realizing then, that within myself, i am not from the “good” mold. i am just like everyone else who needs the cross in all of its ugly, disgusting triumph. no better, no worse.
So Christians appear to be up themselves because they isolate themselves from the real issues in the world.