“To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable…” (Luke 18:9).

I do not like the sound of that sentence. Why?

Well, like most people, I think that I am a pretty good guy. I do nice things most of the time. Overall, I am not that bad - and that is the problem.

You see, it is easy to think that because I am not so bad, then I must be really quite good. It is, then, a short leap to thinking that by my own efforts, I can be good enough. Unfortunately, as Jesus points out above, that is not true.

Consider this quote from Oswald Chambers: “We look at life through the eyes of reason and say that if a person will control his instincts, and educate himself, he can produce a life that will slowly evolve into the life of God. But as we continue on through life, we find the presence of something which we have not yet taken into account, namely, sin— and it upsets all of our thinking and our plans.” (My Utmost for His Highest, June 23).

The truth is that no matter how hard I try, I cannot be what God wants me to be by my own efforts. At best, all I can do is slow down some of the sin in my life, but I can never eliminate it completely.

A good way to understand this is to think about a thermos. A thermos will keep coffee warm for several hours, long past when it would have gone cold in the cup. However, it cannot make coffee hotter. All it can do is slow down the heat loss. Eventually, left long enough, the coffee in the thermos will become cold too. The end result is still the same though – cold coffee.

When we “trust in our own righteousness” or goodness, we may be able to make some changes here and there and slow down the effects of sin in our lives, but we can never eliminate it. Therefore, we end up in the same place – still struggling to be “Godly people” (see Paul’s description of this struggle in Romans 7:14-24. It may sound familiar).

So what is the answer?

Well, here is Paul’s solution: “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord… There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 7:24-25 and 8:1).

Therefore, our message is not, “Be good so that you can be holy”. Rather it has to be, “You are holy people in Christ – respond by doing good”.

The first message says, “Trust in your own goodness”. The second one says, “Trust in God’s goodness”.

I know which one I want to trust in.