Read Romans 7:18
"For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not."
Read Psalms 16:2
"O my soul, you have said to the Lord, 'You are my Lord, My goodness is nothing apart from You.'”
The other night, I was watching this movie - this brilliant movie called, "Gandhi". It was a bio-pic about the life of Mohandas Gandhi - the famed Hindu leader of the Indian revolts against the British rule who through a philosophy of nonviolent protest led India to independence. It's one of my absolute faves! The title character was played beautifully and convincingly by Sir Ben Kingsley. Towards the final climax of the film, Gandhi explains this beautiful truth to a room of men regarding the unrest and violence that was taking place around them. He explains, "The only devils in this world are those running around in our own hearts, and that is where all our battles should be fought." Wow, man! What a profound statement! Truly. If only he’d allowed that acknowledgement to travel a little further down the road, maybe he would've eventually seen that it was for those very "devils" or sin within our own hearts that Jesus Christ came to die and ultimately cleanse us from.
See, it wasn't simply the sins that we commit - our unrighteous deeds & actions - that separated us from God. On the contrary, those were merely outward indicators; an inevitable result of the depraved condition of our hearts. What primarily separates us from a holy and just God is our inward nature and our rebellious hearts. You see, Christ didn't come to make 'bad people', good. He came to make dead people, live. Fam, Jesus didn't come simply to challenge us to set our wrongs right and then give us doctrine to live a better life. He did what no one else could or would do: He literally became sin so that He might destroy the sin within us. “For our sake God made Christ to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” ~ 2 Cor. 5:21
That make sense? Remember that final part in the last "Matrix" movie (Matrix: Revolutions) where Neo becomes the virus Smith in order to destroy the virus (sin) Smith. Boom! We were ALL born with hearts inclined toward sin. In the book of Psalms, David says,
"Behold, I was brought forth in [a state of] iniquity; my mother was sinful who conceived me [and I too am sinful]." ~ Psalm 51:5 AMP
So you see....being "good" and doing "good works" - while morally sound, to be sure - doesn't remedy the issue of our hearts. That's what needs fixin'. No amount of changing your thought patterns or your patterns of behavior or how you emotionally process this world will make you "right". A change of mind only temporarily and superficially "fixes" the acting out of sin....but not the problem in our hearts. The cancer is both external AND internal. I should also note that it is very easy to point out the evil in the world around us...but have YOU recognized the evil in your own heart? At the core of the problem of evil in the world is the problem of evil within us....ALL of us. If you want to pause long enough to raise the question of “Why is there evil in this world?”, you would do well to first try and find an answer to the evil within. That's where the problem begins.
Humanity has a massive and terminal heart condition in the extreme sense. It's totally degenerate! But Hosanna to God's unblemished Lamb....our Salvation: Jesus our Messiah!!! For it was Christ and Christ alone that would/could be the only suitable, perfect and holy sacrifice to cleanse us - once and for all - from within....from the devils in our heart.
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"For if we are beside ourselves [mad, as some say], it is for God and concerns Him; if we are in our right mind, it is for your benefit." ~ 2 Corinthians 5:13 (Amplified Bible)
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