Reading: Romans 3:9-20
Reflective Thoughts
“Nice” really doesn’t matter
Hanging in my mother’s dining room is a plaque that my sister bought her. It says “…because nice matters.” To my mom, everything that was good was also “nice.” To her, nice described things like home-cooked meals and good behavior-and it certainly describes my mother. In her mind there were two types of people-there were those who lived a good life-a nice life, and there were those who lived a bad life.
To the Apostle Paul there were two kinds of people as well-those who lived under the Law (the Jews) and those who didn’t. But Paul says, that didn’t matter-because none of them were “nice” enough. In fact, no matter how “good” anyone is, it seems compared with God’s standards, they’re all pretty bad. These passages permanently drive the last nail in the coffin of the idea that we can escape God’s judgment through our behavior. Not a single human being has ever been good enough (except for Christ).
There is therefore nothing I can do to be “good enough.” If I were born a Jew and lived according to the Law, I would be judged according to the Law because I could never keep the Law in full. Even trying to live according to my mother’s very good morals; I failed, and I should be judged guilty according to them. Both the Law and my mother’s morals are good-they just aren’t meant to make me good. They are meant to point me to the only One who is.