How would your good and bad deeds do on a balance scale?

4/18/19           Will

Many people see themselves before God's throne of justice in terms of a giant balance scale. What they don't realize, however, is that this idea implies that God's justice can be bought and paid for, like one who gives the judge a bribe to pervert justice.

A good human judge would not only refuse to accept a bribe, he would be offended that you would even try to get him to pervert justice. Yet in our humanness we tend to trivialize the depth of our sin – often simply calling them “mistakes” - and overestimate the value of our acts of righteousness. How much more is God offended when we expect our good deeds to offset our bad?

Deut. 10 tells us: “For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who is not partial and takes no bribe." To accept a bribe to ignore justice would completely go against God's holy nature.

Most responsible people would agree that we should do good for goodness sake, simply because it is the right thing to do. I was talking with Will, a young police officer who wants to contribute to society in this way, and I thanked him for his service. But he agreed that God gives us our health, our time, and our abilities and it is only right that God would expect us to use them to serve others.

On the other hand our sins are none other than open acts of rebellion, defiance and disrespect against the Creator who wrote His law on our hearts - our moral conscience – so that we are without excuse. At best we sin out of ignorance, but even these types of sins reveal our sinful nature or our unwillingness to familiarize ourselves with God’s law when we can. And then there are the sins of omission – not just doing wrong but failing to do right when we can. “If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.” (James 4:17)

The bad news is that on a balance scale between our good and bad deeds, we can’t use the good we ought to do to balance out or “pay” for the bad we ought not to do. We are morally bankrupt. We couldn’t bribe the Judge even if he allowed us to.

The good news is that God isn’t just our judge, He also wants to be our Heavenly Father. As I spoke with Will, I had the sense that he really serves as a police officer out of a desire to please his Heavenly Father. He prays regularly and desires a right relationship with God. Yet he doesn’t attend church or read the Bible much, and as a result he is missing out on realizing the tremendous price God has paid in order for us to have that right relationship with Him.

God loves the world, but He also loves justice, a justice that requires the punishment fit the crime and will not accept a bribe in its place. We face the eternal punishment of hell, but God “gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” My prayer for Will and for anyone reading this is that you will turn from your sin in repentance and turn to the Lord Jesus in belief.

Thanks, Will, for allowing me to record our conversation! It’s at https://youtu.be/WH3G2MJBRhg on my YouTube channel.