And behold, one came and said unto Him, Good master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life. Matthew 19:16
In and around the city of Calcutta, the Missionaries of Charity organization run by the Catholic nurse known as Mother Teresa ran 517 homes for the dying. Teresa’s organization worked for years among the slums and poverty of India to alleviate human suffering. Those who admired Teresa declared that if anyone deserved to be in Heaven because of her works, it was her. But did she do enough to get herself admitted to Heaven? A team of Canadian researchers doesn’t think so. The researchers found that the homes operated by Teresa were often dirty and short on staff, food, and pain killers, even though Teresa’s organization raised many millions of dollars to support those homes. They also found that Teresa believed that the sick must suffer like Christ on the cross, and did little to alleviate their actual suffering. So maybe she didn’t do enough to get to Heaven? Those of us who know the Gospel know that nobody can do enough to get to Heaven. But we live in a world that believes otherwise.
The Moslem religion teaches that the only sure way to get to heaven is in a holy jihad – in other words, by killing Christians (and other so-called infidels). But any right-thinking person knows that murdering people is not a good thing. And the one in our text who came to the Lord Jesus was looking for something good to do. He was like the religious world around us, so ready to exert his own efforts to do something that God might be pleased about. Whether a missions operator like Mother Teresa or a collection-plate passer at a local church, the religious fail to understand how impossible it is to find anything good enough to please God. Defiled hands and depraved hearts produce only sin and evil deeds, no matter how well-intentioned. Eternal life is the gift of God, not the wages of work or a prize deserved. The truth of the Gospel is that the only work that God can accept as payment for eternal life is the cross work of Christ.
So why do Christians fill their hands with good deeds and honest, moral living? Are we not striving to maintain our qualification for Heaven? No, our testimony of good works and righteousness is the proof of our salvation, not the means of it. It is also one of the reasons who God reached to us with His salvation, that we might by our good deeds and testimony show the world the holy character of His Son. The good things we do will never bring salvation to us, but they very well might be used of God to bring salvation to others.
Good deeds by the ungodly are prideful vanity, but good deeds by the redeemed are the will of God. -Jim MacIntosh