“But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousness are like filthy rags; we all fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.”
ISAIAH 64:6
PONDER THIS
Before Christ, our righteousness is as filthy rags. Do you know what that word “filthy rags” literally means? It described the bandage that wrapped the oozing, running putrefying sores of the leper—that loathsome thing you would burn. God says, “It’s not about what I think about your so-called badness. It’s what I think about your so-called goodness.” An unsaved man is in himself wicked and therefore everything he touches, he contaminates.
Imagine a beautiful fruit salad, but the person who’s mixing that salad for your dinner has open sores on his hands. Do you want it? Of course not. You lost your appetite. There is nothing wrong with the grapes, nothing wrong with the bananas, nothing wrong with the apples. There’s something wrong with the cook.
The worst form of badness is human goodness when that human goodness becomes a substitute for the new birth. What is sin? Sin is the transgression of the law. Sin is failure to do good. Sin is human goodness that keeps us from God’s righteousness. Even our righteousness is as filthy rags in His sight.
When have you tried to do good in your own power?
Why do you think we often depend on human goodness to get to God?
PRACTICE THIS
Repent for ways you have depended on your own goodness before God.
LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers
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