Cut To The Chase

Sometimes the Bible confronts us with a clear piece of truth. God cuts to the chase. As I was reading Ecclesiastes, chapter 7, which seemed to wander as it compared wisdom and folly, tossing in a few other seemingly random thoughts, verse 20 jumped right out at me, saying:

"Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins."

That sentence is a short and direct statement of fact. There is no person, man or woman, who is completely righteous, which we are told means both doing good and never sinning.

Reading that verse this week, the week of Easter, points me straight to the cross and the empty tomb. At the time Ecclesiastes was written there was no one who lived who had met that simple definition of righteousness. And since that time there has only been one, Jesus. No one you know personally, such as a dear and precious grandmother, meets that definition. Neither does anyone you know and admire, such a famous person living now, or one from some other point in history. Neither does the person you see in the mirror. They each may do lots and lots of things that we would see as being good, but it is the "never sins" part that trips them up. Every single one.

Those sins, no matter how minor they may seem from our point-of-view, are a barrier between each person and God. We can't remove them. We can’t pretend they doesn’t exist. All we can do with them is turn towards God and seek for him to forgive the sins we've committed against him. And when we have faith in Jesus, as the one who saves us from our sin, that sin, each and every last bit of it, is forgiven.

At one particular point in time there was one man, who was righteous in doing good and never sinning. The Lord Jesus. For Jesus "doing good" ultimately meant laying down his life so that sin could be removed from all who believe in him as their Savior.

Try as I might I can't live the perfectly righteous life, but this week of Easter reminds me that because Jesus did, my faith in him brings me peace with God. May you find rest and hope by faith in him too.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.