Self-Righteous

I was thinking today about a friend that has been coming to church for the last few Sundays and wondering if this person's motives for coming to church were "pure." I am beginning to wonder if this person is just coming to impress someone else. I then began to think, "Well, if this person isn't going to come for the right reasons, this person just shouldn't come!"

After a few minutes of mulling over this, I decided I'm being a self-righteous ass. The fact is that if everyone had to come to church and ultimately to God with the right motives, no one would come to God. The fact is that if anyone comes to Christ, they come not because they want the right things, they do the right things, or know the right things. The Bible is clear, we do nothing to merit a relationship to God, He simply takes our wrong motives and changes them on our behalf.

Paul really lays this out step-by-step in Romans. I think this particular thought, though, in Romans 9:15ff, "For He says to Moses, 'I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.' So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy." That is, we can come to God with any motive we want and God steps in and has mercy on us for it and gives us a pure heart for Him or He does not.

Paul continues this thought in Romans 9:17-22,

For the Scripture says to Pharoah, "For this very prupose I raised you up, to demonstrate My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth." So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires. You will say to me then, "Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?'" On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, "Why did you make me like this," will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use? What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wraith prepared for destruction?

All of this to say that God's highest purpose is to see Himself glorified because He is the perfect being that deserves it. It also shows that the purest motive for seeking God is to glorify Him. Selfish motives can have no part in true glorification of God. Yet, no one really comes to God with a pure motive, not even those who have already been redeemed, we still bring our own faults to God. Yet, He is willing to endure our selfishness and sin in order to ultimately demonstrate His glory to all of creation.

Anyway, I don't rant against myself often enough and this seemed like a good opportunity to explain an essential feature of my beliefs and how badly I am at adhering because I too am selfish. I suck. God redeemed me anyway. Amen.