Now when we say that we're good, what's the standard by which we are judging ourselves?

I look around and I take comfort if I can see somebody behaving in a more godless manner than

I do.

Compared to that fellow, I'm a pretty good guy.

We live in a culture that has been so pervasively influenced by the philosophy of humanism that we've heard it said so often we begin to believe the idea that human beings are fundamentally basically good.

We may do things that are wrong, we grant willingly that no one is perfect, but in the main, we are

basically good.

A recent Gallup poll was given among professing evangelical Christians in America,

where over 60% of them affirmed the statement that human beings are basically good.

Whereas Paul in the New Testament tells us there is none righteous,

no, not one.

There is none who does good.

No, not one.

And so we have a collision here between the evaluation of human performance and virtue by our own philosophies

and by that view that is uttered by Christ and by the teaching of sacred

scripture. But it seems such a dire thing for the Bible to say that there's none righteous. No, not one. There is none who does good at all.

What if I said to you, you're simply no good?

How offensive would that be to you?

That's a terrible insult for me to say to you you're just plain no good.

Well, you aren't any good.

So I say it with a smile, but that's the point that Jesus is trying to make with the

rich man, this man, you know, he wants to know how to get to heaven.

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