And finally, in my opinion the #1 most common misunderstanding about Christianity is......drumroll please.....that Christianity is about being a good person!
Until my sophomore year of college, my understanding about Christianity was that it was all about being good. Being good was the only way to avoid a descent into an unrighteous life. Being good was the only way to get into heaven. Being good was everything!
In college, I was kindly invited to a Bible study on the book of Romans by the captain of my water polo team. This was the first time that I actually read and studied the Bible on my own, rather than just hearing a random fragment of it out of context before sermons on Sundays. I must confess that it became rapidly apparent that I had everything wrong about what I thought the Bible was saying!
Turns out, none of us can live a righteous life by being a good person. Why not? Because earning righteousness in God's eyes would require being perfectly good, and none of us are perfect! The Bible is unambiguous about this fact:
"There is no one righteous, not even one." (Romans 3:10)
"For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it." (James 2:10)
"Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin." (Romans 3:20)
Ouch! So if nobody can be good by their own efforts, is it all hopeless? Not at all, for this is where the 'Christ' of 'Christianity' comes into play. The entire point of Christ's perfect life and willful sacrifice was that he was gracing all of us with his righteousness, while taking our sin upon ourselves. It's the ultimate switcheroo: we assume Christ's righteousness, while Christ assumes our sinfulness.
"But now, a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes from faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace and through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus." (Romans 4:21-24)
The implications of this statement are endless, but in closing, here are 3 of my favorite:
1) Equality: grace makes us all equally righteous. Think about it: if we judged our merits on how good we were, then we would look down on those less good than us, and feel inferior to those who were better people than us. Under the Gospel, we are all equally sinful and all equally saved by grace.
2) Removes selfish intentions. Too many people think that you get to heaven by being good, but there is a HUGE problem with this philosophy. If doing good works is really the path to heaven, then people who are being good are not really doing it out of genuine love, but just being good to claim their eternal reward. It transforms charity into selfishness! By grace, on the other hand, all who believe in Christ are already assured of heaven, so every good deed that we now perform is a genuine act of love, performed out of the gratitude and inspiration of how God loved us first. There is no selfish agenda whatsoever for our sacrificial acts of love.
3) Gives us hope. Another problem with the "being good" philosophy is that this tends to lead to despair when we mess us. And we all mess up. Under grace, there is never an excuse to lose hope. You can never fall too low to stop trying to love God, others, and yourself. You are always valuable in God's eyes, and your life will always have purpose.
