Your daily goal:
Philippians 3:14 “I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
(Monday-Friday, from my morning quiet time, I will write a short thought for that day which I pray God will use to motivate you to ‘GO’ for that day. Your objective is simple…to GO…to GO OUT and share the love of Christ with someone in that day….to GO and bear fruit …to be light to the world.)
Today’s Daily Light:
Clarifying and Responding to the article from the past few days …
My 2 Cents:
I did not read Piper’s article to say that ‘good’ was not good. I believe that any sense of good, that any form of good, originates from God who is the creator of good. I believe that good has purpose and value and is another ‘revelation’ of the goodness and love of God as Creator. I think it fits into the understanding of Romans 1…especially vs. 20…His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen… I believe ‘good’ exists #1 to reveal God’s divine nature…the objective sense of right and wrong in outcome with most people… mostly produces good, not bad… whether believers or non believers….people do good deeds, acts of kindness, love their families, take care of their animals…and there is an intention of revelation in the experience of giving and receiving ‘good’. And such also relates to #2…that in the spirit of man…the function of conscious wherein after the Fall that God let remain in all men enough consciousness awareness for us to know about Him…and that same function is the area where mankind is restrained by the Holy Spirit from being only bad…from totally being overcome by evil. Thus what men often refer to as the ‘greater good’.
I copied pieces from the article below… and to me…Piper is trying to make the point that man’s acts of ‘good’…no matter how good they are….although they may be truly pure…are not good enough to save us. To me it is like we are fish in a giant aquarium the water that we swim in is the natural realm of good that God created…and for the most part….the last thing most fish are aware of is the water in which they swim.
And ‘thus’…at best…in the end if we do not come to saving grace…all of our good was performed in and out of our fallen state…which Piper frames as ‘rebellion’….and I get that . Good is good… and if we look at a supreme example of the best of good…the mother who loves her child…which is obviously an example of the best-of natural expression of good that God has created….and it is given to all men, believers and non…such common understanding and experience of good is simply a revelation of the origin of good..and such points to the creator of good…which is our wonderful God… but God’s giving of good is always foremost given ‘so that’ we can see His goodness…and for the mother who loves her child…who experiences the wonder and revelation of such love…God gives us that revelation of wonder ‘so that’ we can come to see just how much He loves us as His children..that He loves us more than we love our child…and ‘that’ is the essence of the existence of good. Not only does good hold back evil…..it is the water all around us that all men swim in… and it reveals the divine nature of God who is the creator of Good for He ‘is’ good. And all good is a pointer…that points us to the ‘cross’…where ultimate goodness gave His life for us…’so that’ we could experience ‘Him’…. and ‘that’ is VERY good.
Thus man does many things which he can do only because he
is created in the image of God and which in the service of God
would be praised. But in the service of man’s self-justifying
rebellion, these very things are sinful. We may praise them
as echoes of God’s excellence, but we will weep that they are
prostituted for God-ignoring purposes.
We recognize that the word “good” has a broad range of meanings.
We will have to use it in a restricted sense to refer to many
actions of fallen people which in relation to God are in fact not
good. For example, we will have to say that it is good that most
unbelievers do not kill and that many unbelievers perform acts
of benevolence. What we mean when we call such actions good
is that they more or less conform to the external pattern of life
that God has commanded in Scripture.
However, such outward conformity to the revealed will of
God is not righteousness in relation to God. It is not done out of
reliance on him or for his glory. He is not trusted for the resources,
though he gives them all. Nor is his honor exalted, even though
that’s his will in all things (1 Cor. 10:31). Therefore even these
“good” acts are part of our rebellion and are not “good” in the
sense that really counts in the end—in relation to God.
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