Everything lost men do is sin. That's because they act without glorifying God, or fearing Him, or being thankful to Him, and without faith in Him.
That is why the birth of Jesus is such a great gift to us. He came to be our Savior! He came to save us from our sins!
We didn't even know how lost in sin we actually were, how hopeless we were, how dead in our sins we were. All of our so-called "good deeds" are condemned by God. The plowing of the wicked is even sin.
Only in Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, can a believer do anything good and acceptable to God. Our only hope lies in the obedience and blood of our Savior.
Jesus is our only Righteousness! We are clothed in His Righteousness.
We might worry, how then can the saints ever do anything that pleases God?
Jesus made it clear that we can and we do. He judges at the end, that His people who carried out acts of kindness to His brethren, are counted as having done them unto their King Himself!
In our flesh, nothing can please God. But Paul then asserts, believers are not in the flesh, but in the Holy Spirit! Our bodies are dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.
Jesus did keep all the law of God perfectly, and did so in perfect love and fear of God, with all His body, heart, mind, and strength.
Therefore, God sees our deeds in the Spirit as we are clothed with the righteousness of Christ, and God is well pleased with us for Jesus' sake.
In Philippians, Paul describes how it is God that works in believers to will and to do His good pleasure. This is meant to astound us, even to cause us to tremble, how God's power is strongly working in us, causing us to desire to obey Him. |
