Christianity is not about doing good. It is about salvation.
It is about Jesus.
"I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." John 10:10b
Many people turn to religion to do good. The establishments of NGOs and the opening of doors for OCIPs(Overseas Community Involvement Projects) starts to offer an alternative method to doing good. It seems like religion would start losing its function of providing people with moral values to do good. People can do good anyway. But... Righteousness is not doing what is morally correct.. Righteousness is about doing what is right in God's eyes.
"What does the Scripture say? "Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness." Romans 4:3
It was because of Abraham's faith in God, that whatever God commands, he would do.. Even to the point of sacrificing his most precious.. It was not about works.. It does not gratify himself, but it glorifies God. It signifies how the devil one does not have a control over the life of Abraham but his life is offered up to God.
"The words "it was credited to him" were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness—for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification." Romans 4:23-25
Righteousness for us would come in the same form-Faith in God. Faith is targetted to a person, not to a thing. And this person manifest himself in Jesus Christ. We no longer lives in condemnation. Not becoz of our endless good works, but because of the blood of Christ. And for that faith, we are credited as righteous. The evil one would not have the ultimate control over us, as long as we have faith in Jesus. The justification is seen from the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faith in God is the roots of the tree of my life. Whether this tree bears fruits or not is dependent upon how rooted I am in Christ, how much faith i have in Him. It is not how much i do, it is how much i trust.
“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”
The evil one will be as low profile as he can be, so that people will not guard against him. It is his greatest tool to manipulate man and push people away from God. Becoz of that, he will do all the charitable works he can, as many acts of kindness as he can. Becoz in our mind, evil and good cannot co-exist. But as established, it is not about "good" Vs "evil" as seen in the eyes of man. Good is about reconcilliation with God. When He created man, he saw that it was "good". He didn't create us with sins then. We were still obeying Him. The day we turned away from God, it became evil. There shouldn't be any harm eating a fruit. What is wrong is disobedience. It is turning away from salvation. For the evil one... his job is not to make all of us "bad" ppl. His job is to draw us away from the eternal God. As long as people do not turn to Christ, he will do it, even the good deeds.
It is not that NGOs or OCIPs or crisis relief teams are bad or always from the devil, in fact most of them are good. As Christians, we just need to adjust our perspectives towards such good works. It should never be used as a way of self gratification. We should never allow the devil to manipulate the acts of good works to distract us from understanding that we are righteous becoz of Christ death and His resurrection, never becoz of good works. Never...
Lifestyle evangelism.
When a salesman comes to you, you are most likely to get turned off.. When you set up a retail shop, customers come to you and ask about your products. You are more likely to close the deal.
It is the same way with evangelism. When you live a life worthy of the gospel, it is equivalent to setting up your retail shop properly, with the products placed properly, strong branding, good services. Not only on the surface, but on the inside, your product must be pure. When people witness your life, they inquire. They want to know more about the "products", the fruits you bear. Different from the retail shop, is that whether the customers buy or not is not how persuasive you are. It is dependent upon our heavenly Father.
Today is one of the rare time during this busy exam period where we get to study at sot and spent some time with the ever so busy uncle tong.. ok... no one is suppose to know he was free.. but he wasn't free.. he was busy coming up with essay outlines, and handling some other stuffs like the never ending interviews.. Yes.. I studied today, but i learnt much more from him.. Ya... the above lessons was gathered from uncle.. He has dropped the thought of becoming a lion tamer.. He is called to spread Daddy's love.. Not spent 12 years trying to convert a lion.. Haha.. I will miss uncle tong when i graduate from SOT. I love the way he prepares lectures. I see that he loves us a lot. And i really treasure uncle too. Daddy loves me, Daddy loves Uncle tong, and we love Daddy too.