In the 1993 film What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Gilbert (Johnny Depp) feels a heavy burden of responsibility for his single-parent mother and three siblings. When he gets distracted and fails to see that his mentally impaired younger brother, Arnie (Leonardo DiCaprio) is put to bed, his mother scolds, “Gilbert, you gotta do better.” This is a recurring tension throughout the movie: you gotta do better.
The core of every religion is that you “gotta do better” if you want God to like you. Deep in the heart of every person is a god chip telling them there is someone—or something—out there that determines their destiny when they die. The key to an enjoyable afterlife is doing better and achieving “good” in the here and now.
Islam has the six doctrines and five pillars of the faith. For Buddhism, it’s the four noble truths and the eight-fold path. Hinduism’s solution is the law of Karma, where multiple reincarnations provide a way to come back in various life forms, atone for past wrongs, and move up the ladder by doing better.
All religions, including Christianity, agree that this goodness—or righteousness—is a qualification for heaven. The standard operating system for attaining that righteousness is doing or not doing certain things. In other words, the afterlife is earned through self-righteousness that is achieved through self-improvement.
But this is where Christianity parts ways with every other religion. While it agrees righteousness is necessary, the purity standard of that righteousness is top shelf: perfection. While doing better is a good thing, it’s not good enough. Failure to reach perfection carries a steep penalty: spiritual death and eternal separation from God.
“But it’s impossible to be perfect, right?” Right.
There is no one righteous, not even one. Romans 3:10
“But doesn’t living by the Ten Commandments earn God’s favor?” Well, yes and no. If anyone could actually keep them—every one of them 100% of the time—they’d be perfect and certainly earn God’s favor. But do you know anyone like that? Yeah, me neither.
What the Ten Commandments do is showcase the righteousness of God in a way that makes it obvious how far we’ve fallen short of the mark. When it comes to earning God’s favor, the Ten Commandments don't do us any favor because they stand as our judge and condemn us:
Those who depend on the Law [Ten Commandments] to make them right with God are under His curse, for the Scriptures say, “Cursed is everyone who does not observe and obey all the commands that are written in God’s Book of the Law. Galatians 3:10
This is where Jesus comes in. While His demand for absolute righteousness never changes, His solution to this dilemma is the core of Christianity:
God made Him [Jesus] who had no sin to be sin for us so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. 2 Corinthians 5:21
The apostle Paul explains it like this when recounting his own story:
...I’m found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith… Philippians 3:9
It's like Jesus is saying, “While trying to do better is good, it’s not good enough. But because I love you so much—and have no sin of My own—I’ll take the penalty of death for your unrighteous and give you MY righteousness as a gift. If you take it, you’ll never again have to worry about being self-righteous because I’ll make you God-righteous.”
So do we gotta do better to improve our standing with God? Absolutely! But Jesus lowered Himself from heaven to earth to make a deal: His righteousness for our unrighteousness. His life for our life. His humiliation for our exultation. His death for our sin to wipe the slate clean and declare us God righteous…forever.
That’s about as good as you can ever get! And yes, it's good enough for God.
THE END.