Come Unto Me

God’s Invitation to the World

by Tony S. Reinke

Independent study project

LAPA 395, Bellevue University

Due 4/16/06

updated 12/28/06 9:09:49 AM

(total words: 63,517)

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To my daughter

Christabel

on her first birthday.

May you grow into a beautiful Christian woman.

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Come Unto Me: God’s Invitation to the World

Cover photo:

Creation of the Sun and Moon

Michelangelo Buonarotti

Sistine Chapel, Rome

Italics in Scripture quotations are the author’s emphasis.

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from:

The Holy Bible, English Standard Version

© 2001 Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.

Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Other Scripture quotations are from:

New American Standard Bible® (NASB)

by the Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,

or transmitted, in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical,

photocopying, recording, or otherwise – without prior written permission.

// Contents //

Introduction	6
Chapter 1: An Invitation to the Sick Criminal	12
Chapter 2: An Invitation to a Relationship	27
Chapter 3: An Invitation to the Thirsty to Drink	41
Chapter 4: An Invitation to Rest	56
Chapter 5: An Invitation without Price	72
Chapter 6: An Invitation to Divorce Self	87
Chapter 7: An Invitation to Reconciliation	100
Chapter 8: An Invitation to Resolution	114
Acknowledgements	129
Works Cited	131

// Back cover text //

“Come unto Me” – Jesus

(Matt. 11:28)

God created and now sustains the universe. And this same mighty God has always been a loving God, intimately concerned with His people. And so He invites us to come to Himself.

Come Unto Me: God’s Invitation to the World, unpacks this invitation in a simple and readable style.

The invitation from God (and to God) is a biblical message filled with rich diversity. For those who accept it, this message requires sorrow and promises inexpressible joy. The invitation comes without price and costs everything. The invitation includes an offer of a relationship to God that is both forensic (or legal) and yet conjugal (or marital). The invitation to God is a call to leave past burdens and take up new burdens. It is a message heralded first by Old Testament prophets, hundreds of years later by the Messiah Himself, and still decades, centuries and millennia later by His followers. The biblical invitation to God is the white light of the world broken into a prism of colors displayed with unblushing diversity.

Come Unto Me is readable for those who have never opened a bible and have never pursued the heart of Christianity. But this book will also benefit Christians who seek a deeper discovery in the riches of gospel promises and fuel for the Cross-boasting life (Gal. 6:14).

This presentation of the biblical invitation also firmly confronts a society of religious relativism and a church addicted to pragmatism, uncertainty and over-simplification. Come Unto Me is a reminder to the church that the invitation to God cannot be watered down, trivialized or simplified and presents the invitation to God in its fullness and letting the reader see its full diversity and beauty.

Go ahead, open the invitation for yourself.

Although he attended church most of his life, author Tony S. Reinke met God personally in 1999 at the age of 22. He is a carpenter, photographer, preacher and writer who lives in Bloomington, MN with his wife, son and daughter. He currently serves at Sovereign Grace Fellowship (a church of Sovereign Grace Ministries) and directs The Shepherd’s Scrapbook, a Cross-centered blog.

// Introduction //

Many childhood vacations I traveled with my three sisters and parents in our 1978 Cadillac from our home in Nebraska. Though we traveled often, I most recall sitting in the back seat and getting my first distant glimpse of the Rocky Mountains as a young boy on a trip to Colorado.

The first sight of the towering peaks brought excitement to the car full of weary travelers. Although the mountains were still in the far distance, I remember immediately beginning to arrange my travel entertainment back into a bag. I put away all my books and tapes and tidied up the backseat in preparation for the arrival at the mountains. But there was a problem. Although the mountains were clearly visible and we drove towards them at a good pace, they hardly grew! After an hour, the initial excitement waned and the mountains still seemed to be miles away. As the endless drive continued, reaching the mountains demanded another patient hour.

Those final hours of travel towards the Rocky Mountains were excruciating because I failed to take into account the grandness of the mountains. Having never seen them before, I simply underestimated their size.

This is the same mistake I made about God.

Grandness of God

For years I underestimated His grandness. Thinking He was smaller and more containable, I failed to grasp the reaches of His vastness. And it was here that I made the greatest theological mistake possible: I assumed God was just like me (Ps. 50:21).

He is not.

Getting our arms around the vastness of God is no natural pursuit. In fact, God forces us to struggle with His grandness. He pushes the limits of our reasoning and forces us to think serious thoughts upon things we can hardly begin to understand –

like eternity past, eternity future, immortality, infinity, the resurrection of the dead, cosmic struggles and the ancient narratives that shape our daily lives.

The God of the bible is an “unsearchable” God (Ps. 145:3). He is so large that the earth and the universe cannot contain Him (1 Kin. 8:27). He lives in an “unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see” (1 Tim. 6:16). God dwells safely apart from His creation, protected from anything that would threaten His holiness, power, life and glory. He dwells where none approach. To the degree that He does not reveal Himself, He remains unknowable.[1] And when God does personally reveal Himself, it is but a drop of His total immensity to prevent the finite man’s life from being ended in the full flash of His explosive glory (see Ex. 33:17-23). Viewed from a safe distance, the small disclosure of God’s glory to mankind appears as a “devouring fire,” an exploding volcano of divine revelation (Ex. 24:17).

The closer we draw to Him, the more clearly we appreciate that we cannot get our arms around the motives and wisdom of this God. He is not like us.

The bible teaches, “Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure” (Ps. 147:5); “Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable” (Isa. 40:28); “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways” (Rom. 11:33)!

Without qualification, the bible teaches that God created the universe. The universe is not the product of randomness but unity, not of chaos but wisdom and purpose. The existence of life is a great example. Just as chaos cannot create order, neither can non-life create life. And when we look around and see the world filled with humans, animals, plants and trees we are reminded that the source of life must always precede life itself. Parents precede children. And so life must have always existed if life will ever exist.

According to the bible, God’s own life is contained within Himself (John 5:26). God is the source and sustenance of His own being. He has no beginning and no end and nothing of His life exists outside of Himself. Theologian John Feinberg writes, “God is the ground of his own existence.”[2] And so our existence can only be explained in its origin in God’s eternal existence. Each of our lives finds its origin in the One who is Himself eternal life.

But for millennia men and women have looked to the sky and concluded with their limited knowledge and senses that God does not exist. This conclusion does not argue for the absence of God as much as it argues for an infinite God that is incomprehensible to the feeble![3]

The self-sustaining God exists beyond our limited sphere of experience. But while the fullness of God is beyond comprehension, He is central to everything.

The center of all life is this immense God. He created everything, upholds everything and gives purpose to life (Ps. 104). He is unchanging, all-knowing, sovereign, absolute and the source of all life. God “upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Heb. 1:3). God was eternally “before all things, and in him all things hold together”(Col. 1:17). When the earth totters, God gives stability (Ps. 75:3). God is light and the light of men (John 4:1). He is the eternal One who creates, upholds, stabilizes and enlightens. God is the center of everything.

God is so grand that He has no need or weakness. Because nothing can resist God’s power, nothing hinders God’s happiness. He is all-powerful and so nothing can hurt Him or steal away from Him what He possesses. Since He can do whatever He wants to, God has no emptiness or lack. God has the perfect liberty to desire what He desires and perfect power to attain whatever He desires. He cannot be restrained or defeated and His power can never be stopped.[4] God is perfectly holy and perfectly happy in Himself. As the source of all life and breath, God needs nothing from us (Acts 17:24-25).

And so compared to this God, all of the nations combined are like a drop of water in a bucket and a grain of dust on the scales (Isa. 40:15-17). Being unable to fill a bucket or sway the scale, the world’s combined value is nothing compared to His greatness.

The closer we draw near to this God, the larger He becomes. His magnitude exceeds our presumptions. And as we approach Him we realize just how little we know Him. We are forced to acknowledge our feebleness and to simply adore His majesty.

Drawing near this God is an awesome and frightful task, wrought with struggle. As A.W. Tozer writes, “All the problems of heaven and earth, though they were to confront us together and at once, would be nothing compared with the overwhelming problem of God: That He is; what He is like; and what we as moral beings must do about Him.”[5] And the closer we come to answering these questions and admiring the beauty and holiness of God, the more we recognize our own unworthiness before Him.

The Psalmist, after looking deep into a dark night sky, writes, “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him?” (Ps. 8:3-4). Such is the conclusion of every man and woman who has grasped the immensity of God. Why would an infinite God, perfectly happy without me, extend an invitation to me?

Compared to God we are all like grasshoppers (Isa. 40:22). We are frail and our lives are temporary. Rarely do we spend time to contemplate God and when we do, it lasts for a few seconds and the thoughts quickly fade away.

But despite our doubting frailty and His perfections, God is mindful of grasshoppers. He considers the drop in the bucket worthy of concern. And even though the dust of our world cannot sway a scale, it moves the compassion of God. This can only be explained because the essence of God, and the invitation to Himself, flows from His loving nature (1 John 4:8). His love is present in every generation as He offers Himself to the world and to this day He continues to offer blessing, refreshment, forgiveness and security to sinners like you and I.

The invitation

God, being the creator and sustainer of all life, offers to the grasshoppers an unending source of life, satisfaction and eternal pleasures (Ps. 16:11). He has no want or deficiency, and so to be with Him and in Him is to have everything needed for life here and life eternal (2 Pet. 1:13).

If God can fill the oceans with water, He can also fill one cup with water. If God can fill the universe with light, He can surely provide us each light for the day. The God who fills the world with life can fill the human soul with life. The God who upholds the universe can uphold the broken soul. The God that lives in His own perfect pleasure is able to fill each soul with eternal joy.

And the bible teaches that if the soul turns from the infinite God, it turns from the source of this joy and comfort. “Nothing can fill the soul but God,” Thomas Brooks writes, “nothing can quiet the soul but God, nothing can satisfy the soul but God, nothing can secure the soul but God, nothing can save the soul but God. The soul being spiritual, God only can be the adequate object of it.”[6]

As we have seen already, the invitation to God is a personal offer from God. No affiliation, family background or religious heritage can naturally gain you entrance to a relationship with God through Christ. Surprisingly, natural religious advantages often become barriers that prevent a personal relationship with Christ (Phil. 3:5, 8)!

But just as natural advantages do not ensure this relationship, so too, no natural barriers can prevent you from entrance into this relationship with God. Your heritage may be strongly Christian or strongly anti-Christian but entrance to Christianity comes through personal invitation only. As we will see, very little about this invitation can be called natural.

Sources

You will notice numerous biblical references throughout this book. I have chosen to take my references from the English Standard Bible, but there are a number of worthy translations.[7] The bible is the ultimate source for this study and the only authority necessary to understand the details of the Christian invitation to God. God communicates through revelation and so the bible is the sufficient, “once for all delivered” source of this invitation (Jude 1:3). For this reason I recommend working through this book with an open bible, carefully comparing the details to biblical accuracy.

Along with direct biblical quotations, I have enlisted the help of several bible teachers throughout church history. Though most are long dead, they continue to speak (Heb. 11:4). Because these teachers were committed to explaining the bible, their ancient conclusions continue to breathe with relevance today. You will notice their helpful quotations throughout this book.

Like a flight attendant on an airplane, authors are first concerned with the comfort of the reader’s flight through their books. Allowing the bible to speak for itself is my chief concern. Because my desire is to be honest, the seatbelt light will remain lit.

Themes

I still rank the Rocky Mountains as the most beautiful place I have experienced. But to merely see a picture of these grand mountains hardly compares to being there. Standing at the base of these mountains there is a convergence of experiences. There is the trickling of the small streams, the animals seemingly unafraid of the visitors, the majestic peaks tearing through the clouds and the taste of fresh air. The white peaks stand in contrast to the green trees and colorful flowers at the base. All these elements unite in creating a majestic experience. Such is true of the invitation from God. In beholding the grand diversity of the invitation there is a beauty not seen in its mere parts. This is especially true when we stand and view the invitation all at once. Beholding the diversity of the invitation is my challenge and goal in the pages to follow.

The invitation of the bible to come to God is filled with rich diversity. For those who accept it, this message requires sorrow and promises inexpressible joy. The invitation comes without price and costs everything. The invitation includes an offer of a relationship to God that is both forensic (or legal) in nature and yet conjugal (or marital). The invitation to God is a call to leave burdens and take up new burdens. It is a message heralded first by Old Testament prophets, hundreds of years later by the Messiah Himself, and still decades, centuries and millennia later by His followers. The biblical invitation to God is the white light of the world broken into a prism of colors displayed unblushingly in their diversity.

There are several themes to this invitation to God, but the most important and common theme of the biblical invitation is the call to press close to a historical figure named Jesus Christ. The invitation is nothing less than a real man calling real people into a real relationship as tangible as any other. From the beginning to the end, Christ is the center of the invitation.

Christ is the one who socializes and draws near to the most unworthy of sinners (ch. 1), who invites us into a living relationship with Himself (2), who offers Himself as the fountain of eternal life and delight to us (3), who removes the heavy burdens and obligations from our shoulders (4), who pays the infinite price for our free gift (5), who calls us to love Himself more than ourselves (6), who legally reconciles a perfect God with guilty sinners (7), and whose beauty is the object of faith (8).

The biblical invitation is a rich message of life-giving hope. It is an offer for desperate sinners to come and drink their fill of eternal delight; to find freedom from the tyranny of sin, self and worldliness; and to partake in the work of God in reconciling His enemies to a personal relationship with Himself. The offer of God to come through Christ is an offer of deep personal satisfaction, mercy and liberation. It is an offer that is accessible to the simplest, demanding to our self-centeredness, and peace-giving to our troubled lives. The invitation to God is an offer of satisfaction for the thirsty, lonely, tired, guilty, bankrupt soul.

It is not, however, an invitation that can be experienced merely by belonging within a crowd of Christians, attending church, contemplating the vast reaches of the universe or beholding the beauty of nature. The invitation to God must come through the revelation of the bible in a personal experience from a personal God.

Welcome to the Christian invitation to God. Jesus pleads, “Come unto Me” (Matt. 11:28).

1 // An Invitation to the Sick Criminal //

“… I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Mark 2:17)

Let me ask you an honest question: How many times have you made a conclusion about someone only to find, after getting to know them better, your initial judgments were totally misleading? Such is common in how we judge co-workers and others we know only superficially. Regrettably, I fall guilty here, too.

And this personal presumption can also be very serious. To assume things are true that have not been affirmed seems to find itself at the heart of conflict in our lives. Personal presumptions prevent men and women from different races from coming together to live in harmony, and fuels polarization in politics. Many of the struggles in society, I fear, have been caused by false presumptions.

Many of the common presumptions about Jesus Christ are simply wrong. He was not ultimately popular, He was rejected by the religious establishment of His time, He was not handsome and in just a few short years of public work He stirred a lot of controversy. It’s no surprise that many of these themes are long forgotten in the church today. In general, we presume that Jesus was largely mythical, peaceful and likeable.

Thankfully, the bible straightens presumptions.

There is no doubt Jesus was a profound man who attracted attention in the first century amidst a dusty, Roman-controlled Palestine. He made many interesting friends, accomplished incredible miracles, taught profound things and made extraordinary claims about Himself. Crowds often formed around Jesus.

However, this same man who displayed deep compassion reveals occasional anger and a deep inner pain. Like having a boulder strapped upon His back, Jesus carried a burden of sorrow. His life was inseparable from weariness, hunger and thirst. He was often homeless and friendless, frequently maligned, slandered, wounded, deserted by His own friends, taunted by His enemies, tempted by Satan and ultimately forsaken by His Father in a way we cannot imagine.[8]

If this wasn’t enough, Jesus was not physically attractive in looks [9] nor prestigious in status. He would have failed in politics. Amazingly, nearly two millennia later, His memory continues to impact Western civilization.

What stirred such hatred towards Jesus was His claim of being God in the flesh. The stronger He claimed to be God, the closer He came to immediate death by His enemies (John 5:16-18, 10:30-33, 14:1-11). Though He often escaped with His life, it was the religious zealots, the ultra-conservative Pharisees, whose fury enacted His painful execution as a 33-year-old young man (John 19:7). In the end it was His bold claims that ended His short life.

And yet His public execution becomes the most profound aspect of His life. Amidst the dripping blood and water upon the thirsty desert sand we find the foundation of God’s invitation (Acts 2:22-41, Rom. 5:10, Col. 1:22). Jesus, the innocent, died so the guilty may live.

The biblical account of Jesus Christ is filled with enough surprise to temper our presumptions.

Jesus’ mission, contrary to the religious leaders of his day, was not to please the religionist or be exulted by the moral majority but to save those who were most spiritually sick and desperate. And the first noticeable facet of the invitation to God is to whom it concerns. It comes addressed to the lost, the diseased and the unquestionably guilty.

The call of Matthew [10]

The bible teaches through narratives, and so we begin our journey through the invitation with a story.

One of the early followers of Jesus was a man named Levi. Levi – who is more commonly recognized from his later name, Matthew – was one of Jesus’ twelve disciples.

Prior to following Christ, Matthew was a tax collector. And similar to the IRS today, there was very little love for those in this position. Collecting taxes for the Romans was a job open to flagrant corruption through bloated tax rates.[11] The extra profits plundered from taxpayers were deposited directly into the pocket of the collector.

Today, IRS employees can attend church. Not so in Jesus’ day. So despised were these individual tax collectors that they were doomed to excommunication from the Jewish community. Tax collectors, including Matthew, were spiritually unclean traitors to the nation of Israel, dealing with the unclean Gentiles and funding the government of the oppressive Romans. They were leeches, motivated by greed to suck their wealth from the oppression of others. On the scale of religious and moral standing, the tax collectors were the lowest scum of the earth (Matt. 18:17). Like the body of a dead dog, the devout Jews had no part with them.

Yet for all the baggage of this profession, Jesus was unafraid to approach, call and embrace one man within it. This is the story of Levi.

He [Jesus] went out again beside the sea, and all the crowd was coming to him, and he was teaching them. And as he passed by, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus [Matthew] sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he rose and followed him. (Mark 2:13-14)

Jesus, it seems, retreats to the seashore for some personal thought and prayer.[12] Rumor soon spreads among the locals that Jesus is near and a large crowd of people soon surrounds Him. He was obviously building a reputation with the locals as intriguing and magnetic, a man who could heal the sick body and cleanse the polluted soul.

Matthew was oblivious to Jesus. Rather than following Jesus with the crowd, Matthew, the tax collector, was busy at work – writing down accounts, counting the pile of coins, pondering profits and awaiting the next merchant train. Having been positioned along a trade route running through the region, Matthew was in a perfect position to tax the goods passing through.[13] Any time away from his office meant lost profits.

But Matthew’s station was also on Jesus’ travel route. Jesus, in the midst of the crowd, comes to Matthew.

The biblical account could not spare more words. Jesus says, “Follow Me!” and Matthew does just that. Leaving his financially lucrative job, Matthew “left everything” to follow Jesus (Luke 5:28). And once Matthew resigned his tax-collecting post there was no hope for a return.[14] The vacancy of Matthew’s seat in a sought-after career of tax collecting would be quickly filled. Nonetheless, Matthew pushes himself away from his papers and coins to follow Jesus.

Matthew left everything. By walking away from a tax collecting job that paid well and was hard to secure, Matthew was walking into certain financial loss. But he arose from his booth and traded the numbers, the coins and the security for a life of surprise, confusion and humility with Christ.

This is not the end of Matthew’s day. The excitement of the call and the inner delight of Matthew’s heart overflowed into a personal party for Jesus at his large house and with his friends.[15]

The party of an ex-tax collector would further illustrate the first feature of the invitation to God.

Matthew’s party

Because he was a tax collector and severed from the community of religious Jews, Matthew had chosen his friends from a motley crew of the morally depraved. Despite their cultural label, Matthew welcomed his friends to meet Jesus at his party. The large company of tax collectors and other openly known “sinners” – people known by drunkenness, prostitution, robbery and who knows what else – were drawn to the opportunity of close interaction with Jesus. Jesus, the man whom their wealthy friend left everything to follow, must have sparked their curiosity.

At this point early in His ministry, Jesus was already engaged in hostility with the conservative religious leaders in Israel. Recently he had claimed to forgive sins, which they deemed blasphemy – a lie about God (Mark 2:2-12). Only God Himself could forgive sin, they said. And so the Jewish leaders, wanting to keep an eye on the actions and words of this blaspheming man, followed along in His shadows. Surely God Himself would never linger with such a party of filthy sinners!

The bible paints the scene for us:

And as he reclined at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Mark 2:15-17)

The “scribes of Pharisees,” were the eminent Jewish scholars. They followed Jesus from the sea to the party – but at a comfortable distance to ensure they were unpolluted by the scene. To them it was simply appalling that Jesus would enter into the house of tax collectors and recline in a house filled with wicked and unreligious people![16]

Jesus enters the party and speaks with the men and women. Such lowly service was reprehensible to the religious leaders. A faithful Jew mingling in a party like this would have been immediately pronounced “unclean.” Even the air of the room was filled with evil. Contrary to the popular religious ideals of the day, Jesus was the “friend of sinners” (Matt. 11:19, Luke 7:34). And Jesus, without ignoring or excusing the sinfulness of His companions, was throwing open the door of salvation to sinners.

The scribes, in all their bible scholarship, had failed the heart of the Messiah’s mission: To offer eternal salvation for those most bankrupt of righteousness.

Religious presumption

The religious leaders made two presumptions about Jesus, errors that continue to echo two millennia later.

First, the scribes wrongly disqualified vile sinners from God. The scribes, believing that sinners and tax collectors were forever defiled in their immoral lifestyles, distanced themselves from them as though they had committed evil enough to be disqualified from God’s offer. This is the blasphemy.

Later in the bible we read of one important church comprised of people with backgrounds of sexual deviancy, idolatry, robbery, greediness and fighting (1 Cor. 6:9-11). Yet it was these same people who, accepting the biblical invitation to come to God, were transformed from the inside out. So while the sinner’s life before coming to God is marked by obvious sin, his biography of sin never determines his ‘worthiness’ before God. When the bible explains who God invites to come and join Him, it is often the most religious He bypasses and the most immoral He beckons to come.

Secondly, the scribes wrongly thought of religion as a refuge for moral people. Jesus exposes that Christianity is a community brought together of tax collectors and sinners who mutually praise God for their liberation from sin! Like doctors running away from sickness so resembles the church that does not offer the invitation of spiritual healing to the ‘dredge’ of society.

While the religious leaders distanced themselves from the sinful ‘filth’ of the party, it was Jesus who, seeing spiritual sickness, drew near. The religious leaders mistakenly thought mere moral change attracts God and by these misdirected efforts caused people to think of themselves as moral and self-righteous. And when a sinner, who needs a spiritual doctor, merely changes into more attractive religious clothing, he is deceived further from God than a spiritually naked rebel (Matt. 23:15).

Jesus proclaims, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” Yet throughout the world, it is still commonly assumed that God draws near to the most religious or moral or upstanding people. Yet Jesus reveals to us the failure of this thought and the surprising nature of the wisdom of God’s plan!

“We need to be frequently reminded,” writes J.C. Ryle, “that Jesus did not come merely as a teacher, but as a Saviour of that which was utterly lost, and that those only can receive benefit from Him who will confess that they are ruined, bankrupt, hopeless, miserable sinners.”[17]

Amazingly, it is often the religious leaders themselves who are ignorant of the invitation to God! The invitation comes to those who are sick, not healthy; the guilty, not the innocent; the lost, not the secure. From the standpoint of human invention, the invitation to God was unpredictable.

So unpredictable was God’s wisdom that centuries of religious studies, scholarship and philosophy still find His invitation to be idiotic and foolish (1 Cor. 1:18-2:4). The biblical invitation to God walks past the man blinded by self-righteous and content with hollow religion for the woman with eyes focused on her personal unworthiness before God. The surprise of this invitation to God reveals that the “foolishness of God is wiser than men” (1:25).

Shut up

Don’t get me wrong. God demands righteous lives from those who accept His invitation! If someone claims to be a Christian but does not show the resulting godliness in his life, his faith is fraudulent (Jam. 2:17). True faith is revealed in the display of a truly changed lifestyle. Yet no one is naturally righteous, God says, not one!

The bible tells us that sinners like Matthew and his friends were not the dredge of society, they are the whole of society.

The bible tells us that God cups his hand to His forehead and takes a long look for anyone on earth who is righteous and pleasing to Him. After scanning the landscape of all nations and all human history, God returns His report card:

None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asps is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes (Rom. 3:10-18)

All man, woman and child – kings and bricklayers, the religious, the atheist, the homosexual and the heterosexual, the Pharisee and tax collector – are all naturally without righteousness. Even the most secret sins buried deep into the dark closets of regret are exposed to the light of God’s knowledge (Ps 90:8).

The third chapter of Romans contains some of the most absolute and poignant language in the bible. None do good! But surely, we must ask, there is one person in the world that God finds pleasing? “None … not one … no one … no one … no one … not even one!” The bible tells us in plain and simple language that no one naturally pleases God. Not the pagan with his idol worshiping (1:18-32), not the moralist with his rules and regulations (2:1-16), not even the most religiously devout Jew (2:17-3:8).[18] Irrespective of religious upbringing or geography or literacy or education, God finds every one of His creatures standing in their own soiled garments.

In case we missed the point, God’s report card becomes specific. There are none who truly understand God’s plan, all are preoccupied with everything but seeking for God. Together all civilization has deliberately turned away from the Creator they can see [19] and thus everyone has become worthless to God. They are all blind and dead.[20] They are quick to use their mouths, tongues and speech for spewing poisonous deceit. They are quick to shed blood and to live destructively. More foundational, there is no genuine reverence [21] towards God in their hearts. We are altogether ungodly.

Whether developed and obvious or dormant and undeveloped, all of these sinful characteristics reside in our hearts.[22] “If God should open a window in the heart, so that we might look into it, it would be the most loathsome spectacle that ever was set before our eyes,” Jonathan Edwards writes, “There is not only malice in the hearts of natural men, but a fountain of it.”[23]

Due to the pervasive sinfulness it is impossible for anyone to appease God’s favor through hard work or an increase in religious fervor (Rom. 3:19-20). In general there is no one who is without sin because there is no one who practices a life of fertile righteousness – “no, not one” (v. 10).[24]

Paul later writes, “For God has shut up all in disobedience so that He may show mercy to all” (Rom. 11:32 [25]). All are “shut up” under sin![26] God takes a huge net and casts it over the scope of human history to catch all who have sinned and fallen short of perfection. The net bursts with a catch of everyone, everywhere, for all time! None are pleasing to God! All are shut-up!

And by this it is obvious that God does not draw distinctions between the really ungodly and the nominally ungodly.[27] All sinners equally fail at God’s perfect standard [28] and the sinful defendant can make no more excuses or arguments for his innocence [29] but stands condemned before the Creator and Judge (Rom. 3:19). Our perfect God is unimpressed by the “works of the law,” flattering speech, religious attendance, attempted morality, goodness or any other duty of sinners attempting to win over His favor.[30] All stand condemned. And so the silencing of all under sin consequently silences the self-justification of the sinner. All stand quietly. All stand guilty. All are shut-up.

Self-awareness

In summary, the sinner is in a dreadful state because he has no goodness before God, has a heart filled with sinfulness, hardened towards the things of God, alienated from God, under His divine displeasure and hopeless of eternal life. Worst of all, the sinner lives ignorant of his condition.

“The cry for more education in this day is loud and incessant. Ignorance is universally deplored,” J.C. Ryle writes, “But there is no ignorance so common and so mischievous as ignorance of ourselves.”[31]

Certainly I was not born with this biblical self-awareness. So why are we naturally ignorant of our sinful condition before God?

Simply put, we are ignorant of our sin because we make presumptions about God. To know ourselves we must know God, and we often fail to know ourselves because we presume that God is just like us. As sinners, we naturally make God into our own image. God rebukes the sinner who assumes that God is just like himself (Ps. 50:21).

God is separate, holy and perfect and until we grasp His holiness any so called self-awareness is ignorance. Edwards writes, “If you were sensible of the vanity of your own pride and that God was not such a one as you have imagined; but that he is an infinitely holy, just, sin-hating and sin-revenging God who will not tolerate nor endure the worship of idols, you would be much more liable to feel the sensible exercises of enmity against him, than you are now.”[32] In other words, if we truly understood God we would see just how much disrespect we focus towards Him.

Tozer rightly warns, “Low views of God destroy the gospel for all who hold them.”[33] The invitation to God is destroyed because low views of God produce false self-awareness. We must first understand the purity of God to truly look into our own hearts. An honest look at God yields an honest self-awareness.

No more obvious evidence reveals our sinfulness than our consistently low tho