None Righteous

When I read yesterday’s post, I realized that it was perfectly placed by the Holy Spirit to poke out my mind’s eye on something pretty big. It’s been a tormenting lie in my life, and it feels like truth. I think that the reason the Holy Spirit keeps hitting me with Isaiah 55:8-9 is because I just don’t get that He doesn’t look at humanity the same way I do. He doesn’t look at ME like I look at me.

I’m no stranger to feeling better about my life and relationship with God when I believe that my life and relationship with God actually is good. And I only feel good about all that when I believe that I’m in my Sunday best, so to speak. Is my house clean and Bible read? Is my car vacuumed out? Is anyone mad at me right now? Are my bills paid? Blog posts written? Orders filed? Teeth brushed? Hair fixed? Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

I still separate my life into good, bad, or ugly. And I don’t just stop with me. I look at the people around me and do the same thing. What’s clean or dirty, kind or mean, helpful or hurtful, pleasing to God or not? In my old nature, all I do is compare myself to others. Am I better or worse? Stronger or weaker? Richer or poorer? Smarter or dumber? And I do the same thing when I try (big emphasis on “try”) to see myself as He sees me. “Well, God, it’s true that I skipped my morning devotions a few times last week, but I didn’t cut anyone off in traffic while sporting a fish decal, so that’s okay. Right?”

Somewhere deep inside, I believe that I am assessed by the Father the same way that I assess myself and everyone else—comparatively. I even compare myself to myself! And that’s what the post wrote on that harpooned my heart: “The problem has never been my mess, great as I think it is, but my attempt to fix it.” Am I messy? Absolutely. Do I try to fix me? Yep. But the Spirit asked me a question yesterday when I was thinking about all this. He asked if I really thought that my idea of a mess was the same as His. And the answer is that I never even thought to ask, so yes. I really thought that He thought like me on that front. Then He gave me a glimpse of true human “mess” as He’s named it:

As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:
There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.
They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.
Their throat is an open sepulchre; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips:
Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness:
Their feet are swift to shed blood:
Destruction and misery are in their ways:
And the way of peace have they not known:
There is no fear of God before their eyes.
Romans 3:10-18 KJV

This is every single one of us until we are saved by Jesus Christ and born again from above, a brand-new creation. And maybe God doesn’t distinguish between messy humans and “good” humans. Maybe there’s just humanity and His new-creation children. Maybe the unsaved manager of a homeless shelter looks just as messy to God as the unsaved serial killer. I don’t know, but I’m beginning to take in the absolute revolution of the Spirit on my mind, and the very way that I process the world around me – and my place in it. I have a whole new reason to receive the Blood in full: there’s no certainty that I know all the “mess” of me that the Blood must cover.

For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord. 

For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.
Isaiah 55:8-9 KJV