In Mark chapter 10 a man came up to Jesus and asked Him, “Good Teacher, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?” Jesus answered his question but first He addressed a common misconception. `So Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God”` (Mark 10:18). Paul reaffirms this in his letter to the Romans, `As it is written: “There is none righteous, no, not one;”` (Romans 3:10).

   So, the answer to the question, “are you a good person” is not exactly; it has to do with our perspective versus God’s perspective. We have a standard of goodness that we think is good but God’s standard is much higher than ours. Isaiah 55:9 says, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.” Let’s explore this concept a bit further.

   Most of us aren’t assassins or corrupt military leaders; we just have a hard time consistently hitting the bull’s eye as we go about our lives in this cursed world. We snap a coarse word at our spouse, or cut someone off on the highway because we’re late for work, or we keep silent when we know speaking up is the right thing to do.

   In John chapter 4 Jesus is sitting at a well in Samaria and a woman comes to draw water so He asks her for a drink. She is astounded that He is even speaking to her because Jews have nothing to do with Samaritans. As He talks with her He shifts the conversation to spiritual things and then does something that we should take notice of. He presents her with the Law of Moses to show how she is missing the mark when it comes to the man she is living with.

   We can examine ourselves in the same way by looking at the Ten Commandments and asking ourselves a few questions. You may need a glass of wine for these next few paragraphs but I promise it will give you an accurate picture of how we all, myself included, frequently miss the mark.

   The Ten Commandments are these, from Exodus chapter 20: You shall have no other gods before Me (God), you shall not make for yourself a carved image, you shall not take the name of God in vain, remember the Sabbath day, honor your father and mother, you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not lie, and you shall not covet. It’s important to understand that in the New Testament, instead of ten there are only two commandments: love God the most and love your neighbor as yourself. You should notice that all ten fall within the scope of these two.

   Just a quick note as we only look at three of the Ten Commandments to see how well we aim; I’m answering these questions along with you and I’m no better than anyone.

   With all that in mind, how good are you at telling the truth? Most of us categorize lies into different groups like, “white lies” or “lies to protect” but the Bible doesn’t say you shall not lie unless it will protect someone; it just makes the statement as though all of them were the same. If we’re not completely honest, we can lie on our tax return which would offend the government; but maybe that’s a bad example. Perhaps you’ve called yourself, “stupid” or “ugly” which are lies and would certainly be offensive to God because the Bible says that He made you. How many of us are completely honest on social media?

   Let’s move on to stealing, ever take something without permission? We probably tend to think that theft is something we did more as a young person but maybe we’ve just moved away from one type to another without realizing it. Perhaps we borrow money from people and never pay them back. Are we really giving the company 100% during the hours we are at work? Perhaps we steal from the government when we lie on our tax return; probably another bad example.

   Just one more and then we’re done. How many things have you coveted in your life? The Bible says don’t’ covet your neighbors donkey because I’m sure some of them were really fast and sleek. We are a nation of colossal discontent, wanting all the stuff of others and ungrateful for the stuff we have. One that is very common is not being happy with our own physique. Most of us just need to improve on what we have but instead we covet someone else’s and don’t even realize that person might be coveting ours. Sometimes we can miss the whole target entirely; if I covet my neighbor’s lawn gnome I might steal it and then have to lie to him in order to keep it.

   Take a minute and consider this bit of fiction. Imagine a person has transgressed the sixth commandment and has gone to prison for murdering someone close to you. Would you call that person a murderer? I would, and I think you would too, but how many people did they murder to warrant that label? Just one person and after they’ve served their time I think we would still want to regard them in that same category. How many times would a person need to lie to you before they became a liar or steal from you before you described them to your friends as a thief?

   Thinking along those lines, if I were to categorize myself by the Ten Commandments, I would be a lying, covetous, thief, and there are seven more that we could pile on top of those three. Jesus said that looking at a person with lust is the same as committing adultery and if we hate someone it’s as though we have murdered them in our heart. If you had a big neon sign over your head that flashed every single thought that crossed your mind would you ever leave the house? We’re good to our spouse and our kids and we do good things for other people but while we’re doing those things we still miss the mark and if we are honest with ourselves we do it often. Every time we miss the bull’s eye we sin to one side or the other on the target and swipe our credit card building up that great mountain of debt.

   God loves us and He does forgive but He is also the judge. Hebrews 9:27 says, “And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment,” All of us will be judged by God for our sins because, let’s face it, we want God to judge everyone who has sinned against us, and if that is true then He must judge us for what we have done to others. The real issue, though, is that all sins are an offense to God because He is the one who has set the standard and His standard is perfection.

   In Matthew 5:48, Jesus is speaking to a crowd of people who would follow Him and He says, “Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.” I can’t even fathom being perfect for a whole day let alone my entire life and yet that’s what He wants from us. So you might be thinking, how is it possible for anyone to be worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven? It’s honestly not as hopeless as you might think. The answer is the good news of what Jesus did for us which is what we are going to begin to discuss in the next chapter.