A philosopher once said that, “Human beings are a religious being.” Most people acknowledge the existence of a Highest Divine and think that they should worship this Him and do good works. So now there are many religions around the world that teaches a person to “do charitable deeds and avoid wicked acts.” These teachings are very reasonable and are in harmony with the conscience of mankind.
Some people try to do good works because they think that doing good will be helpful for their spirit. But we have read that “All the times of our life to do good is not enough, but one day to do wicked, wicked is plenty.”1 So how much good works is enough for one’s spirit? But man is not perfect and has sinned. According to the Bible, there are many sins, such as “sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; … hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like.” (Galatians 5:19-21)2.
We know that sin is not good, everyone has tried to avoid sin, but we are not able to because inside of man there is the essence of sins. As the Buddhist Prayer-Book says, “In one’s heart of hearts is the source of sins, the body is charged with sins.”3 A great king of Israel, David confessed that, “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.” (Psalms 51:5).
The essence of sins in people is so strong that Saint Paul sadly admitted that, “For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out… When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.” (Romans 7:8, 21).
Thinking of ourselves, there have been many times, because we have lost our temper, we have said or done something bad. After that we may have said to ourselves that we would not do this again. But when something like this does happen again, we would repeat exactly what we had done previously.
We are told that “Life is an immeasurable sea of miseries.”4 This is true, because “all have sinned.” (Rom 3:23). If we know that we are in the sea of miseries, we will try our hardest to swim in the hope that we will get out of the sea, but no matter how hard we try, we will face a more miserable situation. Why? Because no-one falling in the sea can swim hard enough or fast enough to get out of it. The more we try to swim, the more we sink into the water of the sea. We can only be saved by The Highest Divine.
The Highest Divine is the Creator who created all things in the universe, living and non-living, including human beings. – We worship Him and call Him God. – He knows the hopelessness of human being. God’s will is that our sins must be forgiven first, then He will enable us to “do charitable deeds and avoid wicked acts.” In other words, if we want to be free to do good work with peace in our heart, our sins have to be forgiven first.
So God gave His Only Son, Jesus Christ, to the world. Because He loved us, Jesus was happy to leave His throne in heavenly glory to come to the lowly earth to seek and save us by dying for our sins on the Cross. Whoever believes in Jesus is forgiven and will have eternal life with contentment and is able to “do charitable deeds and avoid wicked acts” with great result.
This is the amazing grace of God for us to forgive those who try to “do charitable deeds and avoid wicked acts” but confess that we cannot overcome sins and still have sinned in the sight of the Holy Creator. What a sinner has to do now is to believe that Jesus died on Cross for “me, because of my sins”.
There might be a question, “If so, a sinner only needs to believe in Jesus, then he can continue to live in his sinful way?” The answer is, “No!” Why? Because the Gospel of Jesus is, “the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.” (Romans 1:16). Therefore, “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinhthians 5:17).
The Bible teaches that, “God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.” (2 Corinhthians 9: 8). And the word of God teaches clearly that, “Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is noble in the eyes of everybody.” (Romans 12:17).
Thus, the religion of the Lord Jesus not only teaches to “do charitable deeds and avoid wicked acts” but also is the Good News of Salvation of God for man by His love. So Jesus is the Salvation of those who is trying to “do charitable deeds and avoid wicked acts” but knows that his or her good work is not enough.
We need to think of the words of Zen Master Thích Nhất Hạnh. He says, “Because we ourselves bear all sorts of bad-mannered characteristics, full of greed in our heart, so when bad things happen or something is not in our will, we get angry easily, it is so hard to avoid it; so if someone can, we should idolise them.”5
Dear readers, what Zen Master Thích Nhất Hạnh said is right. Thus, I thinhk that a normal person like some of you and I surely cannot escape totally from ‘bad-mannered characteristics, full of greed’ in our heart, so that we cannot lean on our “good deeds and avoiding wicked acts” to be good enough, because we still have sins, no matter what we do.
The Bible teaches that there is Hell, and Zen Master Thích Nhất Hạnh also believes that, “The place to punish sinners is Hell.” 6 So when I die, if I still have sins and they are not forgiven, I will go to Hell to be punished for my sins. How terrible it is!
But by His love, God says to sinners that, “Come now, let us reason together,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.” (Isaiah 1:18).
So now the best solution for us is to come to God, believe in Jesus as our Saviour and pray to Him for His forgiveness.
May God bless you always.
Rev Thanh Huu Tran
msthanh 
Hello MS Thanh, I was very blessed by reading this blog post. You’ve written it so clearly and it is so Word-driven, thank you! I will be interested to refer others (esp seekers) to this post. God bless you MS!