God Wants Us to Understand How to Be a 
Good Person

(from the Sermon on the Mount)

 
Being a Truly Good Person
Have you ever noticed that our world is filled with people who have adopted a moral code without having to submit to a religious belief? You know what I’m talking about: people who live and behave better than you and I do, and they don’t even believe in Christianity at all. Doesn’t it drive you crazy to know that there are non-Christians out there who behave and live in a way that puts us to shame? They are often nicer than we are, kinder and more loving, more generous and law abiding. In general, they appear to be ‘better’ human beings than we hope or claim to be.

I work with someone like this, and he often causes me to stop and reassess what I believe and what God rewards. We often talk about faith issues and he tells me again and again that he believes that if there is a God and a heaven, he will someday be there based on the fact that he is a good person. Have you ever heard someone make that claim? It’s a tough one to answer, as it often seems unfair to folks like this that God would simply require us to believe and trust his son for our salvation. What kind of God would refuse good people access into heaven over a technicality like this?

Who We Are Off-Stage
But if we are honest with each other, and if my friend really thinks about it, he’ll have to admit that it’s impossible to be ‘good’ all the time. There are many times when we let our guard down, especially when we are with people we have known for a long time and have come to trust. How many times have you been in a heated argument with a member of your family and heard the phone ring? Somehow you were able to pick up the phone and put on the sweet voice and disposition long enough to pretend to be that ‘good’ person once again. We like to fool the world into thinking that we are something that we are not. We pick and choose who we want to look good in front of. We decide in advance which audience is going to get the best view, and we are careful about what wee allow them to see. Sadly, we are often the grittiest and least loving with the people who we say we love the most. Have you ever found yourself treating a stranger better than you would treat your brother or sister?

Total Truth from the Sermon on the Mount
Well, Jesus had something to say about the spiritual performances that we often disp[lay to our friends and the people in our world. Let’s take a look at what he says in the next portion of the Sermon on the Mount:

 
Matthew 6:1-18
"Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. "So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. "And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. "This, then, is how you should pray: "'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.' For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. "When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to men that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

 
God sees us for who we really are. He sees us in the dark. And He knows that much of how we behave is simply an act for the people in our world. God knows that this type of spirituality is hypocritical and unreal. God would like us to be truly moral people, but he knows that true morality is more than outward behavior. It must begin with an inward condition. So Jesus begins to recite a number of ‘spiritual’ activities that were common in His day (and are still common among Christians today) as he illustrates the difference between what I have come to call ‘billboard’ faith and true moral goodness.

 
Giving to the Needy
Jesus starts with the act of generosity that all of us should have as part of our nature; the desire to aid those in need. Jesus quickly delineates the difference between two possible audiences we may have when giving to the needy. There is a worldly audience and a Godly audience. We are living for one audience or the other and our behavior will give away which audience we are targeting. Jesus is right on with the observation that when we announce our giving to the world like a blaring trumpet, we have exposed our motive to simply impress the folks around us. He tells us that to have God alone as an audience would result in giving that is so private and secret that one hand doesn’t even know what the other hand is doing!

 
We usually perform for a reason. Actors get paid, and when we act, we too find ourselves waiting for compensation. When we perform for an audience of people in our world, we collect our payment NOW, in full, in the praise that we seek from human beings. When we perform in secret for an audience of One, we are rewarded not only in this life but in the life to come. Reward is tied directly to the SOURCE of the reward. If the source is TEMPORAL, then the reward is also TEMPORAL. If the source is ETERNAL, then the reward is far greater than we could hope for, and as eternal as the giver of life.

 
Praying
Jesus then turns to the righteous act of prayer. Yes here too we can direct our spiritual act toward an earthly audience. You and I still have many opportunities to pray in public; at meals and on special occasions. And we’ve all been in the company of someone who took the opportunity to pray as an opportunity to prove something to other people who might be listening. And have you ever walked by someone on campus or out at a restaurant who took great pains to let you know that they were praying? There are some religious groups that are even required to stop everything and pray at specific times of day, and this often occurs in public. Jesus warns us not to play to the audience of our peers, praying in the streets, babbling and carrying on with long winded demonstrations of our spirituality. He tells us that pray that is directed to God as its audience is very different, and it is here that we are introduced to the “Lord’s Prayer” (we’ll cover that is greater detail in a minute).

 
But once again, God know that we usually perform for a reason. Prayer that targets people in our world as the primary audience get praised in the here and now, and Jesus tells us that this is the only reward we will get. Prayer that is done privately, acknowledging the sovereign nature of God is rewarded by an eternal audience of One and this reward is far more powerful and significant than the praise of men.

 
Fasting
Finally, Jesus talks about the spiritual act of fasting. He tells us that when we target people as our audience, we will find ourselves going to all sorts of lengths to announce the fact that we are fasting. We’ll even ‘disfigure’ our faces and do whatever we can to over dramatize our activity. Clearly we are seeking the praise of the world. But God targeted fasting is done in private and Jesus even tells us that we should make an extra effort to dress up and take care of ourselves so that no one even knows we are fasting. If God is truly our audience, we don’t need to announce it to the world.

 
After all, whose praise are we looking for, anyway? What reward is really important to us? Is it the reward of the world we are after, or are we concerned with the praise of God? The praise of the world is fleeting, but the praise of God is eternal.

 
A Godly Pattern
Have you noticed a pattern developing here in the examples given by Jesus? On the one hand you have the world and on the other you have God. The decision must be made relative to which side we will try to please. From which side do we want to receive our praise? Jesus tells us over and over again that to choose the world is to focus on immediate gratification. It’s easy to get caught up in that approach to life. After all, we are constantly trying to get everything that we want and get it NOW. But when we focus on God as our audience, we begin to get His view of the world. It is a view that is longsighted and patient. It is a view that focuses on eternal reward, rather than immediate, temporary pleasure.

Who is Your God?
Why would God care so much about the audience that we choose when we do our “spiritual acts”? Why would it even matter to Him? Isn’t it a good thing that we behave well, regardless of our motivation? At least we are praying and fasting and giving to the poor! Who cares WHY we are doing these things, so long as we DO them!?! Well, it does matter to God, because He wants us to bow to Him alone as God.

See, there are several ways to determine who or what your God is. One way is to look at the way you spend your time. Give me some free time and see how I spend it. What do I do with it? You will find out quickly what it is that I am truly interested in. You will find out what I worship. You can also take a look at how I spend my money. Look at my checkbook and see what is important to me financially. How do I spend my ‘discretionary’ dollars? That’s another quick and easy way to see what I worship. You might also take a look at what activities I think about. What is it that consumes my thought life? While this is a little harder to get to understand, it is a great indicator of what I worship.

But God knows that there is another way to determine what is truly important in my life. There is another way to determine what I worship (what has become my God). I can simply look to see whose praise I am seeking. Who is my audience? It’s not hard for our audience to become our God. We find ourselves doing righteous works, performing good deeds, to satisfy the audience that matters most to us. And God does not want anything to matter more to us than He does:

 
Exodus 20:4-5
“You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God…”

 
God does not want us to have a worldly audience because He knows it will lead us to worldly gods. This is idolatry, just as in the days of Moses and it is offensive to God.

Billboard Righteousness
God knows that a boisterous, vocal and prideful righteousness that proclaims itself to the world is just a ‘billboard righteousness” that seeks the acclaim and praise of people. On the other hand, a personal, private and humble righteousness seeks the praise of God, and this is the audience that God wants us to have.

Performance Verses Heart Change
Now think for a minute about the difference between a performance that is focused on external appearance and compare it to a spiritual life that is focused on the heart of God. Think about the nature of a stage play, for example. Theatrical plays are designed for people who sit in an audience and they require several things in order to be effective. First, they require a stage and the props to convince people that what they see is real. Second, theatrical plays require actors and actresses who are not really what they claim to be, but are able to carefully follow a script that has been written to convince us of an alternate reality. Finally theatrical plays require loud, dramatic and vocal deliveries so that the audience understands what each actor or actress intends in his or her performance.

Now God understands this nature of theatrical plays and He does not want our spiritual lives to morph into this type of performance. He knows that a Godly act of spiritual righteousness begins with a change of heart and results in an act that is not scripted, is not loud or prideful, and it doesn’t need human praise. This is the kind of spiritual righteousness that God wants us to seek.

Your Heart Matters
And if you think about it, the nature of your heart, the motive you have for doing something ‘good’, truly does matter! Lets say for example you are standing with a friend waiting for a bus. While you are waiting, you see an old lady driving a car who has just gotten a flat tire. She can barely get the car to the curb across the street as she struggles to steer with the flat tire. She steps out of the car and feebly walks around to see the flat. She is obviously very frail, very old and very upset.

Before you can run across the street to help her, you observe a young man come to her aid. He runs up and assures her that everything will be OK. He sits down with her for a bit, calms her nerves, then proceeds to change her tire for her. He is loving to her all along the way, and eventually helps her back into the car and sends her off. You and your friend are amazed at the way that he has treated the old lady. The young man appears to be a saint as he performed this good deed!

But what would you think of this same young man if you knew that the only reason he did this act of kindness was because he first saw you and your friend watching the situation from across the street. Would it matter if the reason why he did all that was only because he wanted your praise? Would it matter if the young man would actually have walked right by the lady and her flat tire if no one had been there to see his actions? Of course it matters, and God knows that our heart and our motive are the primary foundation for any good deed!

Making a Truly Good Person
The decision to do what is right before God is just that: a decision. It is a choice. And if there is no choice to do what is right, then no right can actually be done. Think about it for a minute. The ability to choose RIGHT requires the option to choose WRONG. GOOD is only GOOD when compared to BAD, does that make sense? Let me illustrate this truth for you.

Let’s say that you want to design a perfect being, a being that would be free of imperfections of all kinds. Well, you could design a robot like C3PO from Star Wars and simply program him to be everything that you want him to be. But without the ability to choose on his own, this robot is not very human is he? If the robot does something that is “good” it could certainly be argued that he had no choice to do anything other than what he was programmed to do, so his good actions are not really his own. The robot is simply responding to His programming and cannot be called ‘good’ because he is not actually making a choice for good over evil, does that make sense?

Instead, if we are going to design a perfect MORAL being, we are first going to have to give this being the free will to make a CHOICE so that when the being actually DOES make a choice for good, it is a true reflection of this or her nature! But how can we make sure that the being will choose to do what is right? Well, first we are going to have to teach the being right from wrong. But that won’t guarantee good behavior on its own, will it? We are going to need to motivate the creation to respond to the guidelines and moral code of the creator. How can we do this?

There are really only a couple of ways. One way is to bait our creation with something. You know, we can tell him or her that if they do what we say, we’ll give them something nice. It’s like holding a carrot out in front of a stubborn mule who won’t move until he sees the carrot and steps forward to try to get it. As long as we hold the carrot out in front of the donkey, the donkey continues to move in the right direction. But if we remove the carrot, will the mule continue to move on its own? No. That’s why this kind of motivation is meaningless in the long run. If we require the praise of men to motivate us to do what is right, we are not truly good people. If we would not do the good deed in the dark with no one watching, then we are not truly a people who would do good deeds in the first place.

And that’s what separates Christianity from all other faith systems. Think about that for a minute as well. If good works are required for us to be with God in the first place, if good works are required for us to be saved, then our salvation becomes the carrot that is baiting us. We may or may not be truly good, and we will never know because we are constantly required to do these things to be saved. Don’t be confused by this part of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus does talk about God’s reward for those who perform humble service, but it is not the reward of SALVATION. The rewards of honor, praise and responsibility in heaven are very different than gift of salvation which comes through faith ALONE:

 
Romans 3:21-22
But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.

Romans 11:6
And if by grace, then it is no longer by works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace.

 
God does not want us to be motivated by the bait of salvation through good works, because that does not truly reveal the kind of person we would be if there was no such bait hanging out in front of us. Instead, God wants us to be motivated by something else. He wants us to be motivated by the grateful response of someone who knows the value of the gift they have received. We who believe have already been gifted with the incredible gift of Salvation. That should humble us to the point of joyous response. Have you ever received a gift from someone that was so amazing and generous that it just blew your mind? Have you ever received a gift from someone that changed the way you felt about them? A gift that changed your heart? That is the kind of gift that we have already been given by God. Our salvation is that gift and it is a free gift that requires no work or performance. Yet we find ourselves obedient to the moral code of God, not because we are trying to earn the gift (it has already been given to us freely), but because we have been changed by the gift and simply want now to respond in joy and love. That is the kind of response God is looking for and spiritual acts that are performed in this manner require no earthly audience.

Total Truth
Every worldview tries to answer three questions. First, how did we get here? Second, why is everything so messed up? And third, how can we fix it? For us as Christians, we already know the answers to these questions, and Jesus teaches us these answers in the Sermon on the Mount. We are here as the result of a Creator God who created us with the free will to choose between right and wrong. But our present condition clearly reflects the fact that we often choose to do what is wrong in order to serve our own desire. But Jesus is calling us to have a changed heart that understands the gift of Salvation we have been given and then responds in joy to that gift. God does not want us to act in pride, trying to get the acclaim of the people in our world, and He also does not want us to act in fear, afraid that we won’t be saved unless we do certain good works. The only life of response that matters to God is the life of joy and gratitude.

So Why Do We Seek the Praise of Men?
Why do we continue, then, to focus on the world as our audience for good works? One reason may be that we simply want to be loved. We are hardwired with this basic human need to be wanted and cared for. But we sometimes try to satisfy this need by seeking the love and approval of the people around us instead of the God who created us. We’ve got to remember that God loves us as His created children:

 
1 Peter 5:6-7
Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

 
In addition to this, we also sometimes find ourselves trying to lift up our own self esteem with good works. Let’s face it, we feel better about ourselves when we get the praise of others in our lives. But God would ask us to remember how special we already are; special enough to have been selected by him to be saved in the first place. If we can remember who we are in Christ, we may not suffer from low self esteem. We’ve got to remember that we are heir to the King of the Universe:

 
Galatians 4:6-7
Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, "Abba, Father." So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.

 
In either case, whether we are seeking the love of others or to raise our self esteem thorough good works, as Christians we should know that God loves us and has given us the most important gift of all, his Son Jesus Christ, who has secured our safe passage home to the heart of God.

A Prayer That Focuses on Our God
OK, as we get ready to move on from this section of the Sermon on the Mount, let’s return for a minute to the Lord’s Prayer. So much has been written about this prayer and the nature of prayer as Jesus taught it. Clearly this prayer was not meant to be prayed as a mantra; repeated mindlessly over and over again. There is something here that Jesus wants us to understand; something that is true to the heart of God and the reality of our world. Let’s read it again:

 
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.

 
This ten line prayer can be divided neatly into two five line sections, above and below the line drawn in the middle of the prayer. The top half of the prayer deals with the nature of God, while the bottom half deals with the nature of us as created human beings. How do we know this? Well, look at the personal pronouns that are used in the top half. “Father” and “your” are used throughout these five verses. In the bottom half we find personal pronouns like “us” and “we” that point back to us as created beings.

You’ll notice something else as well. The first part of the prayer that deals with God describes his hallowed position. Take a look at that. God is hallowed. He is the one who is deserving of worship. Notice also that his domain is described here as ‘heaven’ and a ‘kingdom’. Now compare this to the bottom half of the prayer. You’ll notice that forgiveness is the primary focus for us as created beings. We need forgiveness! Check out the description of our domain here on earth. It’s no wonder that we need to be forgiven! There is ‘debt’ and ‘temptation’, and there are ‘debtors’ and ‘the evil one’. Clearly there are two worlds being described here, one that is the heavenly abode of God and another that is the fallen world of man.

The prayer can be divided into two parts that seem to tell us something very important: God is God, and we are NOT God! For this reason, we should never find ourselves seeking the praise of created beings. After all, they are not God. We should, instead seek an audience with God Himself. This prayer clearly distinguishes the difference between man and his Creator and this truth is echoed in all of scripture:

 
Isaiah 55:8-9
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

 
Where is the Spotlight Shining?
When we do our good works for the praise of men, we turn service into self satisfying glory. We place a spotlight on ourselves instead of on the God who deserves all the glory. When we do that, we are Gods unto ourselves. When we do that, we take the energy and passion that should be directed at God and place it on ourselves. We deny God his glory and try to assume it for ourselves. That’s not the way to build a truly good person. We may look like good people on the outside, but when we do our works for a human audience we deny the total truth Jesus taught on the Sermon on the Mount.