BE SELF-RIGHTEOUS

Now, there are four elements that I see in John 8:21–30 that show how a person can die in his sin.

BE SELF-RIGHTEOUS

The first way to guarantee that you will die in your sin and not go to the Father’s house in heaven with Jesus is to be convinced that you don’t need to be saved, that you are spiritually all right. By far, those who deny their need of a Savior are the most difficult people to reach. People who claim to be righteous apart from Christ by saying, “I belong to this special group,” or “I’m one of the 144,000,” or “I’ve got my papers that say I’m a righteous person,” are only deceiving themselves. Self-righteous people, who have developed a system that they believe gives them the right to enter God’s presence, are the hardest people to convince that they need a Savior because they already feel they are fine. Satan is clever. When he puts together a phony system based on human achievement and works-righteousness, he does it in such a complex and supposedly biblical way that it is tremendously deceiving. People become captivated in cults and falsely assume they can gain righteousness by what they do. But no one ever comes to Christ who doesn’t see Him as a Savior who takes away sin and himself as a sinner who needs his sin taken away.

The Jews that Jesus confronts are clearly self-righteous, as you can tell from their answer. Jesus had just given them a loving warning, and their response is a mocking joke: “So the Jews were saying, ‘Surely He will not kill Himself, will He, since He says, “Where I am going, you cannot come”?’” (John 8:22). They implied that Jesus was going to commit suicide.

The Jews believed suicide was the worst sin, for which the blackest part of Hades was reserved. People who had killed themselves had no possibility of ever entering “Abraham’s bosom” (Luke 16:22). Therefore, the Jews concluded that if Jesus killed Himself, He would be going to Hades, the opposite place to where they assumed they were going. They didn’t even understand what Jesus was really saying. They were so self-righteous, having systematized their religion so carefully, that they believed they were the ones who would populate heaven. Nevertheless, Jesus mercifully warns them with an announcement of impending doom. How deaf could they be? If you read the whole New Testament, you would be hard-pressed to find a story of the conversion of a Pharisee. There are a few, but not many because they were such hard people to reach with biblical truth.

The Jews were correct in concluding that Jesus was going to die. However, they were completely wrong in thinking that His death was going to be by suicide. Rather, it was going to be a self-sacrificial, voluntary offering of Himself to be crucified. Acts 2:23 says, “This Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death.” It was murder, not suicide. But He was a willing victim, in order to accomplish redemption.

Self-righteousness is the big lie of Satan. The truth is you are saved by Christ; the lie is you are saved by anything other than Christ. That lie can come in all kinds of packages: you can be saved by following certain rules, doing specific routines, belonging to a particular system, being good enough to outweigh your shortcomings—there’s a myriad of possible systems to counter the one truth, and they are all part of Satan’s big lie. If Satan can get someone into a system that says they are righteous, it’s very hard to extract them from it. One reason is that self-righteousness is very proud. I am reminded of what Job said to those who judged him: “Truly then you are the people, and with you wisdom will die” (Job 12:2). Proverbs 12:15 says, “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes.” Luke 16:15 says, “That which is highly esteemed among men is detestable in the sight of God.” When men believe Satan’s lie and develop a system that is highly esteemed in their eyes, it is an abomination to God. Salvation can never be earned by good works and keeping religious rituals.

So, the first way to die in your sins is to be self-righteous and laugh at anyone who talks about sin or hell. The world does that all the time. It mocks Jesus, making a joke out of His warnings about hell. It gets no more serious about hell than to put devil suits on little kids at Halloween. It refuses to admit its sin and its need of Christ’s forgiveness as it trusts in good works or self-made religion for salvation. A person who gets wrapped up into the kind of self-righteous systems that the world offers, whether it is a religious institution like Mormonism or Jehovah’s Witnesses, or one’s self-made system, can become very belligerent once he becomes committed to it.

For example, I read an article that was sent to a Melbourne newspaper by a person after he had heard Billy Graham preach, which said: “After hearing Dr. Billy Graham on the air, viewing him on television, and seeing reports and letters concerning his mission, I am heartily sick of the type of religion that insists my soul and everyone else’s needs saving, whatever that means. I have never felt that I was lost nor do I feel that I daily wallow in the mire of sin, although repetitious preaching insists that I do. Give me a practical religion that teaches gentleness and tolerance, that acknowledges no barriers of color or creed, that remembers the aged and teaches children goodness and not sin. If in order to save my soul I must accept such a philosophy as I have recently heard preached, I prefer to remain forever damned.”

Now that’s a precarious position to be in. Evidently the man has developed a system in which he believes he has attained self-righteousness before God, and therefore fearlessly mocks the truth.

That letter exactly reflects the attitude of the Pharisees and scribes. Desiring to give a correct analysis of the situation, Jesus responds to their mockery: “And He was saying to them, ‘You are from below, I am from above’” (John 8:23). Jesus understood their intention in mocking Him that He was going to kill Himself and go to Hades. But Jesus says, in effect, “It is you who are from Hades; I am from above. You’ve got it reversed.” With this cutting reply, Jesus does not mean that they were literally from Hades; He means that their unbelief, hypocrisy, false religion, ignorance, and willful self-righteousness were spawned from the enemy. He makes the distinction clear that they are following Satan while He is following God. They were, like all unbelieving people are in this world, from beneath in the sense that they were part of the evil system. In John 8:44, Jesus said to them, “You are of your father the devil.” Such people operate their lives “according to the prince of the power of the air” (Eph. 2:2).

Whereas the unbeliever is unknowingly guided by Satan from beneath, the believer is guided from above because his citizenship is in heaven (Phil. 3:20), and he positionally resides in “heavenly places” (Eph. 1:3; 2:6). We are connected to either heaven or hell while we are alive by virtue of who we identify with. So Jesus, warning the Pharisees, puts things in perspective, saying in effect, “Your roots run downward to Hades because your lifestyle makes it manifest. You had better recognize the source of your religious system.” If you want to die in your sin, just follow the Pharisees’ attitude: believe you don’t need Christ as your Savior, assume you are okay, have solved all your problems, and have attained righteousness. Convince yourself of that and you will die in your sin.