Do all Good Things have to End?
Tom Jacob, Mumbai
Another year-end (of 2023) is fast approaching. We are awaiting the dawn of a brand new year (2024), hoping that things might get better concerning our finances, careers, education, health, relationships, etc.
This is also a time when some of us wish to pause a bit, introspect, and reflect on what went wrong, where, when, and how? We like to determine what we should have done differently so that we don't have to face the outcomes of our failures and avoid repeating them in the year ahead as we did this year. All this helps us to come up with certain resolutions for the year ahead.
On the other hand, for some of us, this year, 2023, was really good as we could experience success and see progress in several spheres of life, while this may not be the case for others. However, without any exception, we all desire that only good things should happen in our lives, and this trend should keep continuing. Nevertheless, the world says, "All good things come to an end"; sadly, we tend to think this to be true, and refuse to hope for any good to last for long.
The only 'Good' that ever existed
Contrary to common thinking, the Holy Bible talks about certain good things that have no end, rather they literally last for an eternity! For instance, God, in the Bible, is described as good; and about His goodness, it is written that it is everlasting - no end to it! Isn't this a comforting thought? There is Someone who is infinitely good and continues to be so always!
Yes dear reader, you can always trust Him, and He will never fail you. Regarding the time when the Lord Jesus Christ was on the earth, it is written that He went about doing good. Also, it is written that God causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. When God is good, even what He does and gives is only good.
James in his epistle says in 1:17, "Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow." Not only is He a giver of all good and perfect gifts, but He also does not ever change in His character. He is the same yesterday, today and forever!
The best part of God’s goodness is that He intends to share His goodness with all who relate with Him. However, when seen from God’s righteous perspective, no human is eligible to be rightly related to Him. The reason for this impossibility is the presence of an inborn tendency in every person to rebel against the goodness of God.
The greatest good for us
Therefore, the greatest good that can happen in any person’s life is to experience the deliverance from the power of evil in them. All our lives we struggle to get rid of the inherent evil within us, which the Bible calls as sin or the sinful nature. This sinful nature is what forces us to think, speak, and do the evil that we do not want to do, and it prevents us from doing the good we so much wish to do.
Listen to the helpless cry of a great man of God in the Bible. He cries out in desperation like this.
"For I do not understand my own actions [I am baffled and bewildered by them]. I do not practice what I want to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate [and yielding to my human nature, my worldliness—my sinful capacity]. Now if I habitually do what I do not want to do, [that means] I agree with the Law, confessing that it is good (morally excellent). So now [if that is the case, then] it is no longer I who do it [the disobedient thing which I despise], but the sin [nature] which lives in me. For I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh [my human nature, my worldliness—my sinful capacity]. For the willingness [to do good] is present in me, but the doing of good is not. For the good that I want to do, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want to do, I am no longer the one doing it [that is, it is not me that acts], but the sin [nature] which lives in me. So I find it to be the law [of my inner self], that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good. For I joyfully delight in the law of God in my inner self [with my new nature], but I see a different law and rule of action in the members of my body [in its appetites and desires], waging war against the law of my mind and subduing me and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is within my members. Wretched and miserable man that I am! Who will [rescue me and] set me free from this body of death [this corrupt, mortal existence]?" (Romans 7:15-24 [AMP]).
You can also own it
The best part of all this is that he is not left without hope in this wretched condition. Deliverance from sinful nature is possible and available right now. He goes on to say, "Thanks be to God [for my deliverance] through Jesus Christ our Lord!"
Yes, dear one, if you are really seeking to be delivered from this sinful nature, you don't have to go anywhere else or do anything for that. Christ has done what we could not do, for the forgiveness of our sin and to grant us deliverance from the sinful nature. He sacrificed Himself for the sins of the whole world, was buried, and rose from the dead.
Today He is willing and able to forgive all your sins and grant you divine power to say no to sin if you but cry out to Him in faith.
Will you not do so to enjoy God's eternal goodness? He has promised God's (eternal) life to all who trust in Christ's substitutionary death and vicarious resurrection. Please don't refuse this good that does not have an end. May God help you also to do so.
5/12/2023
