8072	Forums / Main Forum / Why Faith Is A Must	on: December 19, 2006, 01:58:05 PM
Quote Yes, i think i understand, MBG.  There is no one righteous or good because the standard for righteousness and goodness is Jesus Himself, who was and is perfect.  Even Jesus said, "There is no one good but God alone". I understand that everything you or i think is tainted by our sinful nature (what popular culture might call our dark side), so that what we think is unselfish and giving love on our part really has some degree of selfishness to it. So, you are really not saying Christians are good and non-Christians are not, rather, what you are saying is that all Christians and non-Christians (at least to some degree) are really evil.   Unbelievers are not as evil as their potential of evil. There is a difference between murder and just hating someone. The punishment demands are different. On the positive side the rewards for giving 1 million dollars are far greater than giving 10 dollars. And these circumstances involve personal choices that come with reward or punishment. But really what keeps an unbeliever from being the worse that he possibly could be? What makes an unbeliever do good acts of kindness? Well there is a sense in which the rewards or punishment encourage them to act with moral conviction. But again we are really discussing the sovereignty of God and that aspect of behavior by choice. And since God causes everything , we can conclude that God causes the unbelievers to choose according to the common grace they have in their choices. God is absolutely sovereign and has decreed what ever comes to pass. So really what keeps an unbeliever from the depths of sin is common grace. It is the cause of all philanthropy. God orders all things so that He gets the glory even if men in the state of unbelief acknowledge it or not.