“I’m O.K., You’re O.K.”  That’s the title of a best selling book and the philosophy mankind has adopted since it’s inception.  The thinking is that man is not all that bad.  Actually he’s pretty good most of the time, and he can get better.  And if you don’t believe that just check out all the late night infomercials.  Mind, body and soul can be perfected in 30 days or less. Guaranteed.

Is it really true that we’re not all that bad?  Are we really okay afterall?  Not hardly.

Speaking collectively of all mankind, deceased and still reforming, the Apostle Paul wrote that “there is no one righteous, not even one” (Romans 3:10).  An Old Testament prophet named Jeremiah described our condition by stating that our hearts are “deceitful above all things and beyond cure” (17:9).  Even Jesus, who loves humanity more than any other, said “There is only One who is good” (Matt 19:17).  And to quote an old children’s song, “and you are not it.’  Nor I.  Nor Ghandi.  Nor Oprah.  Nor Mother Teresa.  Not even Billy Graham.   We all have issues.

     Yet we still hold on to the belief that we can be better.  So we buy the self-help books and we attend the self esteem seminars and we tell our children that they are ‘gifted’ and ‘special’ all in an effort to feel and think better of ourselves.  And therein lies the problem.

We don’t need to think more of ourselves.  We need to think less.  We don’t need to build ourselves up.  We need to be taken down a notch or two.  We are sinners through and through.  Dirty and at times depraved.  Unrighteous and at times unloving.  Rotten to the core.  In desperate need of God’s grace and forgiveness.

No we don’t need more of ourselves.  We need more of Christ.  We needn’t try to be better people.  We need to let someone better live in and through us.  John the Baptist knew this well when he said “He must become greater, I must become less” (John 3:30).