Our Good Deeds =Utter Rubbish

Here is a brief thought on how worthless our good works are when we hold them up before God in order to be "made right with Him" or to "gain entrance into heaven." 

Please take the time to read this verse in the context of the whole chapter so you can feel the full force of what the Apostle Paul is trying to say. Then take the time to really reflect on the commentary that is provided below. Let this thought cut deep, penetrate, and strip away any thought or idea that you might carry in your heart that you in anyway on your own can EARN God's favor apart from the work of Christ on the cross.

"Yes doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but DUNG, that I may win Christ" (Philippians 3:8).

And do count them but dung - The word used here - σκύβαλον skubalon - occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. It means, properly, dregs; refuse; what is thrown away as worthless; chaff; offal, or the refuse of a table or of slaughtered animals, and then filth of any kind. No language could express a more deep sense of the utter worthlessness of all that external advantages can confer in the matter of salvation. In the question of justification before God, all reliance on birth, and blood, and external morality, and forms of religion, and prayers, and alms, is to be renounced, and, in comparison with the merits of the great Redeemer, to be esteemed as vile. Such were Paul's views, and we may remark that if this was so in his case, it should he in ours. Such things can no more avail for our salvation than they could for his. We can no more be justified by them than he could. Nor will they do anything more in our case to commend us to God than they did in his. 

Is there any thing in your life that you're trusting to earn your salvation? If you're trusting in your Church, your good deeds, your love and compassion that you have for others, your religious devotion, your bible reading, your prayer life--- then you're trusting in things that are worthless and will be utterly discarded by our Lord at Judgement.

 Remember the words of Isaiah: We are all infected and impure with sin. When we display our righteous deeds, they are nothing but filthy rags. Like autumn leaves, we wither and fall, and our sins sweep us away like the wind (64:6).