Can your good deeds save you? Is it sufficient to be a good person and revere God, regardless of your faith?
A professed Christian told me that Hindus, Muslims, Jews etc., could be saved if they were good people, did good deeds and had reverence for God. It wouldn’t matter if they were not Christians. In fact, he said that a lot of Christians won’t be saved because they weren’t good enough! His argument was based on the day of judgement when all of our deeds will be revealed. Now I know that can’t be right, but what Bible verses do I need to prove that salvation can not be “earned” by good deeds?
Some great answers! Thanks to everyone who took the time to quote from the Bible. I’ve been dishing out thumbs’ up – but nobody got a thumbs’ down from me. I might not agree with an answer, but I welcome all opinions.
You have sufficient verses posted above.
What possible good deeds could any do to match the perfection and glory of God?
Shall mortal man be more just than God? shall a man be more pure than his maker?
Behold, he put no trust in his servants; and his angels he charged with folly:
How much less in them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, which are crushed before the moth?
Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one.
What is man, that he should be clean? and he which is born of a woman, that he should be righteous?
Behold, he putteth no trust in his saints; yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight.
How much more abominable and filthy is man, which drinketh iniquity like water?
To put it at a very low level that would be to bring God down to our level or to be presumptious about our own worthiness and goodness.
There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes, and yet is not washed from their filthiness.
As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:
There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.
They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one …
Do we dispute God’s declaration of the matter?
Lets’s be absurd and imagine that any are just as good as God in their deeds, yet what of their sins and disobedience? If you like their misdeeds?
If thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?
For now thou numberest my steps: dost thou not watch over my sin?
My transgression is sealed up in a bag, and thou sewest up mine iniquity.
If I sin, then thou markest me, and thou wilt not acquit me from mine iniquity.
Since sin has brought in corruption and death, What man is he that liveth, and shall not see death? shall he deliver his soul from the hand of the grave? Selah.
Is God going to ignore breaches of His law? Crazy. Even in the imperfect courts of this world the judge does not ignore offences.
Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.
But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.
So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God.
Who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead.
And if the judges did ignore offences would we not all cry out injustice, unfairness, why can they be let off but we can’t? Wouldn’t that render our law keeping of no account?
Much more then the Perfection of God.
Who can stand before his indignation? and who can abide in the fierceness of his anger? his fury is poured out like fire, and the rocks are thrown down by him.
But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner’s fire, and like fullers’ soap:
For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?
In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel.
For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ … For therein is the righteousness of God revealed …
Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.
Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.
And why was it so absolutely necessary for Christ to be punished in our stead? Would He have undergone such supreme and infinite sufferings if there was any other way?
Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.
It was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.
Obviously it was to pay the full demands of Justice on behalf of those who are joined to Christ so that they may be given new life with Christ in His resurrection, and since He had not sinned but lived a perfect life of obedience to God and under God’s law, they would receive and be clothed in His righteousness, which of course is God’s righteousness, in perfect agreement with the glory of God.
But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets;
Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference.
Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection:
God can only accept perfection and this is how it is made possible with imperfect sinners.
That he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.
Until any become convicted of their sin then they can entertain notions such as you write of.
But God has declared to us our true state and this has come to us in the record of His word.
We ignore at our peril and loss.
