Honesty Is the Best Policy

It has been said that honesty is the best policy. And nowhere is that more true than in matters of faith.

Newly liberated from Egyptian captivity, the children of Israel gladly entered into covenant relation with God. It was a people filled with hope and expectation that encountered God in the wilderness.

After learning that God wished for them to be His “special treasure . . . above all people,” “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation,” Israel enthusiastically agreed to what God proposed (Ex. 19:5, 6). “All that the Lord has spoken we will do,” they declared (verse 8). Yet barely six weeks later Moses’ countrymen, led by his brother, Aaron, the high priest, built a golden calf, and engaged in degrading idolatry. “The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play” (Ex. 32:6). So disgusted was Moses with what he witnessed as he descended Mount Sinai that he “cast the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain” (verse 19).

Their problem was not a lack of sincerity, or willingness. They simply ran into the same predicament Paul outlined in Romans 7: “What I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do” (verse 15). What Israel needed was honesty. Admitting they were incapable of doing what God had asked would have seen them avoid an almost endless stream of failure and suffering.

There was no way this group of former slaves, unaccustomed to freedom or self-determination, and surrounded for generations by raw paganism, could of themselves do what God was asking. Which is precisely the situation in which God’s people find themselves today. The question is not whether or not God wishes His people to love and obey Him. The question is How is that to happen?

The Key

Many have become discouraged with their own inability to live with integrity before God, often concluding that they will never learn the secret to genuine Christianity. The first thing for a follower of Jesus to understand is their own weakness. The second is what God promises to do in and through that weakness.

The truth is, God cannot save those who believe they are strong. This is why Paul wrote, “Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor. 10:12). As the prophet said: “All our righteousnesses are like filthy rags” (Isa. 64:6).

The One who begins the work of salvation in a sinner’s life pledges to continue that work until the day Jesus returns.

Yet to these sinful, unrighteous people God says, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). The key to successful Christian living is learning to depend on the strength of Jesus. God does not ask His children to do great things, but to surrender their lives to Him so that He may do great things in them.

This thought is expressed repeatedly in the book of Philippians: “Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6). The One who begins the work of salvation in a sinner’s life pledges to continue that work until the day Jesus returns. “For it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13).

To the same believers, Paul expresses his desire to “be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith” (Phil. 3:9). Paul explains to the church in Philippi that God wishes that His children allow Him to live His life in them. Surrendering their lives to God, sinners receive Jesus’ own righteousness.

When the Holy Spirit inhabits a life, He brings to the believer Christ and His righteousness. Jesus pledges to live in the hearts of His followers. As Galatians 2:20 says: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me” (KJV). Paul explained to the church at Colossae that the mystery of the gospel is “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27).

Jesus expressed the same thought when He explained that His relationship with His disciples was akin to the connection between a vine and its branches. “Abide in Me, and I in you,” Jesus said. “As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me” (John 15:4). 

Alive in Christ

Every day presents the child of God with the opportunity to surrender to Him. “The soul that is yielded to Christ becomes His own fortress, which He holds in a revolted world, and He intends that no authority shall be known in it but His own. A soul thus kept in possession by the heavenly agencies is impregnable to the assaults of Satan.”1 

“Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?” (Rom. 6:16, KJV). “All true obedience comes from the heart. It was heart work with Christ. And if we consent, He will so identify Himself with our thoughts and aims, so blend our hearts and minds into conformity to His will, that when obeying Him we shall be but carrying out our own impulses. The will, refined and sanctified, will find its highest delight in doing His service. When we know God as it is our privilege to know Him, our life will be a life of continual obedience. Through an appreciation of the character of Christ, through communion with God, sin will become hateful to us.”2 

As German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote: “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”3 Dying to the old life allows Jesus to remake us in His own image. There will undoubtedly be times of disappointment as we learn how to surrender to Him more fully. If we are honest with ourselves, we shall admit we are not able to be what eternity demands. That same honesty will recognize that God can do everything necessary for justification and sanctification in even the weakest life. Surrendered to Jesus, we may look with confidence to that great day when the redeemed shall say, “Behold, this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for Him; we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation” (Isa. 25:9). 

“Even so, come, Lord Jesus” (Rev. 22:20). 

1 Ellen G. White, The Desire of Ages (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1898, 1940), p. 324.

2 Ibid., p. 668.

3 Deitrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (Touchstone; First Edition, 1995), p. 99.