What is the one thing separating most people from God?

If your answer to the question is, “sin?”, then enter buzzer sound for being incorrect here.

Now, to be fair, you’re right theologically that sin divides us from God. For example, the prophet Isaiah wrote: “But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you” (Is. 59:2).

Paul also says bluntly that “the wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23) and tells us about our former state and what Christ has done about our sin problem when he writes: “When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross” (Col. 2:13-14).

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So, sin separates all people from God, which is why everyone needs a Savior. But the problem is, most of us don’t think we need anything of the kind.

Many years ago, I was conversing with a close family member who thought exactly that. When I asked them what they believed was going to happen to them when they died, they said they’d go spend eternity with God because they were “a good person.”

Again, enter buzzer sound for being incorrect here.

Mark it down: this is the one thing that separates most people from God. As theologian John Gerstner put it: “The main thing between you and God is not so much your sins; it’s your damnable good works.”

This is the biblical double-slap in the face and bitter pill that’s too offensive for many people to swallow. As Tim Keller said: “Grace is insulting. One side says they don’t need forgiveness whereas the other side says that’s too easy.”

Both sides say it’s all about being “good.”

The issue is, as Jesus said, “No one is good except God alone” (Mark 10:18). Scripture tells us: “None is righteous, no, not one” (Rom. 3:10), “There is no one who does good” (Ps. 14:1), with Isaiah being clear on where that leads: “For all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; and all of us wither like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away” (Is. 64:6).

If you think that’s a difficult truth to accept, let me do you one better. When it comes to combining offensiveness with incredulity on this matter, no one outshines Jesus in one of His parables that we find in Luke’s Gospel.    

What salvation looks like

Luke writes:

“Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. ‘I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, the sinner!’ I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 18:10–14).

Christ’s listeners were no doubt grabbing their chest and fighting off a heart attack after hearing this. Jesus could not have been more extreme if He tried.

He gives them the ultimate personification of “good” in that culture — the Pharisee — vs. the most hated example of being “bad” in the tax collector, who society saw as selling their soul to the devil. How in the world can the bad actor be “justified” in the eyes of God vs. the extreme “good” law keeper?

Maybe some of Christ’s hearers noticed that, with the Pharisee, there were no pleas for forgiveness. Instead, he played a comparison game with his rival prayer partner that finished with a series of congratulatory slaps on the back on his going beyond the call of law-keeping duty. In his mind, he was right with God and his companion doomed, which is a mindset seen in a Pharisaic prayer dating from about the time Jesus told this parable that reads:

“I thank thee, Jehovah my God, that thou hast assigned my lot with those who sit in the house of learning, and not with those who sit at street corners. For I rise early and they rise early: I rise early to study the words of the Torah, and they rise early to attend to things of no importance. I weary myself and they weary themselves: I weary myself and gain thereby, while they weary themselves without gaining anything. I run and they run: I run toward the life of the age to come, while they run toward the pit of destruction.”

The Pharisee’s stance reminds me of that old nursery rhyme that goes: “Little Jack Horner sat in the corner, eating a Christmas pie; he put in his thumb, and pulled out a plum, and said, ‘What a good boy am I, am I!’ And said, ‘What a good boy am I, am I!’

What a contrast he is to the guy who knows he’s not “good.” When the tax collector cries out to God for grace, he doesn’t use the normal Greek word for “mercy,” but instead the term hilaskomai is employed, which means to propitiate, appease, pardon, and eliminate impediments that alienate two parties.

That’s the kind of mercy we all need from God.   

It’s in keeping with what David wrote when he said: “Be gracious to me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; according to the greatness of Your compassion blot out my transgressions (Ps. 51:1).

If you’re reading this and think, like the Pharisee, you can get right with the Creator by being “good,” you can’t. Don’t let your supposed good works that fall far short keep you from spending eternity with God. Instead, get right with Him by adopting the truth spelled out in a verse from Charles Wesley’s old hymn, Rock of Ages that says:

“Nothing in my hand I bring, Simply to thy cross I cling.”

Go that route and you enter through the narrow gate (Matt. 7:13) and are home free.