We live in a culture where the highest good has been redefined to make the greatest good doing what you want. It's called 'self-actualisation' ... getting everything your own heart desires.
But that ethic glosses over the age old realisation that most people are demonstrably their own worst enemy.
We should know better.
Following your heart as if it was your head has led many of us into deep water, and as for following our fancies and addictions ... well!
When you sit down and give this notion a moment's thought, this shift in what we see as the greatest good is so obviously a dangerous re-definition ... even if we leave aside the Bible and the teaching of Jesus.
To go with this 'therapeutic' definition of the highest good, the main goal to be sought out in life, you have to pronounce Jesus as wicked because it is the opposite of what He was actually all about. If that's the greatest good, He was the greatest bad!
Let's fill in a bit of the background here.
It was six weeks after the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus.
There'd been a short lull when the authorities thought they'd buried Jesus, then a big ferment started to break out around a growing crowd of people to which the dead-then-alive-again Jesus of Nazareth appeared ... it happened sometimes in small groups and sometimes in large ones, such that all accounting for this in terms of hallucinations and 'mass psychosis' was ruled out.
It was for real.
But then those six weeks later there was Pentecost ... oh boy ... Pentecost.
People who had gathered at Jerusalem from the Jewish diaspora scattered all around the world saw the impact of the sending of the Holy Spirit on the gathered disciples and heard those disciples proclaiming the praises of God in their own languages, languages the disciples had never learned.
The signs that accredited Jesus had started up all over again, but this time it wasn't just one Person that was doing them. His disciples were doing what Jesus did and proclaiming what Jesus had said.
The game was up for those who had tried SO hard to discredit and eliminate Jesus.
And then at Pentecost the preaching really got started
Peter had preached pretty plainly on the Day of Pentecost, putting the blame for what happened to Jesus squarely on the shoulders of the Jewish leaders and people:
"‘Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.’" (Acts 2:36)
Three thousand were converted that day.
The next day the apostles healed a man at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple on their way into town (continuing in Jesus' Name the accrediting works Jesus had Himself done), and then Peter preached again:
"When God raised up his servant, he sent him first to you to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways.’ "(Acts 3:26)
The rulers and authorities were very disturbed by this and they threw Peter and John in gaol, but by the next day 5,000 had been converted.
The message of Jesus lived on, continuing to be accredited by what were His signs and wonders, but now being done through His repentant, faithful people.
As Jesus had preached from the first, the Kingdom of God was at hand and it was time to REPENT and believe the Good News ... both those things. Not (you see) to fulfil your own needs and plans but to get right on board with following through on His plans.
The King's royal road to rich blessing
Jesus had spoken about living life on either one of two roads. One's a wide road where you meander along pleasing yourself. The other's a lot narrower, but that road leads to the richest blessing in life.
So Peter's putting it to the crowd in Jerusalem ... assembled from all over the known word of his day ... that repentance to faith is the way of the Risen Jesus, which is what Jesus had come to bless people with, by turning them onto walking that way.
You can follow that way, or you can choose not to do so, but the implications of that choice are actually what will affect your happiness quotient.
The Point
If you go with a Gospel that maximises present therapeutic benefit (feeding the selfish self) but that minimises repentance and living by faith, you eradicate the King of the Kingdom's road to real blessing.
The Takeaway
The point of Christ's incarnation, death and resurrection was "first to you to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways.’ " (Acts 3:26)
So are you personally quite sure about that denial of self-fulfilment thing, or have you picked up the cult of self-fulfilment that's perculating through our secular culture, and put a bit of Jesus on it?
Because, from the first, turning from our natural ways to follow Christ has been the authentic call and conscious hope of the Christian.
"When God raised up his servant, he sent him first to you to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways.’" Acts 3:26
So, believing that, what would change about you?
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