"Our righteousness is like filthy rags!" (Isaiah 64:6),or
"The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9)
The psalmist seems to disagree.
"My goodness is nothing apart from you."
The other verses above are referring to our state prior our redemption. But referring to those He would redeem, God says,
"But I will put my Spirit in them, and I will remove their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh."
The psalmist doesn't say, "My goodness is nothing."
Nor does he say, "My goodness is nothing compared to You."
He says, "apart from You."
But he is not apart from God. His goodness is not nothing precisely in virtue of the fact that he is dwelling in God's presence, abiding in Him.
"And it is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me."
If this is true, if Christ is the one who lives in us, then our goodness is His goodness.
That is not nothing.
That is not filthy rags.
That is not an exceedingly wicked heart.
Our goodness is pleasing to the Father, if we have trusted Christ, if we have said with the psalmist in verse 2, "You are my Lord!"
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