{"id":6439,"date":"2024-04-06T12:23:44","date_gmt":"2024-04-06T17:23:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/?p=6439"},"modified":"2024-04-06T12:23:45","modified_gmt":"2024-04-06T17:23:45","slug":"righteous-rags","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/?p=6439","title":{"rendered":"RIGHTEOUS RAGS"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I&#8217;m not a bad person.<br>I&#8217;m a good person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m not so bad.<br>I&#8217;m pretty good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m better than most people.<br>I&#8217;m not as bad as . . .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My good is more than my bad.<br>My good outweighs my bad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I do a lot of good for others.<br>I don&#8217;t hurt anyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I have good relationships.<br>I don&#8217;t hate anyone.<br>&#8211; &#8211; &#8211;<br>Ten times &#8220;I . . .&#8221; in the above.<br>Four times &#8220;My . . .&#8221; in the above.<br>&#8211; &#8211; &#8211;<br>Good ?<br>Right ?<br>Better than ?<br>&#8211; &#8211; &#8211;<br>&#8211; &#8211; &#8211;<br>\u201cAll of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The literal meaning of &#8220;filthy rags&#8221; (with a Hebrew word to make it clear)&#8212;anything after being used for a woman&#8217;s menstrual cycle.<br>That is why the common term was &#8220;on the rag&#8221;.<br>God&#8217;s choice of the word in the Bible makes it very clear how worthless, how despicable, our best efforts appear before Him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My good counts for nothing&#8212;worse than nothing&#8212;repulsive to God.<br>My sin counts for hell.<br>And all that is why Jesus suffered and died.<br>Accept His payment for your sin, today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Jesus paid it all&#8212;all to Him I owe.<br>Sin had left a crimson stain<br>He washed it white as snow.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m not a bad person.I&#8217;m a good person. I&#8217;m not so bad.I&#8217;m pretty good. I&#8217;m better than most people.I&#8217;m not as bad as . . . My good is more than my bad.My good outweighs my bad. I do a lot of good for others.I don&#8217;t hurt anyone. I have good relationships.I don&#8217;t hate anyone.&#8211; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2,7,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-educational","category-faith_based","category-inspire_lifter","category-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6439"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6439"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6440,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6439\/revisions\/6440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awordforthought.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}