“Why is it dangerous to be good?”

Steve Brown:
“Why is it dangerous to be good?” The answer to that and other questions, on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
Welcome to Key Life. Our host and teacher is Steve Brown. He’s no guru, but he does have honest answers to honest questions about the Bible. God’s grace changes everything, how we love, work, live, lead, marry, parent, evangelize, purchase, and worship. So, here’s Steve and Pete Alwinson from ForgeBibleStudy.Com with street-smart Bible teaching for real life.

Steve Brown:
Hey Pete.

Pete Alwinson:
Hey man, how you doing?

Steve Brown:
I’m doing good and better now that you’re sitting here.

Pete Alwinson:
Oh, well, you know, you probably haven’t said anything to anybody, but you’re better, but you had an accident and you’re doing better.

Steve Brown:
I was drunk and fell down and, actually, I’m a teetotaler, so

Pete Alwinson:
I know you were lying there.

Steve Brown:
But I did have a fall and hit a car that was sitting there. It was parked. It wasn’t coming at me. And then I cracked some cartilage around the ribs and, and I expect a great sympathy from you.

Pete Alwinson:
And you have it.

Steve Brown:
No, you’re making fun.

Pete Alwinson:
No, I’m not making fun. You’re just being a little insecure on this, but I am really sad. I’m just, you know, I want you to heal up quickly, take deep breaths and are there dents in the car? Cause you’re a.

Steve Brown:
I haven’t checked, I didn’t leave a note.

Pete Alwinson:
You’re a tough guy.

Steve Brown:
I bet, could be, you know, the hard thing about cartilage stuff and don’t send me, don’t send me your remedies. I just got, my son in-law who’s a doctor and my doctor both say you can’t do anything. You just got to heal. It’s got to heal and it’s going to take a while.

Pete Alwinson:
All right. All right. Well, we’ll put up with it.

Steve Brown:
All right.

Pete Alwinson:
And we’ll pray for you.

Steve Brown:
But don’t send me your remedies, but you could pray for me, that can’t hurt. By the way, Pete comes in on Fridays as you know, and we’ve been doing this for a lot of years. And if you haven’t checked out ForgeTruth.com you ought to, great podcast there, a weekly one that is just life changing, and a lot of other material. And Pete comes in, we answer questions on Fridays, and I love this time, and we love your questions. You can call 1-800-KEY-LIFE, 24 7, follow instructions, and we’ll record your question, and sometimes put it on the air. Or you can write to

Key Life Network
P.O. Box 5000
Maitland, Florida 32794

in Canada, it’s

Key Life Canada
P.O. Box 28060
Waterloo, Ontario N2L 6J8

or you can e-mail your question to [email protected] and if you can help us, that would be appropriate for you to use those contact places to do so. And I promise we’ll be as faithful with your gift as you were in giving it. And if you can’t, we understand, say a prayer for the ministry. If you do, you become a champion and you help those who can’t. Pete, why don’t you lead us in prayer and we’ll turn to these questions.

Pete Alwinson:
You got it. Let’s pray together. Our Great Father, we thank you for your goodness to us in so many ways and we honor you and praise you. Father, thank you for walking us through this week. We need you every day, even more than we know it. And Lord, we thank you for your answered prayer. We thank you for the truth that sustains us when we’re anxious, when we’re insecure. We thank you for your greatness and your power. We thank you for your salvation, mercy. Lord, we thank you that we don’t have to be good to be accepted. In fact, we aren’t good and you accept us in Jesus. We praise you that you were good for us and then took our curse and we honor you and praise you and ask that this time a Q&A would go well. But Lord, looking ahead to this week-end, we pray for our pastors and priests and teachers and leaders and ask that you would use them in a big way to unfold the gospel and unfold your greatness to us that we could worship you. Be with Steve. Heal him up completely, Lord. And thank you that you protected him in that fall. And thank you that you protect us all. So, we commit our time to you now as we pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Steve Brown:
Amen. Let’s go to our phone lines.

Caller 1:
I heard in the past, you mentioned that one of the greatest gifts for a Christian is their sin when they know it. And your faithfulness is one of the most dangerous places to be when you know it. So, my question is, what do we do when we are faithful and we know that we have been faithful?

Steve Brown:
Well, you know, I can be faithful, I just can’t be faithful long enough. You know, as a matter of fact, be glad when God shows you that. I’ve often said, God, I know that you think if you give me an inch, I’ll take a mile. So, I don’t see a whole lot of really good things in me. But occasionally, would you do that just so I don’t get discouraged?

Pete Alwinson:
Right.

Steve Brown:
And he does, by the way, and so I think he does, and I think this listener, and that’s a great question, and it shows that he’s really thinking about it. When you’re faithful, be glad, because the next hour you might not be, and you know what you’re capable of. What I was talking about when I said it was dangerous when you’re faithful and you know it, is that it can become self righteousness. What were you singing before we came on the air? If you’re faithful and you know it,

Pete Alwinson:
pat yourself on the back. It’s a play off of a kid’s song, you know.

Steve Brown:
And that’s what we do. We have a, it’s in our DNA. We’re attracted to self righteousness. And that is the sin that Jesus had more trouble with, read Matthew 23. Don’t do it at night because it’ll keep you awake. But it’s pretty harsh stuff. And it’s directed almost exclusively to self righteousness. And you know the parable that Jesus told about the tax collector and the Pharisee and they went and the Pharisee was a good man and told God he was and thanked him. And the tax collector said, I’m not, man, he wouldn’t even look up. And Jesus said he went away justified. So, that’s what I meant, that you’ve got to be careful when you begin to think, you know, I’m a really good person and better than most.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
First, that’s a lie. And secondly, Satan will use it. It puts you in a really bad place.

Pete Alwinson:
Oh, that is so true. And that just flows with that verse.

Therefore let him who thinks he stands. Take heed lest he fall.

And it’s kind of this idea that, Oh, look, I’m doing pretty good. I must be standing by myself. But we’re not, we never stand by ourself. And so, yeah, be thankful, like you said, God’s working in your life. I think the thing in the long run, you and I’ve been at this a long time and I think what happens the more you’re in the word and the more you’re growing the more you see your motivational level.

Steve Brown:
So true.

Pete Alwinson:
And I, what I find is I don’t find myself patting myself on the back as much as I see my motivational level sins and I feel convicted by that. So, I’m being faithful out there and I’m doing pretty good and I’m not messing up. But I see my darkness at times just on the motivational level, that keeps you humble.

Steve Brown:
It’s a gift. It’s a gift from God. Both our obedience and our disobedience are dangerous places and you got to be careful.

Pete Alwinson:
I’m glad you teach that.

Steve Brown:
What are the qualifications, this is an e-mail, for ordination and church leadership.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. I Timothy 3, Titus chapter 1. By the way, it’s also for men and it’s qualifications for a mature man and I would say also for mature woman, maturity in general. But the kicker on this is that people think as they read those, well, I don’t have that perfectly. I don’t have any of these qualifications, but none of us do, particularly as we had in younger years in the ministry, for officers, elder, deacon or whatever. But we’ve got to be on the way to those things, I think.

Steve Brown:
You know, I think what you just said, and nobody does that perfectly. I think a leader needs to recognize that. If I had been writing to Titus or Timothy, I would have added one other thing, that he recognized that he doesn’t live up perfectly to all of these things.

Pete Alwinson:
Right, right, right.

Steve Brown:
We have a friend here, his name’s Ray, who pastors a church in our denomination. And I was preaching there one time when he introduced the new elders that had been elected. And he had them come before the congregation. He said to the congregation, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking we picked the best of the bunch to lead you and he said, no, they aren’t, he said, they’re probably the worst of the bunch, but the difference between them and you is that they know it.

Pete Alwinson:
Ah.

Steve Brown:
Is that a good statement?

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah, it is.

Steve Brown:
It really is.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah. And I think that’s just part of spiritual growth. You know that the whole thing, what’s most important character, charisma or competency. Well, it’s got to be character.

Steve Brown:
Of course.

Pete Alwinson:
Yeah.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, it really does. And that’s important. You know, you don’t bring a drunk in and make him an elder of the church. Not because those who are elders are not sinners, but because there are certain things that ought to be a part of the leadership.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. And therefore what happens is if you’ve got basically qualified leaders, you’re going to have a better led church. They’re going to make better decisions for the good of everybody. And it’s not, again, it’s this things should be done decently and in order in a church because we’re a big family and we need wise leadership. That’s why there needs to be character.

Steve Brown:
So good. Boy, do I agree. This is an e-mail, do you have to say a sinner’s prayer to be saved? If so, where is it in the Bible? Well, it is in the Bible.

Pete Alwinson:
It is. So, where is it?

Steve Brown:
Well, it’s in the sinner, the tax collector who prayed.

Oh God, be merciful to me, a sinner.

That’s a sinner’s prayer.

Pete Alwinson:
It’s a model of one, sure.

Steve Brown:
So, no, you don’t, you know, we have these formulas. on how you lead somebody to Christ. There’s the Roman Road, the Evangelism Explosion, Four Spiritual Laws, and a thousand others. And none of them are exactly and precisely revealed in Scripture.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. That’s right.

Steve Brown:
So mostly, coming to Christ is an attitude. I’m really in trouble here and I, you know, it’s obvious I’m not doing a good job of anything and somebody told me that Jesus would love me if I’d go to him because he died for me. That’s it. And that didn’t take a brain surgeon.

Pete Alwinson:
And I trust. I trust. I trust in Jesus.

Steve Brown:
Because I don’t have any other where to go.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right. That’s right. And that’s what the disciples said when people were all abandoning Jesus. Where should we go? You have the words of eternal life.

Steve Brown:
That’s so true.

Pete Alwinson:
And that’s basically coming to the end of ourselves and just telling God that, that’s what the center of prayer is, however it comes out.

Steve Brown:
It’s an attitude of knowing where the bread is and going to get it. And our job is to tell we’re beggars, as somebody has said, and we’re called to tell other beggars where we found bread.

Pete Alwinson:
That’s right.

Steve Brown:
Well, you coming back next week?

Pete Alwinson:
You know, if you’re going to be here, I’ve got to show up.

Steve Brown:
All right. Got to go. Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.