Not on our Own

Read 2 Corinthians 5:14-21.  Here are verses 17-19:

So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; look, new things have come into being! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation;  that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.

I'm not against goals.  I set them every week - or I try to.  I am not against working to improve ourselves or trying to be "better" than we were before.  I remember reading the Benjamin Franklin (was it him?) who would set a positive characteristic that he wanted to achieve.  He would work on it until he felt he had reached it, and then he would move onto another one.

That said, I think this passage helps us to understand that while we can do "better" - maybe - it is God who transforms us.  it is God who makes us a new creation.  That is not self-improvement, but moving onto perfection through God's sanctifying grace.

Verse 21: For our sake God made the one who knew no sin to be sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Through Christ, we can have a clean heart. That is not something we can do on our own.