I was in church last week – small miracle – and was really amped up to be there. Only two songs in, I got really distracted. The worship team was belting out a song that went something like this: “You are so good, you are good, there is nothing good in me…”

Geez. Nothing good in me? No redeeming qualities whatsoever? Wow. Now, I’m motivated.

Luckily for me, the pastor delivered a sermon that seemed to contradict that lyric, bringing me back into focus. He started with a passage, Romans 7:17, which says, “But now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that in me (that is, my flesh) nothing good dwells…” Hmmm. The clarifying statement, “that is, my flesh” suggests to me that we aren’t necessarily void of goodness. Otherwise, why clarify? If you read further, it says talks about walking according to the spirit versus the flesh. The spirit, even though it is of God, is within us, battling it out with the flesh.

I personally think it is very dangerous to believe there is nothing good in us. I don’t care how many times I read the word wretched in the Bible, I don’t like it! I’m not being holier than thou with a remark like that. I’m not suggesting I don’t need God, that I don’t need salvation. I simply replace the word wretched with the word wrecked.

Yes, I’m a mess. But I am not void of goodness. I was made in God’s image, right? Once upon a time anyway. I’ve written about this before, but it is something I spend a lot of time pondering. In the spirit, we can do good, be good. Of course it is powered by God. But it is God opening something that exists inside us.

Otherwise, we would have no innate desire to follow Him, to be in relationship with Him, to yearn for Him. We are weak. For sure. We are wrecked. At least I am. But wretched? I just think that’s a strong and unnecessary word. Is my argument theologically based? I have no idea. After all, wretch is a fairly common descriptor throughout the Bible. This is simply my point of view.

Yes, I also fully appreciate that sin is deep within me. I just refuse to have it define me. I believe that God sees potential within me.

I was preparing to write this post several days ago. But my schedule got the best of me. The first day I started working on it, I had to drive to the airport for a business trip. On the way, I heard a song by Depeche Mode called Policy of Truth. It had been about a decade since I had heard it. There is a line in the song that says, “Never before is what you swore, the time before.”

Near the end of the song, that refrain is repeated about a thousand times. After multiple rounds I was like, ok ok ok ok. I get it. I have been walking according to the flesh. I’ve been falling back into old patterns, despite my rhetoric. Not really making a great case for there being good in me.

The passage in Romans said that sin dwells in us. That is an important description. Dwells. It’s not a weekend guest or an occassional visitor. It dwells. It lurks beneath the surface. It has taken hold. It occupies space. But it dwells “within us” which means it doesn’t define us. We have the ability to rise above it and to walk according to the spirit.

And we can’t do that without God, obviously. And without His mercy and grace, we would continue to be wrecked and really make a disaster out of our existence. But I will continue to protest the notion that nothing good can come of this. That we are wretched with no redeeming qualities. Right or wrong. For better or for worse. Good, bad or ugly. We could not be “redeemed” if there was nothing to “redeem.”