Sermon: Signifying Nothing
Jun 25th, 2007 by Matt
Date: June 24, 2007
Title: Signifying Nothing
Text: Colossians 2:20-23
Speaker: Greg Pinkner
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Fellowship Evangelical Free Church, Knoxville, TN8000 Middlebrook Pike, Knoxville, TN 37909 :: 865.470.9800 |
Fellowship Evangelical Free Church, Knoxville, TN |
Hello,
Just a couple of comments on an excellent sermon that really made me stretch my mind……
Are good deeds, good works, the people do before salvation “evil?”
The OT is replete with exhortations to do the righteous, right, proper, good, obedient thing so that blessings can be given.
I guess I am merely saying that “worthless” might be a better word. They really don’t count for anything. However, they may help, encourage, support, uplift, heal another human being.
If “evil” can be defined as the deeds people to do heal and help and feed and to nurture, I guess I am not sure what evil really is…..
Second, I bet 40 people have told you that the FRENCH author Camus is not pronounced Kam-us. (French is nearly impossible to figure out at times…..!) How about “Cam-oo.” That is the closest you might get to the sound of the French rue and the German fuehlen.
I really appreciate all the thought you put into messages and how to make all of us really think!!!
May the Lord continue to bless you in your gifts!!
Garvin Greene
I enjoyed this sermon. According to Augustine and Aquinas, evil is a privation of good. So, one could restate Greg’s comment in the following terms. Our ‘good’ actions are a privation of good before God. In the sermon, he also points out that this lack of goodness is not to be seen merely as a quantitative lack. It is not as if we just need God to add that extra 50% to tip us over into goodness. While Platonic dialogues always refer to the difference between appearance and reality, they also point out that the real issue of the Good in and of itself can only be addressed when you consider the orientation of the soul itself and not just the external showing of obedience to laws. There is something disordered in the soul. In Christian terms, we need the grace of God to continually help us so that the actions that flow out of our soul can be used for good. A reorientation/reordering of the soul is fundamentally different than completing a checklist of ‘good’ actions wherein the emphasis becomes what I have achieved instead of the glory of God.
On a side note, I thought the reference to the French existentialists fitting for the larger topic of the goodness of human actions. All of those guys, Camus, Sartre, and de Beauvoir really struggled with whether or not the so-called good actions we performed were not in some way inherently violent. Camus’ The Plague is a great novel that really articulates this struggle from a secular standpoint.