My two sisters are in the habit of calling me the “Golden Child,” saying that mom doesn’t think I ever do anything wrong. I guess I was always pretty well-behaved. I remember mom used to have to bribe my brother and sisters with rewards to be good, like cookies or chocolates or some other treat. But she didn’t have to bribe me that way. And recently I overheard her bragging about me to someone. She said, “That Mike was always good for nothing!”

That corny joke leads me to what I want you to consider today, the phrase, “good for nothing.” You may have used it before without really thinking about what it means or says. But I think it goes a long way toward explaining who we are and who we have become as disciples of Jesus Christ.

1 Peter 3:18 For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.

You and I are truly good for nothing, in several senses of the term. First of all our sins make us worthless in God’s sight. That is the message that has come to us down through the ages. It is the message God has for the world: “You are good for nothing!” using it in the traditional sense of the term, worthless. God sent the message through His prophets that our life and conduct make us “good for nothing” in His sight.

Isaiah 40:17 Before him all the nations are as nothing; they are regarded by him as worthless and less than nothing.

Another meaning of this phrase is that we could not make ourselves good for nothing, or to use better grammar, there is nothing we can do to make ourselves good. There is no way for us to make up for what we have done. There is nothing we can offer God to appease His righteous anger over sin. We all fall into that trap of thinking that we can, believing we can do something to make God like us. We fool ourselves into thinking that we are not like everyone else, that we are somehow deserving of God’s kindness and favor. We must all be regularly reminded that what the hymn writer wrote in “Rock of Ages” speaks for us all:

Not the labors of my hands, Can fulfill the Law’s demands. . .
Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to thy cross I cling.
(The Lutheran Hymnal #376)

That brings me to the third sense of this phrase: We have been made good for nothing. That is what Jesus came to do.

He died that we might be forgiven, He died to make us good.
That we might go at last to heaven Saved by his precious blood.
(Children’s Hymnal #43)

Jesus died to make us good, and it costs us nothing. It is a free gift of God’s grace. His death paid for sin. His resurrection is the guarantee of life everlasting for all who trust in Him.

Dr. Cesar Malan was visiting in the home of a talented woman who had pursued a career in music, but she had become disabled and was now bitter about life. She asked Dr. Malan, “How do you become a Christian?” He replied, “You pray this prayer: O God, I come to you just as I am.” Dr. Malan’s words had a profound impact not only on Charlotte Elliott, but upon untold other searching sinners. It was years later when Miss Elliott, now a Christian, was trying to help raise money for a school in England, that she wrote a hymn that would become known around the world, the hymn that recalled those words Dr. Malan spoke to her:

Just as I am, without one plea, But that Thy blood was shed for me
And that Thou bidd’st me come to Thee, O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

Just as I am, good for nothing. Christ died, the good for the good for nothing, to make you good…for nothing.