Sincerity isn’t enough
A few years ago I travelled back to Birmingham by train from London. It was when the train stopped at Watford Junction and then began returning to London that I knew something was amiss. I was on the wrong train! The thing is, I had been fully convinced that it was the right train. I was utterly sincere, and yet totally mistaken.
There is an idea going round that, when it comes to matters of faith, it doesn’t really matter what you believe as long as you’re sincere. Certainly, it’s not a good thing to be insincere. But, as with my train, you can be utterly sincere and yet totally mistaken.
The apostle Paul makes this crystal clear as he writes about his fellow-Jews, longing that they all come to a saving faith in Jesus Christ: “I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge” (Romans 10:2). In other words, they are sincere, but ignorant. How so? “Since they did not know the righteousness that comes from God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness” (verse 3). So, as well as being ignorant, they are arrogant (daring to make themselves right in God’s eyes) and disobedient (refusing to accept the righteousness that God longs to give them). Similarly, when we work to make ourselves acceptable to God, we may be utterly sincere and yet totally mistaken. Our acceptance before God is only ever his gift to us, through our faith in Jesus and his death for us.