You know the more I live in this world the more I realize people as a whole have not changed a lot. Yes times, styles and means change but the heart of people has always been flawed. Some people look at our fledging moral society and think it has really went down hill. While it’s true that western culture has slipped down the moral scale, in its totality the human race has always clung to evil. The Bible says there is no one good and that all fall short of the glory of God.

So how does all that correlate with my mentality since I was a young child that say, “There is good in everyone?” I mean if we are totally lost because of our sin, then how is there good. Was I completely wrong? Well I think in my study last week I finally figured out how to marry those seemingly opposite ideas. Since we are created in God’s image then we have the potential with Christ in us to be a new creation. Think about it; Jesus always seems to look at who someone could be in Christ rather then who they were at the time. He looked at people for what they could become rather than what they were or what they had.

Who would ever have guessed that reactionary Simon Peter would become a rock-like leader, that the persecutor Saul would become the preacher Paul, the demon possessed Mary Magdalene would be the first to see the resurrected Jesus, the proud intellectual Nicodemus would be humbly born again, or the cheating tax collector Zaccheaus would host Jesus for dinner? Jesus saw the potential in all of them and He looks at us the same way. So maybe my child silly thoughts were not that far off after all. We should look to the potential good in everyone.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17).