Back in the 1980s, I attended "An Evening With Cary Grant" in Los Angeles. The program featured the iconic film star discussing his career along with film clips and an extensive Q&A session with the audience.

Grant was, in so many ways, the quintessential movie star, the epitome of style and grace. He was impossibly handsome, inimitably charming, and incomparably debonair. He was the closest thing to perfection that the silver screen has ever produced -- and that's saying a lot, considering Hollywood's reputation as America's "dream factory."

Yet the one thing I most remember about that night is when he told the audience sadly: "I wake up every morning, look in the mirror and say, 'I wish I was Cary Grant'..." That's right, even the great Cary Grant couldn't be Cary Grant in real life! Truth is, neither can any of the rest of us.

We like to tell ourselves that we are good people and we'll get to heaven because our good works will surely outweigh our bad ones. The problem is that this runs completely counter to what Scripture teaches -- that none of us are good because the standard for goodness is God Himself. So we read in Psalm 14: "There is none who does good, no, not one."

As far as doing more good works than bad, Scripture also tells us "the best of our righteousnesses are like filthy rags" before a perfectly holy, perfectly just God (Isaiah 64:6). The truth is we cannot even do good works apart from Christ. Our own works are always tainted, to some degree, by impure motives and are done for self-serving reasons -- our own acclaim or to impress others -- certainly not for Christ's glory. And as the great missionary C.T. Studd rightly stated: "We have just one life, 'twill soon be past, only what's done for Christ will last." So God demands true holiness and nothing less, and all truly good works glorify Christ.

Yes, we can all find plenty of other people who are worse than we are, to make us feel better about ourselves and think we're good by comparison. But being "less bad" compared to other fallen human beings is only a matter of degrees on the sliding scale of sinfulness. The Apostle Paul cautions of such false assurance, "measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, they are not wise" (2 Corinthians 10:12).

The only acceptable standard for goodness in this world is the perfectly holy life that Jesus Himself lived in thought, word and deed. Everything else falls short, and that means all the rest of us -- "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). That means we all need a Savior, and Jesus is the only one there is or ever will be, the One who lived the perfect life none of us have (and did it for us) then died the perfect sacrificial death in our place -- "the just dying for the unjust" (1 Peter 3:18). Now, when anyone comes to faith in Christ, he is justified (made just or righteous) by His redeeming blood and grace: "Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ" (Romans 5:1).

No, we are not born good. We are made good by a sovereign work of God, by being born-again through faith in Christ and receiving the free gift of eternal life that only He can give to us.