Like the last episode, this program demonstrates that all people, whether religious or secular, do not meet the righteous standards of God. The Pharisees' tendency was to divorce outward behavior and practice from the essence of the Law, which was love of God and neighbor. They replaced God's standard of righteousness with their own. Unbelievers do the same, primarily by appealing to obedience to the civil authority as the standard of goodness. As long as unbelievers aren't ax-murderers and don't commit felonies, most conclude they're basically good people. Well unbelievers are guilty of the same deflecting as Pharisees were: they both substitute their own standards for God's standards. The episode concludes that all are convicted as sinners and should abandon all hope of being good and doing good deeds apart from trusting in the One who was good for them, namely Jesus Christ.
Mercy Triumphs over Judgment..But Only for the Blind
This episode highlights the natural human tendency to substitute God's standard for good works with human ones, mostly centered on outward observance. One of the primary aims of the sermon on the mount (Matthew5-7) is to explode reliance on outward morality divorced from internal embrace of the commandments. The Pharisees were often guilty of emphasizing external observance of the Law without grappling with the heart's penchant for lawlessness. Christ concluded that Pharisees who continued to insist on their own righteousness, maintaining that they were good people, were headed for judgment. (John 9:39) By contrast, those who acknowledge their sick condition and are utterly despondent over any ability to do good--these are candidates for salvation who rest completely on the finished work of Christ.
Biblical repentance goes deeper than you might think
This episode goes deeper into the depth of spiritual death in which all mankind participates. Spiritual death does not simply refer to outward transgressions, but also describes the spiritual state of the inner man that produced them. Paul says in Colossians 2:13 that we were "dead in our trespasses AND the uncircumcision of our flesh," indicating that spiritual death is descriptive of both the acts themselves (dead works) and the one who is uncircumcised in the flesh. So when one repents of dead works, he also has a change of mind about the self that produced them characterized by death. The solution to spiritual deadness is the circumcision of Christ, the supernatural cutting away of the flesh in regeneration.