If you sometimes think this then
you are definitely not alone. When someone says this to me, I am often tempted
to try and find fault: "If only I could try and make this person feel
bad!" But frequently, as I listen to their story, I find that they are a
genuinely good person, hard working, often sacrificial for their parents or
their family, dutiful, and conscientious.
Yet this objection to "doing
any more" can be a terrible blockage to drawing close to God. Sometimes it
springs from "scripts" buried deep inside us, rather than in true
response to the message God wants us to hear. We say it when we are tired from
fulfilling all the 'oughts' in our lives, and we're looking for encouragement
from God. If you are asking this question, then I hope that the answer given
below will eventually give you the encouragement you deserve.
But first, I must point out three
traps that this question will lead you into if you persist with it.
It is as if we have to prove
ourselves before Him, and this of course is based in the truth that each of us
will be called to account. However, what God revealed in Christ was that self-
justification will never be the way to get right with God, for it is Christ who
justifies us.
Jesus told a story of two people
who went to pray. The first person began by telling God all the good things he
had done; he thought there was nothing left he had not covered. The second
person simply said, "God have mercy upon me, a sinner." Jesus said it
was the second, rather than the first, who went away right with God: He
received his justification thanks to God's grace and mercy.
We may have done many, many good
things - and God is well aware of them - but in the teaching of Jesus God
revealed that we are put right with him solely through his mercy. Justification
given through Christ, rather than self-justification, is the way to get in a
right relationship with God.
We all have a part of us which
thinks we ought to be able to earn God's favour, and there is much about every
person which causes him great delight. But St. Paul was gripped by
life-changing insight when he wrote, "the free gift of God is eternal
life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Ultimately, none of us can 'earn' the
right to be accepted by God. Every good thing we do is merely the product of
how he has made us. Acceptance by God, or eternal life, is nothing less than a
freely given gift.
Think about it: where would you
draw the line? Is it a matter of just tipping the balance so that the good in
your life just outweighed the bad? That sounds like it might be fair. But then
where is the parity between those whose good far outweighs the bad, and those
whose good only just outweighs the bad.
St Paul lived the first part of
his life as a strict Pharisee. He did everything in his power to fulfil God's
law. Yet later, as he considered this issue of salvation, he recalled the
ancient words of Isaiah: "There is none who is righteous - no not
one," and thus came to the sobering conclusion that "all have
sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Why is it that the most holy
people are always more aware of their sin than they are of their goodness?
The fact is that salvation is
never something we can earn. On the contrary, salvation, or acceptance by God,
is a gift that we can only receive.
Jesus met a rich man who asked,
"What must I do to be saved?" Jesus replied, "You know the
commandments." The rich man said, "Of course! I have kept them since
I was a boy." And he reeled them off. However, what the rich man didn't
realise was that he missed out the command against covetousness: he had a blind
spot which affected his attitude to money. Jesus told him to go and sell all he
had and give to the poor. And the man left, very unhappy, because he was very
rich.
All of us have blind spots - not
the bad things we are aware of, but those we are totally unaware of. And if God
were really to point them all out we would be utterly mortified. Some may be
perspectives on life we totally ignorant of; some may be the ways we are caught
in webs of economic exploitation that we do little or nothing about; some may
be deeply ingrained attitudes or prejudices. Blind spots are, by definition,
almost impossible to spot.
People often say, "I'm not a bad
person and I never try to hurt anyone, so why do I need to do any more?"
But when we do so we frequently fall into the trap of forgetting that we still
have many, many blind spots that we know nothing of.
God does want to accept you - and
he doesn't want you to 'do' anything else first, except to receive him as Lord
and God. His first word, therefore, is "Welcome." He is well aware of
all the good things you've done, and he's delighted with them. But he's even
more interested in you - simply you - as a person.
What God really wants for us to
receive his salvation is that we come to him laying down all the good things,
all the bad, along with all the unknown, at his feet. "This is my stuff,
Lord: the good, the bad, and the unknown. Now I stand before you - just me. I
believe the words of Jesus, that you want to receive me just as I am, if I
receive you just as you are. Me: human being (most of the time); You: God.
The Apostle John was fascinated by
relationships. As he reflected on what we have to do in order to lease God he
wrote, "this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus
Christ, and to love one another." In the end, you see, what God
actually wants us to do is first of all to relate to him as God - to receive
the gift from him of being received by him. This gift is freely ours through
the grace, the mercy, the cleansing and the Spirit of Jesus Christ.
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