Faith Personal Theology
R. L. Solberg  

To Be Earned

I fondly remember when my oldest daughter Sami was a toddler and just starting to read. She would sit in my lap with a book, open it up to a random page and point to a word. I would ask her, “What does that word say?” Her adorable little toddler finger would trace the writing on the page as she read each letter aloud. “C…o….w.” Then she’d turn to me with her eyebrows raised to see how she did. “That’s right! What word is that? Sound it out.” Her attention would return to the page, and I would remain silent, thinking, “You can do it, Sam! Say…cow.” A moment later, Sami would gleefully blurt out the word. “Cow!” I would hug her and tell her what a good job she did. Then we were on to the next word. Reading books with both of my daughters is one of my happiest memories. 

It’s heartbreaking to think that some kids have dads who are never satisfied. When they were reading and got a word wrong, their dad would sigh and shake his head. Not good enough. Those are the kids who ended up spending their lives trying to earn their father’s love by doing things right, obeying the rules, and trying to make him proud. They longed to hear “I love you” or even “well done” from their father. And if that acceptance never came, they walked away broken.

Imagine how that approach would work in a romantic relationship. Suppose you fall in love with the man or woman of your dreams, but before they agree to love you back, you are required to demonstrate that you can obey their rules and do things correctly. Who would want a relationship like that? That’s not how real love works.

Sadly, I’ve found that some of us have just that kind of understanding about God. We’ve come to believe that He is a distant, hard-to-please father figure who requires us to adhere to a strict list of moral restrictions before He will love us and let us into heaven. Many of us believe we can earn our way into heaven by living a good life and doing good things. But this is the exact opposite of biblical Christianity. Islam teaches that to enter paradise, our good deeds must outweigh our bad deeds, and Allah must will it. But Christianity turns the idea of earning God’s acceptance on its head. 

Whereas those other worldviews—and our human sensibilities in general—say that we must first work to earn God’s love and acceptance, the Bible teaches that we are accepted simply through faith in Jesus (Eph 2:8-9), even while we’re still hostile toward God (Rom 5:8). And our natural response to being loved and accepted is a changed life. We aren’t begrudgingly following a list of rules; we’re willingly following after God’s heart. We aren’t working to appease an angry God, so He’ll love us. Instead, we want to please our perfect, heavenly Father because He loves us.

As preacher Voddie Baucham points out, Hell is full of sincere, religious people who didn’t drink or smoke or curse or have sex outside of marriage. None of those things can save you. Heaven, on the other hand, is full of broken, immoral people who simply repented and believed. We are not saved by living a “good” life or by reciting a prayer. And nowhere in the Bible will we find that salvation is about “asking Jesus into our heart.” What we will read—over and over, in fact—is that salvation comes when we repent and believe (Acts 16:31). That’s it. It’s no more complicated than that.

You sometimes hear Christians say, “It’s not a religion, it’s a relationship.” What does that mean? It means that we do not need to do things right and obey God’s rules before He will love and accept us. With God—as with a good spouse or a good parent—love is not earned through our actions. And, conversely, in a good relationship, love is not taken away when we mess up. A relationship is more than a list of rules. Especially when it comes to God, His love for us precedes our commitment to Him. There’s nothing we can do to earn our way into heaven. God already did all that work for us Himself (John 3:16-17). We simply need to believe.

The Bible says we are God’s children. “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are” (1 John 3). There’s a great meme going around social media right now that says that God doesn’t want the kind of parent-child relationship with us where, when we mess up, we think, “Oh no! Dad’s going to kill me.” Insetad, when we mess up, God wants our first thought to be, “Oh no! I need to call my Dad.”

Once we place our trust in Jesus and begin to walk out our faith, we start to understand that biblical obedience and morality come from a place of love, rather than control or judgment. We see that God gives us these standards because He is a perfect, loving Father. He knows that it’s within those boundaries that we, His children, will flourish. Those conditions are where we will experience the most peace, joy, and fulfillment possible in this life. And God doesn’t take away His love when we happen to fall short of them. Instead, He helps us get up, dust ourselves off, and get back on course (Psalm 40:1-2).

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:38-39

When my girls were little and reading time was over, I would tuck them into bed and kiss their cute little cheeks. Then I’d tell them there was nothing in the world they could do that would ever make me love them more, and nothing they could do that would make me love them less. The reason I was able to tell them that and truly mean it is because I knew that—incredibly, almost beyond comprehension—that’s how God feels about us.

1 Comment

  1. Patsy Norton

    The interview with Bill Arnold helped me to understand some of my brother and sister-in-law’s beliefs in Torahism. It is amazing how far they have walked away from Christianity. Thank you for your love and winsome way you have displayed to them even though they respond viciously back to you. You are a great example for Christ with your responses to them. I can’t say that I have been kind to their hateful rhetoric.
    Patsy

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