Scripture: Ephesians 2:8–9 (WEB)
"For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, that no one would boast."
Lately, I've been thinking a lot about my early days of faith. Not just when I came to truly know Jesus, but the years before that. The years when I knew about God but didn't really understand what it meant to have a relationship with Him.
We've been reading The Six Battles Every Man Must Win in our men's Bible study at church, and something in the first chapter really struck a chord with me.
The author talks about being taught that getting into heaven was something like a scale. On one side were all the good things you had done in your life. On the other were your sins. When your life was over, God would weigh the two, and whichever side was heavier would determine your eternity.
That pretty much sums up how I understood Christianity in my youth.
I call it Old Testament religion.
Not because that's actually what the Old Testament teaches, but because that's how I understood it. Rules. Laws. Judgment. A God keeping score of everything I did wrong.
And I was pretty good at doing things wrong.
The problem with that kind of thinking is that eventually you start believing there's no possible way to balance the scale.
You know your mistakes. You know your thoughts. You know the things you've done that nobody else knows about.
And when you believe God is keeping score, eventually you begin to wonder why you should even bother trying.
If I'm going to hell anyway, I might as well enjoy the ride.
I wish I could say that was just something I heard other people say.
But it wasn't.
That was pretty much my attitude through my teenage years and into my early twenties.
I knew enough about God to believe He existed, but I didn't understand enough about His love to believe He could possibly want someone like me.
And that misunderstanding took me down roads I wish I had never traveled.
But then something changes.
At some point, you stop simply hearing about Jesus and begin to understand what He actually did for you.
You begin to understand that the cross wasn't just a terrible thing that happened to a good man two thousand years ago.
It was a debt being paid.
My debt.
Jesus didn't come to help me put a few more good deeds on my side of the scale.
He came because the scale was never going to save me in the first place.
He came to pay a debt I could never repay, to wash away sins I could never erase, and to offer a gift I could never earn.
And when that truth finally settles into your heart, it changes everything.
At least it did for me.
I wish I could tell you that from that moment forward I've always gotten it right. That I've never stumbled, never disappointed God, never said something I shouldn't have said, or made decisions I later regretted.
But that wouldn't be the truth.
The truth is, there isn't a day that goes by that I'm not humbled by what Jesus did for me.
And there are still days when I struggle with feeling worthy of it.
Because I'm not.
I know the man I was. I know the man I can still be when I let pride, anger, selfishness, or my own desires get in the way.
Sometimes I look back at my life and feel guilt over the things I cannot change. The people I hurt. The opportunities I wasted. The years I spent running in the wrong direction.
And I wonder how God could continue extending His grace to someone who has needed so much of it.
But that's the beautiful thing about grace.
It was never about being worthy.
If I could earn it, it wouldn't be grace.
If I could pay for it, Jesus wouldn't have needed to go to the cross.
And if God only loved me on the days I got everything right, I would have very little hope.
Yet every morning, He gives me another day.
Another opportunity to do better. To love better. To forgive. To make amends when I've been wrong. To become a little more like the man He created me to be.
And on the days when guilt whispers that I'm not good enough, God reminds me of the promise in 2 Corinthians 12:9 (WEB):
"My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness."
Not because I've earned it.
But because He loves me.
There's a difference between being humbled by your past and being imprisoned by it.
I think sometimes we Christians forget that.
We accept God's forgiveness with our mouths but continue carrying the weight of our sins in our hearts.
We keep putting things back on that scale, even though Jesus already settled the account.
And perhaps that's what I've been learning lately.
God doesn't need me to spend the rest of my life punishing myself for the man I used to be.
He wants me to live as the man His grace is helping me become.
Romans 8:1 (WEB) tells us:
"There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus."
Think about that.
No condemnation.
Not less condemnation.
Not condemnation until you've proven yourself.
No condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
That's a promise I still find difficult to fully comprehend some days.
And maybe you do too.
Maybe you're reading this and thinking about your own past.
Maybe you've made decisions that hurt people you loved. Maybe you've walked away from God. Maybe you've spent years doing things you're ashamed of.
Maybe you believe in Jesus, but you cannot imagine Him wanting anything to do with someone like you.
I understand that feeling.
I've been there.
And I want you to hear something from a man who spent far too many years believing he had already lost his chance at heaven.
You are not too far gone.
You haven't committed so many wrongs that Jesus has stopped loving you.
You haven't wandered so far that He cannot find you.
And you don't have to clean yourself up before coming to Him.
That's what He's offering to do.
In Revelation 3:20 (WEB), Jesus says:
"Behold, I stand at the door and knock."
Those words were spoken to a church, but they paint a beautiful picture of Christ's invitation.
He's not standing there with a scale in His hands, waiting to tell you how badly you've failed.
He's standing there offering grace.
Offering forgiveness.
Offering a relationship that changes everything.
All you have to do is open the door and receive Him.
I don't know where you are in your walk with God today.
Maybe you've known Him your entire life. Maybe you've been running from Him for years. Or maybe, like I once did, you've confused knowing about God with actually knowing Him.
But I know this.
The cross wasn't God's way of making the scale easier to balance. It was His way of showing us that salvation was never something we could earn.
I'm still not worthy of what Jesus did for me.
I never will be.
But I've come to understand that being unworthy doesn't mean being unloved.
And every single day, when I wake up and realize God has given me another opportunity to walk with Him, I'm reminded of just how extraordinary that love really is.
So if you're sitting there today feeling ashamed, broken, unworthy, or too far gone, I want you to remember something.
Jesus already knows your story.
Every chapter.
Even the ones you'd rather forget.
And He still went to the cross for you.
Stop trying to balance the scale.
The debt has already been paid.
Open the door.
A Thought from the Pasture
Sometimes the hardest person to forgive is the one staring back at us in the mirror.
But if Jesus was willing to die to forgive our sins, who are we to insist that His sacrifice wasn't enough?
Grace doesn't excuse the wrongs we've done. It gives us the opportunity to become something more than the sum of our mistakes.
And that is a gift I pray I never take for granted.
Scripture for Reflection (WEB)
- Ephesians 2:8–9 — Salvation is a gift of grace, not a reward for good works.
- Romans 3:23–24 — We have all sinned, yet God freely offers justification through Christ.
- Romans 8:1 — There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
- 2 Corinthians 12:9 — God's grace is sufficient, and His power is made perfect in weakness.
- Revelation 3:20 — Jesus stands at the door and knocks, inviting us into fellowship with Him.
A Question to Carry With You
Are you still trying to earn forgiveness for something Jesus has already paid for?
And if you've never opened the door to a relationship with Him, what's keeping you from doing it today?
Until next time, may we remember that grace isn't something we earn. It's something we receive. And may we extend that same grace to others, knowing how desperately we've needed it ourselves.
— The Pasture Pulpit
Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible (WEB), a public-domain translation of the Holy Bible.