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Ask Pastor John
Does God Owe You?
00:13:52
What’s the relationship between our good deeds and God’s reward? When he empowers us to obey him, he loves to celebrate the beauty of his grace.
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- [00:05]
A
So you do something nice for someone. You invite a struggling neighbor over for dinner. You take a friend out for coffee who you know is suffering. You give a family at church some money to get through a rough season, you help someone. And in the back of your mind you wonder, am I doing this because I'm a good person, or am I doing this because I want God to reward me for it later? And if I'm doing it for a future reward, then in the moment it can all feel very transactional, right? Like we're engaged in an under the table deal with God that the person we serve doesn't know about. Today on Ask Pastor John Does God owe you? This important question comes from an anonymous listener to the podcast who writes this Pastor John, thank you for your ministry and for this podcast avenue to Ask questions. I have one for you. You have famously built your theology on the idea that Jesus entices us with rewards to sustain our love. Specifically in Luke 14:14, which we read tomorrow, where Jesus promises that we will be repaid in the kingdom for inviting the poor to our banquets. In this life, this very incentive motivates the kindness. Yet you also fiercely oppose what you call the debtor's ethic, using Romans 4:4 to argue that any wage reckoned as his due nullifies grace. So here's the challenge that I if I feed the poor because I'm pursuing a future payout from God, have I not operationalized this into a business transaction of grace? If the promise of repayment is the sustaining power of the act, doesn't the poor man become a mere tool to my reward rather than an object of my love? How can seeking a divine repayment be anything other than working for a wage?
- [01:52]
B
This is a really important question. Just a few days ago, I was discussing this very question with Dudeney Tomfu, a friend from Cameroon, as we sat in Olive Garden sipping our soup and eating breadsticks. Which is one of the reasons I go to Olive Garden. I love bread. And the way we were posing the question was, well, if it is wrong to speak of earning rewards from God, and I think it is wrong to use the word earn in relation to God, how do you describe the correlation between our obedience and the rewards we receive for it if not earning? It's the same question that our friend is asking when he says or she I'm not sure who's asking the question. How can seeking a divine repayment be anything other than working for a wage? That's the key question. Now here's the problem. Jesus says in Luke 14:14 when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed because they cannot repay you for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just. And the word repaid There is a word that certainly can be used for earning wages. It can be so it looks like our obedience to Jesus to bless the poor with our feasts is a way of earning his payback. Earning a wage earnings. But catch the very same word for payback, Antapadathesatai is used in Romans 13, I mean Romans 11:35. Like this, who has given a gift to God that he might be repaid? Exact same word and form of the word. And the implied answer, of course, is nobody, nobody has given a gift to God that he might be repaid. For from him and through Him. Him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever and ever. Amen. In other words, it is a fundamental biblical truth that the only thing we can give to God is what he already owns. Here's the way, the way David prays in 1st Chronicles 29:14 who am I and what is my people that we should be able thus to offer willingly? For all things come from you, O God, and of your own have we given you. So here's the way God Himself puts it, and this is what Paul is quoting in Romans 11. God Himself in Job 41:11 says, who has first given to me that I should repay him? Nobody. Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine. So Paul says the same thing again in Acts 17:25. God is not served by human hands as though he needed anything, since He Himself gives to all mankind, life and breath and everything. In other words, we can't give God anything that is not already His. And so you can't put him in your debt by supplying some need. But that's what wages are. Wages are they are paying a worker what you owe him because he supplied you with a service that you needed, and now you are in his debt to pay him. That's what justice demands. We can never do that to God. Who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid? Paul says, nobody. What do you have that you did not receive? He asks. If you then received it, why do you boast as though it were not a gift? 1st Corinthians 4:7 but someone might say, well, yes, you can't give to God anything that is not already His. But the giving itself, the act of giving, might be the service that he pays back with a wage. Maybe that's it. But that doesn't work, because even the act of our serving or giving is a gift of God's grace. This is really clear in 1 Corinthians 15:10 by the grace of God, I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them. And then he adds this, though it was not I, but the grace of God that was with me. So Paul is saying that after we are justified by grace alone, through faith alone, even our obedience, our act, our giving, our serving is a gift of God's grace, a working of God's grace. It was not I, but the grace of God that was with me. That's what was decisive in enabling me to do what I ought to do. This is what he says again in Philippians 2:13 work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it's God who's at work in you both to will that's the key will and to work for his good pleasure. So our working is first the working of God. He works through our working, we work by his working. This is what Hebrews 13:21 says, now may the God of peace equip you with everything good that you may do his will working in us that which is pleasing in his sight through Jesus Christ to whom be glory. Of course, to whom be glory. He gets the glory because he worked it in us forever and ever. Amen. And all this was prophesied in Ezekiel 36:27. It's part of the new covenant framework in which we live, that our obedience was bought with the blood of Jesus. I will put my spirit within you, and I will cause you to walk in My statutes and be careful to obey My rules. So the point of all those texts is that even the giving of our service to God is a gift from God. God causes us to walk in paths of obedience for his name's sake. He works it in us. Our willing is owing to his willing. Our working is owing to his grace. So we cannot put God in our debt. We can't give to him what he doesn't give have, and we can't offer him service that he does not provide first. Like first Peter 4:11 says, we serve in the strength that God Himself supplies. So we can't earn anything from God, because earn means that we supply a labor or a service or a product that put someone in our debt so that they owe us. But we can never put God in our debt. He never owes us anything. So all his gifts and all his rewards are undeserved grace. So then the question is, okay, what then is the correlation? That's what we were discussing at the Olive Garden table. What is the correlation between our obedience to Christ and our rewards from Christ? God clearly rewards obedience. Inescapable. He rewards and he rewards proportionately. They can even sometimes be called wages. They can. And repayment, because that's what they look like at the human level. But in reality, that's not what they are. They're not wages the way humans earn wages. Rather, they are. This is my answer now. God's way of declaring the beauty of the obedience of faith. Rewards are God's way of declaring the beauty of the obedience of faith. God loves to be trusted for his grace and power. It honors Him. And when we trust him and do what he says, he doesn't get richer. His riches are put on display. This is the beautiful thing. This is the beauty of obedience, the obedience of faith. God shows his delight in this beauty, this trusting him in obedience. He shows his delight in this beauty by rewarding it. So the answer to the question is, when we are seeking a reward, we are not seeking a wage or a payback. We are seeking the expressions of God's delight in his own grace in our lives.
- [12:17]
A
That was a deep conversation over free breadsticks.
- [12:21]
B
They were free.
- [12:23]
A
Yeah. God is not indebted to us. God isn't an employer. When we are seeking a reward, we are not seeking a wage or payback, but the expressions of God's delight in his own grace in our lives. You're not earning your keep with God. You're just experiencing his delight in the work he's already doing inside of you. Such a great reminder, Pastor John. Thank you. And all of this kind of reminds me of all the time that we've spent looking at how we avoid loving the gifts more than the giver of the gifts. And again, focusing on God's goodness and all the things that we get, seeing him in the good things that we get. If that's something you wrestle with, focusing on God, the giver of all good gifts and not getting taken by the gifts that he gives us, that is such a common challenge in the Christian life. And for more on that, see pages 96, 97 in the Ask Pastor John book. I was just reflecting on that the other day on the story of the ten lepers. Amazing. And speaking of God delighting to give an abundance of grace, there's a story in the Gospels that is so wild, it's hard to imagine, really. I'm talking about the time when a whole group of people was resurrected from the dead together. When Christ was crucified. Do you remember that story? The account is so brief, but we are going to look at it next time. Why A crowd got resurrected. I'm Tony Reiki. We'll see you back here on Thursday.