WHAT IF WE ARE STILL TRYING TO EARN WHAT GOD HAS ALREADY OFFERED?

There is a kind of exhaustion that comes from believing we must always do more before we can finally be enough, and it can follow us into our faith so quietly that we barely recognize it. We believe God forgives, yet keep bringing up what He has forgiven; we believe He loves us, yet measure His closeness by how well we have behaved; we say we trust Jesus, yet spend our hardest days wondering whether we have done enough for Him to hold on to us. Today’s sermon brought us into Galatians 3, where Paul confronts that very struggle with a question that reaches far beyond the people who first received his letter: having begun by the Spirit, why are you now trying to finish through your own strength?

Paul was writing to people who had received the gospel and believed, but were being persuaded that faith in Christ needed something added to it before they could truly stand right before God. As we worked through his argument this morning, I kept thinking about how easily we do something similar, even without realizing it. We may never say that we can earn salvation, but we can live as though God is keeping a running account of our good days and bad days, waiting to see which side outweighs the other, while we keep promising that tomorrow we will be more disciplined, more patient, more faithful, and finally become someone He can be pleased with.

Then there is the man hanging on the cross beside Jesus, whose story leaves us with so little room to pretend that salvation is something we can accomplish for ourselves. He could not climb down and repair the damage he had done, return what he had taken, build a respectable life, or spend the next twenty years proving that his repentance was sincere. He acknowledged his guilt, recognized the innocence of Jesus, and asked to be remembered when Jesus came into His kingdom. With his life nearly over and nothing left to offer but his trust, he received a promise from the Savior beside him that he would be with Him in paradise.

I find that deeply moving because so much of life teaches us to establish our worth before we ask for anything. We explain what we have contributed, how hard we have tried, and why we deserve another chance, and sometimes we carry that same instinct into prayer, as though we must first present a convincing case for why God should listen. But the man beside Jesus had no convincing record to present, and Jesus knew everything about him already. His hope rested entirely in the One he was asking to remember him.

Paul takes us back even further, to Abraham, who believed God’s promise long before the law was given through Moses, and whose faith was counted to him as righteousness. The order matters, because the promise did not begin with Abraham successfully meeting a list of requirements, and the law that came centuries later could not turn that promise into a reward for flawless performance. Abraham had to trust the God who spoke, even while the circumstances of his own life gave him reasons to wonder how that promise could possibly be fulfilled.

That does not make obedience meaningless or give us permission to be careless with the lives we have been given. It changes the place from which obedience grows, because there is a profound difference between seeking to honor God because we trust His love and desperately trying to secure His love through our performance. Paul describes the law as a guardian leading us toward Christ, exposing the sin we might otherwise excuse and bringing us face to face with our need for a Savior. We can recognize what is right, sincerely want to do it, and still discover that knowing the standard does not give us the power to become righteous before God.

There is humility in accepting that, especially for those of us who are used to handling responsibilities, finding solutions, and pushing ourselves harder when something is falling apart. We want a task we can complete, a measure we can reach, some assurance that if we work hard enough we can finally settle the question of whether we are worthy. The gospel brings us to the place where we have to receive what we could never provide for ourselves, trusting that Christ has carried the curse of sin and that His work is sufficient even when our own record is painfully insufficient.

And that same grace leaves no room for spiritual superiority. Paul tells these believers that they are one in Christ Jesus, bringing together people whose society had separated by ancestry, status, and sex, and placing them on the same ground before God. None could claim a greater right to belong because of where they came from or what position they held. I wonder how our churches would change if we remembered that more often, especially when someone walks through the door whose past is unfamiliar, whose struggles are visible, or whose life has not yet taken the shape we think it should.

The sermon also challenged us to be ready to explain the hope we carry, and to do it with gentleness and reverence, taking the time to understand the question someone is actually asking. That requires us to know what we believe well enough to speak truthfully about it, but it also requires the humility to remember our own need for grace. A testimony can be powerful precisely because it is personal: this is where I was, this is what I could not repair on my own, and this is how Christ met me there.

What stayed with me most today was that simple request from a dying man who knew he could not save himself: Jesus, remember me. There are days when those words feel like a prayer large enough to hold everything I cannot explain, every failure I cannot undo, and every fear I have about what lies ahead. They bring me back to the heart of what Paul was defending, and to the hope that makes the gospel such good news: the Savior who receives us by faith is the same Savior we can trust to carry us home.