Pavement on the Road to Hell

I boarded a plane one day from Calgary to Denver and sat down by one of the nicest people you could expect to meet. He worked for Caterpillar and actually took a demotion because he found he was spending too much time away from his family in pursuit of money. He was cordial, pleasant, humble even, interested in other people … and, apparently, utterly lost.

At the end of a conversation about spiritual matters during which I shared my own story and a couple of favorite truth analogies, I said something like this to him: “Someday God is going to knock on the door of your heart, and it will require faith on your part to answer.”

For maybe the first time in the conversation he disagreed with me.

“No,” he said, “I don’t see it that way. At the end of the day, I believe a life well-lived will not be rejected.”

Since he had felt free to disagree, I reciprocated.

“No,” I said, “I’m afraid you are mistaken. That’s the greasy-$100-bill approach,” I replied, referring to an earlier metaphor I had used that goes like this:

If someone approached me and said, “Gary, I would like to do something really special for you. I want to give you my ranch. Here’s the deed, titles to the vehicles, all the equipment, buildings, cattle and horses … it’s yours! Enjoy!”

If that happened to me, I said, I had two choices: I could accept it as a gift, or I could refuse it.

The only other option, to pay for it, was way beyond my means. And if I dragged a greasy $100 bill out of my wallet and said, “Here’s 100 bucks, I can’t take that for nothing,” I would be insulting the giver.

So it is when we try to earn God's favor. We can never muster enough goodness to earn that favor. We must receive it as a gift, or reject it. Our highest effort cannot possibly begin to earn it.

That payment has already been made. 2000 years ago. As surreal as it may seem, on a Roman cross just outside the gates of first-century Jerusalem, Jesus of Nazareth provided the unique payment for the sins of the whole world for all time ... including yours ... including mine.

So, while a well-lived life is a goal worthy of anyone, to rely on such a life to earn a good standing with God is folly.

Maybe that's what Jesus was talking about when he said: “When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first.” (The Gospel of Matthew, chapter 13, verses 43-45)