On Being “Worthy”

I have a friend who is going through a faith crisis at the moment, and she recently said that she was not “worthy” of God’s love or forgiveness.

I was writing to her to discuss this idea when I realized that there might be other people I know who are also struggling. So my letter to a friend becomes a letter to my friends. If you are struggling with feeling unworthy, please read on.

NONE of us is “worthy” of God’s love of forgiveness. NONE. Not you. Not me. Not my mom and dad. Not Robert Blackstone. Not Adrian Rogers or Billy Graham. Not ANY of us. That is what the New Testament is all about.

WE are sinners. No two ways about it. No way to make it pretty. SINNERS.
That means that we CANNOT do ANYTHING to make ourselves worthy of God’s love and forgiveness.
Bill Gates giving away ten billion dollars does not make him worthy.
Mother Teresa’s selfless life given for the poor in India does not make her worthy.
Oprah Winfrey starting schools for underprivileged girls in Africa does not make her worthy.
NOTHING we do makes us worthy.
NOTHING.

GOD is holy. He cannot bear sin.
He feels about sin the way you and I feel about a roadkill possum lying in front of our mailbox with its guts hanging out and blood and flies everywhere.
He DETESTS it.
It makes Him PUKE.
But He MADE mankind. He pronounced them GOOD. And He LOVES them.
Mankind screwed it up.
So God has to fix it.
Why?

Because when someone screws up, someone has to clean up the mess.
If the person who made it cannot do it, then someone else has to take the time and effort.

When your daughter was 3 and knocked over her juice and it went all over the kitchen, she couldn’t clean it up. You had to do it.
When my sons are playing ball and break the picture window, not only do we all have to clean up the broken glass, but I have to pay to replace it, because my sons have no way to earn the $2000 it would cost.

God sees that we are not capable of fixing our sinfulness ourselves.
We are not strong. We don’t fight temptation very well.
That’s what the Bible means when it says that God knows our “frame” — what makes us — and He knows we are only dust.
The whole point of the Old Testament was to show us that we cannot fix ourselves.
That all the rules and laws in the world, no matter how perfectly kept, will not fix the real problem.
Oh, they may make us LOOK good, but we are still rotten at the core.

Because we are rotten AT OUR CORE, we cannot do ANYTHING to fix ourselves or to pay for our mistakes.
NOTHING.
Because even at our best, we are rotten.
If you have an apple with a wormy middle, you can polish its skin and set it in the fruit basket and it will look beautiful. But if someone takes a bite, they get rottenness and worms. UGH.

That wormy apple can do nothing to fix its rottenness.
It cannot make itself fit to eat.
Now, you or I could come along, slice it up, remove the worms and rotten bits, wash it off really well, and use the bits in fritters or a pie.
But the apple cannot do anything to make itself worth your notice.
It just sits there, rotten.
Its nasty, and it is worthy of the trash bin.
The fact that you or I come along and do something with it does not change its worthiness.
Its new worth comes from the fact that someone took the time to see value in it, clean it up, and give it a new purpose.
It would be US giving the apple worth.

Make sense?

That is what God does with us.
HE sees value in us.
Mostly because He made us.

He sees the lovely skin that makes our apple look so pretty — maybe we volunteer for church service or sing in the choir or give huge amounts of money for worthy causes or help feed the homeless or teach a Bible study or go to third-world countries as missionaries — whatever it is that is our “pretty skin.”

But God has x-ray vision. He sees through the skin to the soul.
And He sees the selfishness and the hope to be noticed and the yearning to be praised and the self-righteousness and the holier-than-thou attitudes and the anger when people point out our hypocrisy and the laziness and the pride that tells us we’re better than so-and-so because at least we don’t … whatever.

He sees it ALL.
Your soul is NAKED before God.
You cannot fool Him.
Your mask of generous kindness or meek submission does not fool HIM for a minute. It may fool all your friends and family, but it does not fool God.

That is why God is so scary.
You cannot pretend with Him.

So because you are not worthy of God’s love and forgiveness, and because you cannot make yourself worthy of them, you are LOST.
And you feel this.
You feel adrift.
You don’t know where you’re going or what you should do.
You feel alone.
You feel anxious and empty.
You are a slave to your past.
You are afraid to trust.
You cannot break free of the hurts others have inflicted on you.
You have this deep longing for something, but you aren’t even sure what.
You just know that you are unhappy.
Like there is a hole in you.
But you don’t know what to fill the hole with.

Maybe you’ve tried drugs. Or sex. Or retail therapy.
Or maybe you self-medicate with food. Or liquor.
Or maybe you escape into movies or television or story books.
None of it has filled that hole.
None of it has made you more than momentarily happy.

And none of it makes you any less worthy of God’s love and forgiveness.
The Bible says that sinners will not inherit God’s kingdom.
Sinners: people who lie, cheat, steal, and murder. Who envy, brag, don’t keep their promises. Idol worshippers. Extortioners. Adulterers. Fornicators. Alcoholics. (More here and here.)
BUT it goes on to say that even though some of us may have done those things, what we were in the past will be WASHED AWAY.

How do you get washed?
Well, you accept the free gift of salvation.
You tell God you are a sinner.
You tell Him you are sorry for the wrongs you have done, wrongs that offended Him and rejected Him.
You ask Him to forgive you sins and help you turn away from them.
You ask Him to become the king in your life, to teach you and lead you and make you more like Him.

That’s it.
The Bible says “Whoever calls on the name of the Lord SHALL be saved.”
It says, “If you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that God has raised the Lord Jesus from the dead, you SHALL be saved.”

And the Bible says that you do NOT have to be worthy.
It says “We are justified by faith, not by the works specified in the law.”
In fact, it specifically says that God planned it that way so that no one could brag about it: “You are saved through faith in God’s grace. It is His gift to you; you did not earn it by being good, so you cannot boast about it.”
What is “grace”? Grace is God’s determination to treat you better than you deserve.

My friend, do not wait to be worthy. Do not hold back by fear of being rejected.
The Bible says “WHOEVER calls on the name of the Lord SHALL be saved.”

Jesus is the Good Shepherd who leads you to God and makes you good in God’s eyes. It is JESUS who is worthy, and we are the unworthy beneficiaries of His good works. Ask Him to come and help you. To make you clean. To make you new. To clean you of all your sin and make you whiter than snow.

Tags: challenges, Christianity, Jesus, Religion