When Grace Becomes a To-Do List

Grace sounds wonderful.

Until we start trying to improve it.

Most Christians would never say that Jesus isn’t enough.

We know the words.

We are saved by grace through faith. We can’t earn salvation. Jesus paid the price. His work on the cross was sufficient.

And then, somehow, a little word sneaks into the way we live:

But.

Jesus saved me, but now I need to prove I’m serious.

God loves me, but I should probably be doing more.

I’m saved by grace, but surely God is more pleased with me when I’m getting everything right.

Jesus is enough…

but.

That little word is much closer to the problem Paul addresses in Galatians than we might realize.

Jesus—and something else

The believers in Galatia had heard the gospel.

They had believed it.

But then other voices came along and began adding requirements. Jesus was good, but Jesus alone wasn’t enough. They needed Jesus and the law.

Paul doesn’t treat that like a minor theological disagreement.

He calls it a distortion of the gospel.

Because the moment we add something to Jesus as the basis of our standing before God, grace stops being grace.

And we still do this.

Our version may not involve circumcision or Jewish ceremonial law, but we’re remarkably good at creating Christian to-do lists.

Read your Bible more.

Pray longer.

Serve more.

Give more.

Stop struggling with that sin.

Be more disciplined.

Be more spiritual.

Try harder.

Now, are any of those things necessarily bad?

Of course not.

I hope we read Scripture. I hope we pray and serve and give. I hope the Holy Spirit continues changing us and producing obedience in our lives.

But there’s an enormous difference between doing those things because we belong to God and doing them so we’ll be acceptable to God.

One is the fruit of grace.

The other is an attempt to improve upon it.

We can’t rescue ourselves

Galatians opens with two words that are easy to skim past:

Grace and peace.

Not achievement and anxiety.

Not effort and uncertainty.

Grace and peace.

Paul reminds the Galatians that Jesus “gave himself for our sins to rescue us.”

Notice who does the rescuing.

Jesus.

We can’t rescue ourselves. He is rescuing us.

And yet we keep trying to help.

There’s something in us that wants a checklist. A checklist gives us something measurable.

Did I read enough?

Did I pray enough?

Did I serve enough?

Have I improved enough?

Am I a better Christian than I was six months ago?

And perhaps the question underneath all of those questions is:

Is God okay with me yet?

The gospel answers that question by pointing somewhere completely different.

Not toward your performance.

Toward Christ.

Our peace with God rests on what Jesus has done, not on how impressive our Christian life has looked this week.

That’s why adding our performance to the gospel doesn’t strengthen it.

It diminishes the finished work of the cross.

But doesn’t obedience matter?

Absolutely.

And this is where grace can make us nervous.

If we tell people that they don’t have to earn God’s love, won’t they stop trying?

If our behavior isn’t what makes us right with God, does our behavior even matter?

Yes.

But the order matters enormously.

We don’t obey so that God will finally accept us.

We obey because, in Christ, He already has.

We don’t serve because we’re trying to pay Jesus back.

Grace isn’t a loan.

We don’t pursue holiness because we’re terrified that one bad week might make God reconsider the whole arrangement.

We pursue Christ because we’ve been made His.

The Christian life isn’t:

Jesus saved me. Now I’d better make myself worthy of it.

It’s:

Jesus saved me. Now I get to live from the freedom of knowing I never could have made myself worthy of it.

That doesn’t make obedience less important.

It changes where obedience comes from.

The gospel isn’t a beginner lesson

Sometimes we treat grace as though it’s Christianity 101.

We learn that we’re sinners, Jesus died for us, salvation is by grace through faith—and then we graduate to the serious Christian stuff.

Now we need discipline.

Now we need obedience.

Now we need spiritual growth.

And without realizing it, the gospel becomes something we needed at the beginning rather than the truth we live in every day.

But we never graduate from grace.

The same Jesus who saved us is the Jesus we need today.

And tomorrow.

And on the day when our Bible has stayed closed longer than we’d like to admit.

And on the day when we’ve prayed beautifully and served everybody and feel pretty good about ourselves.

Actually, we may need to remember grace especially on that day.

Because legalism doesn’t only tell us we’re failing.

Sometimes it tells us we’re succeeding.

Either way, it gets our eyes off Jesus and onto ourselves.

Jesus plus nothing

Paul’s language in Galatians 1 is strong because the gospel matters that much.

Jesus doesn’t need our additions.

We don’t need Jesus plus perfect church attendance.

Jesus plus theological knowledge.

Jesus plus the right spiritual habits.

Jesus plus a cleaned-up life.

Jesus plus our ability to prove that we’re taking Him seriously.

We need Jesus.

And when we really begin to understand that, something surprising happens.

Grace doesn’t make us care less about how we live.

It frees us to live differently for the right reason.

Not fear.

Not comparison.

Not image management.

Not an attempt to make God owe us something.

Love.

Gratitude.

Freedom.

And maybe that’s worth asking ourselves:

Has following Jesus quietly become a to-do list?

Do I believe God is more willing to love me on my best spiritual day than on my worst one?

When I fail, do I run toward Christ—or immediately start making plans to do better so I can feel acceptable again?

Am I trusting in Jesus, or in Jesus plus the version of myself I think I ought to become?

Paul knew something about that.

He had once built his life around religious achievement and zeal. And God completely redirected him. The man who had once tried to destroy the church became someone who proclaimed the grace he’d once opposed.

That’s what grace does.

It doesn’t tell us to clean ourselves up enough for God to use us.

It tells us that Jesus is enough.

So put down the scorecard.

Stop trying to pay back a gift.

And when grace starts turning into a to-do list again—and it probably will—go back to the gospel.

Jesus plus nothing.

Because nothing you add can improve upon a finished work.