Words from a worship song we sang at church Sunday have been drifting through my mind all week:
Merit not my own.
For me, those words bump up against something deeply ingrained in who I am.
I’ll admit it: I’m prideful about being smart.
I was good at school, and I liked it. Not necessarily the people part—the learning part. I liked knowing things. I liked understanding things. I liked studying something until I could explain it. I was good enough at it that I accumulated multiple degrees and certificates to validate my claim to “know things.”
It’s actually a running joke in our household.
I often claim I have no genuinely useful skills, but inevitably someone asks a question and I know the answer—or remember some obscure fact nobody else remembers. When my family fact-checks me and discovers I was right, they’ll ask how in the world I remember these things.
My answer is usually some variation of, “It’s what I do. I know stuff!” 🤣
I’ve also never been particularly comfortable being handed anything.
My husband and I have worked hard our entire adult lives. We’ve worked to provide for our family and to be able to help other people. We try to contribute wherever we go. We don’t want to be the people depending upon everyone else’s generosity. Earning our keep, earning our way, pulling our own weight—whatever you want to call it—is deeply ingrained in both of us.
Which creates a rather uncomfortable problem when I come face-to-face with the gospel.
Because there is absolutely nothing I can contribute.
Nothing.
Another song lyric drifted through my mind this week. I don’t remember the words exactly, but the thought was essentially:
It should have been me. It should have been us hanging there on the cross, all of the shame and the scars should’ve been stains that were never washed.
And yes.
But also—
No.
Because it couldn’t have been us.
We couldn’t have paid it.
I earned something—just not salvation
I have no trouble understanding that I am a sinner.
“for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God”
—Romans 3:23, ASV
I don’t struggle to believe that.
Neither do I struggle intellectually with the consequence:
“For the wages of sin is death; but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
—Romans 6:23, ASV
There’s actually an uncomfortable irony in Paul’s choice of words.
Wages.
Something earned.
If we’re talking about what I have earned, Scripture is quite clear.
I earned death.
But eternal life?
Paul calls that “the free gift of God.”
And somewhere inside my prideful little brain, that is considerably harder to process.
Because I couldn’t earn it
I was even having a conversation about this on one of my morning walks this week when another lyric wandered through my mind:
I couldn’t earn it.
And that’s it.
The academic part of my brain has absolutely no difficulty understanding this theology.
I can follow the argument through Scripture. I can explain sin, righteousness, substitution, sacrifice, atonement, justification and redemption. I can show you the passages.
But the prideful part of my brain?
That part feels like it has been hit with a mortar round when I actually surrender to what all that theology means:
I cannot save myself.
Not I haven’t tried hard enough.
Not I haven’t learned enough.
Not I haven’t accomplished enough.
Not I need to become a little better first.
I cannot do it.
And Scripture shows us why.
The sacrifice I could never be
Long before the cross, God established what was required for an acceptable sacrifice.
The offering had to be without blemish:
“…he shall offer it a male without blemish…and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him.”
—Leviticus 1:3–4, ASV
The sacrifice died in the sinner’s place, and its blood was offered because God said:
“For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh atonement by reason of the life.”
—Leviticus 17:11, ASV
And when atonement was made, Scripture repeatedly gives the result:
“…the priest shall make atonement for him, and he shall be forgiven.”
—Leviticus 4:31, ASV
Without blemish.
A life given.
Blood shed.
Atonement made.
Forgiveness granted.
And suddenly the problem with the idea that “it should have been me on that cross” becomes obvious.
Yes, my sin deserved judgment.
But I could never have been the sacrifice that satisfied it.
I am not without blemish.
I am the one needing atonement.
A guilty person cannot offer her own guilty life as the spotless sacrifice required to remove her guilt.
But there was One who could.
Merit not my own
John the Baptist saw Jesus coming and declared:
“Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world!”
—John 1:29, ASV
Peter makes the connection even more explicit:
“knowing that ye were redeemed, not with corruptible things, with silver or gold, from your vain manner of life handed down from your fathers; but with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ”
—1 Peter 1:18–19, ASV
There it is.
The Lamb.
Without blemish.
Without spot.
His blood.
And my redemption.
Paul says that we are:
“justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith, in his blood…”
—Romans 3:24–25, ASV
And Hebrews says:
“but through his own blood, entered in once for all into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption.”
—Hebrews 9:12, ASV
His blood. His righteousness. His sacrifice. His merit.
Not mine.
And that is simultaneously one of the easiest and hardest truths of Christianity for me.
Academically?
Easy.
I can see it plainly in Scripture. I believe it.
But moving that truth from my head into my heart and processing all the emotions that come with it?
That’s harder.
Because helplessness comes with admitting I couldn’t do it myself.
Gratitude comes because Jesus loved us enough to do what we could never do.
And sometimes there’s this strange feeling of being an imposter because I know I don’t deserve what I’ve been given. I didn’t earn it. Someone else’s merit purchased my place.
Maybe that’s part of why I so often struggle with feeling like I’m not good enough.
Because I’m not.
But that was never the requirement.
Jesus is.
And perhaps that’s the point
The gospel doesn’t tell me that if I work hard enough I’ll eventually become worthy of Jesus.
It tells me that while I was still a sinner, Christ died for me (Romans 5:8).
It doesn’t ask me to produce righteousness impressive enough to stand before God.
Christ is my righteousness.
It doesn’t tell me to pay back the debt.
Christ paid it.
It doesn’t tell me to become an acceptable sacrifice.
The spotless Lamb already offered Himself.
And it doesn’t tell me to earn eternal life.
It calls eternal life a gift.
That’s difficult for someone who likes earning her way.
There is something deeply humbling about standing empty-handed before God and admitting:
I have nothing to contribute to this.
No degree.
No intelligence.
No accomplishments.
No amount of hard work.
No good deeds.
No suffering.
No ability to pull my own weight.
Nothing I can hold up before God and say, See? I earned my place.
Only Jesus.
Merit not my own.
And when I really allow myself to comprehend that—not merely as a theological proposition I can defend, but as the reality of my own redemption—it overwhelms me.
It makes me long for Heaven while simultaneously knowing I did absolutely nothing to deserve to be there.
I am going because Someone else made the way.
Someone else met the standard.
Someone else was without blemish.
Someone else shed His blood.
Someone else bore my sin.
Someone else paid what I owed.
And somehow receiving generosity that enormous is still difficult for me. I can’t quite articulate what it does inside me.
Mostly it lodges a lump in my throat and makes my eyes leak.
Maybe that’s appropriate.
Because for once, there’s nothing for me to accomplish.
Nothing to earn.
Nothing to prove.
Only a gift to receive.
Merit not my own.
“Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift.”
—2 Corinthians 9:15, ASV
Raychel Writes 