2 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Try to “Pay God Back”
By Michael Kelley
If you’ve never thought seriously about buying a home, you might not have thought too much about interest rates. You hear the reports, you have some basic financial understanding, but the difference between a 5.2% and a 6.4% still feels pretty small. But if you have ever ventured into the real estate market, those tenths of one percent get very real… very fast.
The interest rate is what you are being charged for using someone else’s money. It’s the cost of borrowing - and it dramatically influences what you will end up paying back after 30 years or so. You have to pay back what you borrow, and in addition to that, you have to pay a percentage for the ability to use that money in the first place.
It may be painful, but it’s also understandable. Though simple to say, money isn’t free. For that matter, very few things actually are. Even when someone gives us a gift, we might very well feel compelled to pay it back in some way:
A friend buys your lunch so you resolve to get the next one.
Someone invites you over for dinner and you reciprocate the invitation.
A neighbor looks after your dog and you promise to do the same when he is out of town.
Again, these are all reasonable responses - more than that, they are courteous actions. So when it comes to the greatest gift in the universe - the gift of God’s Son for our salvation - we might be tempted to have the same mindset. We might think something like, God, you have given your Son for me, and although I never can, I will spend the rest of my life trying as hard as I can to pay you back.
There are two very significant reasons why this attitude, which is entirely appropriate in most other relationships, is absolutely wrong when it comes to God, and both of them relate to our understanding of the gospel:
1. The price is too great.
The first reason we shouldn’t try to pay God back is that in doing so, we are unintentionally trivializing the life and death of Jesus. Consider Peter’s words about the price that was paid for us:
For you know that you were redeemed from your empty way of life inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of an unblemished and spotless lamb (1 Pet. 1:18-19).
Not silver. Not gold. Not the things that we think are the most precious. In light of this price, those things are completely perishable. When we have the payback mindset, we are forgetting the truly precious nature of Jesus Christ. What could we possibly bring to the table that would balance the scales for a sacrifice like this? There is nothing.
2. There is nothing to pay back.
We should not try to pay God back because in doing so we reveal that we haven’t grasped the preciousness of Jesus. But the second reason we shouldn’t try to pay God back is that doing so reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of grace.
For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift— not from works, so that no one can boast (Eph. 2:8-9).
God’s grace is a gift. And in giving us this gift, we have no claim on God - we have no works to hold up as evidence for why we deserved it, and we also have nothing to give back in exchange for it. To attempt to do so is to demonstrate our misunderstanding of grace.
The simple but glorious truth of the gospel is that the price has been fully paid. There is no outstanding balance. There is nothing left to do. Nothing, that is, except live in gratitude, and that’s a very different thing than trying to pay God back.
So, yes, let us by all means live gratefully. But let us not live as debtors who are subtly trying to rebalance the scales.
Michael Kelley is a husband, father of three, author, and speaker from Nashville, TN. His latest book is a year-long family devotional guide called The Whole Story for the Whole Family. Find his personal blog at michaelkelley.co.
