There is an old song that has been playing in my head. I finally found it in one of my piano books and played it this afternoon. “I Am Not Worthy” is the title by Beatrice Bush Bixler. Perhaps some of you remember the words. “I am not worthy, the least of His favor, yet Jesus left heaven for me…”

It’s a concept that has been all but lost today. This feeling of unworthiness in the light of God’s holiness. Too often we think we deserve something from God. People in Christian circles go around telling other Christians that since we are His children, we deserve the best life has to offer. After all, we’re children of the King, right?

Years ago, I had a neighbor that I thought was a Christian. She had “accepted Christ” at another neighbor’s church – a neighbor from a denomination that at first glance I assumed was a Christian denomination. I later learned that this denomination denies the Trinity and believes that salvation is not God’s priceless gift – rather they believe in a works based doctrine that is “part God, part man.” They do not hold to the basic tenets of Christianity, which made me realize that this woman they had “led to Christ” did not know Him at all.

Her name was Cathy, and her son had spent nearly every day at our house for years. She knew I was a Christian as I had called to “congratulate” her upon what I had thought was her salvation experience. She welcomed me into her home and we talked. I asked her, “If you were to die tonight and stand before God and He were to say to you, ‘Why should I let you into My heaven?’ what would you say?”

Without hesitation, Cathy said, “He’d better let me in because I deserve it.”

Stunned at her answer, I struggled to understand how she could think such a thing. How does a human being, by nature a sinner, become so arrogant to think that we deserve anything from God? But as I remembered some of her earlier comments about having fasted for days and prayed for God to lift her depression (I suspect she had some sort of post partum blues), it occurred to me that she thought these “works” had earned her a place with God.

So I asked her, “Do you feel this way because you’re all fasted and prayed up?”

“Yes,” she said.

I tried to explain that God’s grace doesn’t work that way – we cannot earn His love, it is a free gift – that salvation is not earned, lest any man should boast.

I left Cathy some materials to read, but I doubt she ever read them.

Shortly afterward Cathy and her husband separated and she moved. A few years later, I learned that Cathy had died in a house fire. Her youngest son tried to save her, but she had passed out – rumor has it she’d been drinking and her boyfriend set fire to the house.

How she died doesn’t matter. What matters is what she believed before that fateful night. She once thought she deserved heaven. Like a lot of people who think they are worthy of the best, that God owes them something. If she died believing that, she was sorely mistaken.

Luke 18:9-14 says:
Also He spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other men—extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.’ And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

That song I first mentioned goes on to say, “I am not worthy, this dull tongue repeats it. I am not worthy, this heart gladly beats it. Jesus left heaven to die in my place. What mercy, what love, and what grace.”

Amen.