I Deserve It

          Well past the Christmas story, I’ve been reading in Luke 7 this week where I got stuck on one word. I know it’s probably good to read through the Bible in a year, but I’ve just never been able to do it. I’ll start out well and then come to a screeching halt over one little word. That’s all it takes—one word—and I’m in the scene listening, smelling, and feeling everything that’s going on. This time the word that derailed me was deserve.

            A centurion who had a sick servant had heard—only heard—of Jesus and sent Jewish leaders to ask Jesus to come heal his servant. The couriers earnestly made the request: “This man deserves to have you do this, because he loves our nation and has built our synagogue” (Luke 7: 4-5, NIV). The centurion has done this, so he deserves for you to heal. It’s a transaction. He’s done this; he’s owed a healing.

            Interestingly, Jesus isn’t put off and goes with them. Now the centurion’s friends come, bringing a second message on behalf of the soldier: “Lord, don’t trouble yourself, for I do not deserve to have you come under my roof” (Luke 7: 6, NIV). I don’t deserve anything. He even says he isn’t worthy to come into Christ’s presence.

            Deserving something. Deserving nothing.

            I’ve spent a lot of my life thinking I’m so deserving. I deserve that recognition, the higher place in a competition, the better grade, that promotion, the raise, the money to get that car, an easier way to whatever I wanted. There are things that, from my perspective, I haven’t deserved. I didn’t deserve to have my dream career smashed, to have to wait much longer than I planned to find a husband, to struggle so spiritually when I was devoted to Christ. Did I deserve to have cancer, to have estrangement and heartbreak in my family? I didn’t think so.

            Have you spent your life that way?
            Perhaps it hasn’t been obvious to others, but as I look back or even hear self-centered thoughts play through my mind, I’m chagrined at my raw audacity to think that God owes me something—anything at all.

            God owes me nothing. He owes you nothing.

            The debt is all on my side and yours.

            One of my favorite songs is The Great Divide sung by Point of Grace. One line explains my problems and yours: “Looking out ‘cross the canyon carved by my hands.” I created the gulf between God and me. I’ve dug my own grave—shot myself in the foot. What I really deserve is Hell. I don’t deserve any help. I did it to myself.

            Jesus spoke the word of healing for the centurion’s servant without being in his house or even seeing the Roman soldier. Whenever he did healings, faith was always involved. So Jesus didn’t heal because the man deserved it or didn’t deserve to have his servant die. He did it because the man humbled himself and expressed faith in Christ.

            And that is what the cross is all about—a place to humble ourselves and believe in Christ, a place where those who once thought themselves deserving become undeserving so that they can be made worthy to be God’s children.

I can’t get over that; I never want to. I don’t deserve it!