Don't Grab Those Bootstraps - Ephesians 2:1-10
I’ve heard it, “pick
yourself up by your bootstraps,” but I have also heard it come across as “pull
yourself up by your bootstraps.” It
pretty much means the same. It means
that you should improve your situation by fixing it yourself. That’s all well and good if you are like me
and wear boots with bootstraps. However,
what is a person supposed to do that wears clogs or tennis shoes, high-heels or
flip-flops, or operates in my preferred mode, barefoot? So maybe we should seek
out some advice that is a little more comprehensive? Maybe something Biblical?
How about this? “God helps those who helps themselves.” Can anyone tell me where this particular
statement about God appears in God’s Word?
If you said, “Nowhere,” you are right.
This often quoted statement, attributed to God, and mistaken as
Biblical, is of uncertain origin. Some
suggest it is from Benjamin Franklin and some trace its origins as far back as ancient
Greece and Aesop’s Fables. I have heard
faithful Christians quote this passage over and over again through the years,
maybe even more often that I have heard them quote, “For God so loved the world
that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish
but may have eternal life.”[i] The phrase actually should be problematic for
Christians rather than cherished. The
notion behind it is that God is only going to help those who do something about
their plight—that God is only going to help someone who really doesn’t need any
help.
What is the problem? The problem is that the notion that God is
only around to help those who can help themselves is actually the opposite of
what we read in all of Scripture. From
the time of God’s covenant with the people of Israel, God has always stressed
the importance of caring for those who cannot care for themselves.
God repeatedly reminds
the Israelites that they are to care for the orphans, the widows, and the
aliens in their midst—those whose status meant they had no standing in the
public square and therefore could not do anything to improve their situation…they
had no bootstraps to pull themselves up by.
Jesus, Emmanuel, God in
the Flesh, comes along and when criticized for hanging out with the sinners,
those who couldn’t help themselves, rather than hanging out with the religious elite,
those who claimed to have helped themselves, Jesus tells them, “Those who are
well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.”[ii]
In other words, Jesus says, “I didn’t
come to help those who think they can help themselves, but those who can’t help
themselves.”
What we have to
understand is that truly none of us can help ourselves. Without the help of God, without His grace
being extended to us, none of us can do anything for ourselves. That’s what God’s grace is all about. God reaches out to us before we are even
aware that we need help to point us toward himself (John Wesley called this prevenient
grace), God declares that we are righteous based not on our helping ourselves,
but based on the righteousness of Christ, his willingness to die in our place
for our sins (justifying grace), and then God begins to change us, making us
Christlike (sanctifying grace). All of
these things God does for us because we cannot do them for ourselves.
Paul reminds the
Ephesians of this very fact:
All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh,
following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of
wrath, like everyone else. But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love
with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us
alive together with Christ…For by grace you have been saved through faith,
and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works….
So if God only helps
those who can help themselves, those who can pick themselves up by their own
bootstraps, then none of us would ever be able to be helped. However, Paul tells us that while none of us
could ever help ourselves, God, out of His love for us, in His mercy, reached
out and helped us, took us from certain death, and gave us life. Just in case any of us were to think that God
did this because we made an effort, because we tried to help ourselves, Paul
reminds us that God’s helping of us is a “gift…not the result of works….”
We were helpless. God helped.
God calls each of us to do likewise, for God created us in His image…we
are called to live our lives out as a reflection of God to the world…we are
called to be the living body of the resurrected Christ to all of those around
us. We are called to help those who
cannot help themselves…to help those who cannot pull themselves up by their
bootstraps.
We are called to look out
into the world and search out those who cannot help themselves:
Those who cannot help
themselves because of their age…because they are too young or too old to help
do anything about their circumstances.
Those who cannot help
themselves because of their health…because of physical impairments they cannot
do anything to help themselves.
Those who cannot help
themselves because of their education…they do not know what needs to be done to
improve their status.
Those who cannot help
themselves because of their social status…because of their gender, their skin
color, their language limitations, their ethnicity, they are not given the same
opportunities as everyone else.
Those who cannot help
themselves because of their upbringing…they were never taught any life skills
to care for themselves, they were never taught personal responsibility, they
were never taught anything other than to lie, cheat, beg, or steal to get what
they need.
To operate in God’s grace
means to reach out to each of these, right where they are, without expecting
them to do anything to make them deserve our efforts. God’s grace comes to us where we are, it does
not demand that we meet Him halfway…likewise, we are called to go to those who
need our help where they are, not demand that they come to where we are, or
even meet us halfway. We cannot demand
they make an effort first, any more than God demands that we make an effort
before He offers us grace.
I can hear the concern
now. Why should we help anyone who won’t
make an effort to change or who keep doing the same thing? Before we say that, we must remember that God
reaches out to us before we make any effort to change. He keeps reaching out when we keep sinning. If we help those who could do something to
change their circumstances, won’t that just enable them to continue to live
where they are, without changing, without doing anything for themselves…won’t
it continue to foster a society where folks just depend on everyone else to do
for them?
Not if we help as God
helps. God helps be reaching out to
where folks are and entering into a relationship with them…and as He pours
forth His grace, as He enters into relationship, His grace has expectations…
Adam and Eve were
expected to tend to Creation…
Noah and his family were
expected to repopulate the earth…
Abraham was expected to
trust God and surrender all things, including his son to God…
The Israelites, freed
from slavery to those in Egypt, helped when they couldn’t help themselves,
found themselves at Mt. Sinai were given the Ten Commandments, and other laws
to live by…
The lepers Jesus
encountered and healed by the side of the road were told to go and present
themselves in the Temple and re-enter the community (rather than continue to
beg for their livelihood).
The woman caught in
adultery and pardoned, though she had done nothing to deserve pardoning (she
was guilty), was forgiven, then told to go and sin no more.
Paul tells us that we
have been saved by grace through faith, not by our own efforts, but that we
have been “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared
beforehand to be our way of life.” God
has saved us and begun making us more and more like Christ—the One who was sent
not to help those who claim to be able to help themselves, but to help those
who may not even have a bootstrap to grab hold of. We are called to enter into the lives of
those who cannot help themselves with the same grace God extended to us,
forming personal relationships with them, and walking alongside of them as instruments
of God’s transforming Grace.
In the Name of the Father
and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
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