Can I make 8 turnovers and still get to heaven?

Really, it’s not just a facetious question!

Usually the content of the question is slightly different, but the intent is still the same. How bad can I be and still earn my eternal reward? Is there some point where even Jesus, in all His grace and mercy, will give up on me?

Let me say from the outset that it is a different question from “Can I make 8 turnovers and still have a job?” That question, purely a matter of law, is much easier to answer. No, you can’t. In a contractual world, you get paid for performance. And if you don’t perform – and one might argue that 8 turnovers indicates lack of performance – you ought not get paid, whether that be a salary of hundreds of thousands of dollars or the prestige of a starting position or whatever. In this life, you get paid to be good, and if you’re not good, you don’t get paid.

It is, after all, what makes this life understandable at all.

But, of course, as a matter of grace, you’re not getting paid to be good by God. That may come as a shock if you think about it a little bit. God does not pay us to be good, he just demands it. Luther says, “Therefore I surely ought to thank and praise, serve and obey him.” Nothing in it for me. As my father used to say, “Because I said so. That’s why!”

This is where faith trips us up every time. We like to see ourselves as the perfect free agents, owners of our own will, choosers of our moments and our destiny. We think that all of this good stuff is coming to us because we deserve it, we earned it. We may even be willing to take some responsibility for our faults. At least within reason. But that’s the brick wall that we never see coming. For that fault is a debt we could never pay off.

But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? Malachi 3:2

The problem with Grace is that it can never be a partial proposition. To get a little grace is to get it all, to receive forgiveness once is to stand beholden forever. As much as we’d like Grace to be our fall-back position, it belongs to a God who will not abide anything less that complete devotion, complete lordship, complete pardon.

But that’s what makes it Grace! For it is not a matter of 8 turnovers, no more than it would matter if it was 88 or only one. The question itself misses the point – our place with God never depends on what we do or do not do, but only in what God does. Or did, for he sent his only Son not merely for the drama but to change the very nature of heaven and earth and of us.

So, to paraphrase Dr. Luther, when you put the ball on the ground, really give it a boot. For the one who counts isn’t keeping score. Sometimes I think he might just be getting a good laugh at all of it.