Growing up my parents gave me plenty of opportunity to try many extra curricular activities. One of those happened to be Boy Scouts. While I thoroughly enjoyed my time as a scout (never made Eagle, settled for First Class) I traded that experience in for sports soon before my teenage years began. The camping and survival skills obtained benefit me to this day and leave me with lasting memories. Our motto in Troop 218 was "We Try Harder." I have the T-shirt to prove it.
As you can see that motto became the goal for most of us kids at a very early age. That goal remains the goal for many of us as adults. However, through the years I have also found this motto to be the mantra of many in their Christian life and is the motto held both explicitly and implicitly by most church leaders. The challenge for holding this view is that it contradicts the essence of the Gospel. Remember this quote? "Give God your best, and He'll take care of the rest." I fail to remember anyone rejecting this notion with the verse from Isaiah 64:6 where God essentially said, "your best is like filthy rags." Do a word study on filthy rags. Comment on what you find God saying about our best.
Don't get me wrong trying harder makes sense when it comes to our jobs, sports, etc., but not in our Christian life. Here's why. The Christian life is not about trying, but dying. It's not committing (rededicating the rededication) to try harder but dying to self-reliance. "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me."(Gal. 2:20) The apostle Paul reminds us of how easily we forget that living the Christian life is accomplished by the same way we received that life, by faith. "Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, (by faith) so walk in Him,"(Col. 2:6). So many of us think that we live the Christian life by simply trying harder hoping we accomplish it. This takes on so many forms (quiet time quotas, church attendance, witnessing quotas, 10% tithes, etc.) Paul goes on to challenge us in Galatians 3 when he writes,
"1You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? 2This is the only thing I want to find out from you: did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law (trying harder), or by hearing with faith? 3Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh (trying harder)?"
Do we get what Paul is saying? You received eternal life by God's Spirit and the channel (Greek word 'dia' - through) was faith. You live in your new life "pleasing" God not by trying harder but by dying harder (see Galatians 2:20).
So what about pleasing God? He is pleased with you. As a son or daughter who has placed your faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross your work is finished trying to please God. That's what Jesus meant when He said, "It is finished." The work of man trying to do enough things for God to remove His wrath over their lives is over. This is the Gospel! The idea of "working hard for God" should not be to make God pleased with us but should be motivated because His is pleased with us.
Is there work to be done "for God?" Yes. Again, Paul tells us what this looks like. "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them."(Ephesians 2:10) How do we walk in them? By faith. How do we accomplish it? We don't but God's Spirit inside of us does. Paul again, "for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work (He tries harder) for His good pleasure." (Phil. 2:13) Do you see a pattern here? It is all God! Why? So He receives the glory alone. He told us He will share His glory with no one (Isaiah 48:11). He is only impressed when He looks at us and sees Himself.
