The Cruelest Lie

It hung over the entrance to Auschwitz, a large metal sign handmade by prisoners, offering a last shred of false hope to the doomed: “Arbeit macht frei” (“work makes you free”). Some have argued it was placed there to deceive inmates into thinking hard work would earn them a release, while others argue the saying was a common slogan extolling the virtue of labor. Either way, it was damnably false, a sick joke and the cruelest of lies. Because, of course, work made no one free in Auschwitz. You were there to be worked to death, or put to death. There was no curtain number three.

Still, I can see why a new arrival, already terrified and weakened from the brutal forced trip on a box car, would clutch any hope that was offered. “Maybe if I make myself valuable”, he or she would pray while staggering into hell, “show good effort, and obey all the rules, that will earn my freedom.” And in fact, doing all of that sometimes did earn a temporary reprieve, while Nazi guards got all they could out of prisoners who had different specialties to offer. But the end was always the same. Ultimately, the best of efforts could never earn the gift of life.

Before I first heard the gospel as a teenager in 1971, I had enough faith and understanding to accept the fact there was a God, a Creator of some sort. Occasionally I’d even heard of Him being referred to as “father”, and putting 2 and 2 together I came up with 9: “If God is a father, and fathers require their sons to perform well, then to appease God I have to perform well.”

Great start. Now the question became, how do I do that? Exactly what sort of performance does He require? The fact I was viewing Him as someone to be appeased says a lot, and my quest for a God-appeasing performance was at least comical. I gave up LSD; that must have really blown Him away. And I started being nice to people, cut down on smoking, and promised Him with moderate success that I’d go to, rather than ditch, school. To my 16 year old self, this reformed lifestyle was as impressive as entering the Priesthood, so surely, I reasoned, God was wowed. He would love me now. I wouldn’t go to Hell, and I didn’t need to be afraid anymore.

It lasted a few months. Even the simplest of commitments became an impossibility (algebra simply had to be ditched; no martyr could endure it) and each failure underscored, to my thinking, God’s disgust with me. Soon I waved the white flag and resigned myself to Godlessness because, in the end, it was always the same. I’d try and fail, proving yet again that the best of efforts could not earn the gift of life.

But that same year a lovely classmate invited me to church with her, where for the first time I heard it spelled out plainly: Work does NOT make you free. At your best, you’ll never make it to heaven on your own. Or, as evangelist Greg Laurie so perfectly sates, “Jesus came to pay a debt He did not owe because we owed a debt we could not pay.”

It clicked. Work did in fact make me free, but it was His work, not mine, that secured the liberty.

Ironically, to this day, I’m most motivated to good works when I remember that. Mind you, I oppose any teaching that denigrates the importance of works. They matter, and hugely. If I am in ongoing, deliberate disobedience to God, it absolutely affects my fellowship with Him, grieves Him, calls for chastening and repentance, and is nothing to be minimized. So God forbid any of us adopt a casual attitude towards sin, based on a misunderstanding of God’s grace. It’s that sort of carelessness towards holiness that has, to my thinking, weakened the Body of Christ considerably.

And yet, to this day, when I view my daily devotions, ministry responsibilities, marital duties and worship life as items to check off my “Do It For God” list, they inevitably lack vibrancy. Good works done to make me feel better about myself, or keep God’s approval, constitute the right things done for the wrong reason. Conversely, good works offered in grateful response to His goodness are precious to Him, valuable to me, hopefully of some help to others, and will, when I stand before the judgment seat of Christ, be accounted for.

If my life lacks good fruit, including the fruit of right actions, there’s something terribly wrong. That sort of lack can indicate a seriously backslidden state, spiritual dryness, deception or (God forbid) a life that was never truly regenerated. That is all true, and worth considering.

But it’s also true that to this day, God remains unimpressed by any good deeds on my part. He is, I know, pleased when He sees His son strive to do right, and He’s grieved when His son errors. But impressed? Hardly.

When I trained at a gym full of competitive bodybuilders (one of which I was NOT) I’d pump moderate weight next to professional gorillas who slung massive poundage around like it was spaghetti. My tiny weightlifting accomplishments never impressed any of them, but when I tried my best, they appreciated my effort for its own sake. Often, in fact, a few of them would give me the old “atta boy”, not because they were wowed by the amount I pressed, but appreciative of the fact I was giving it my all.

Of course, our service to God is no gym routine. It’s dead on serious, and your obedience to God’s will in your life has eternal repercussions, not just for you, but for all of us. Still, if I were to revisit that confused kid of 41 years ago who was trying to figure out how to appease God, I’d say “Skip it, Boy. Your feeble righteousness is like filthy rags to Him. Accept His gift by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ, get to know Him through His word and good fellowship, and you’ll see He wants you as you are, sees you as you can be, and has a plan for your life and behavior that’ll impress you a million times more than your plans will ever impress Him.”

God grant that we know Him, love Him, and, in response, produce the hard work and good fruit that will neither save us nor impress Him, but which pleases Him and, for that reason alone, matters.

Eternally.