A real bargain
“Please, God, if You’ll just get me out of this mess, I promise I’ll never do anything bad ever again!” Similar attempts to bargain with God have been happening since Old Testament times, as recorded in the Bible. From Jacob promising to worship God if God would take care of him, to Hannah vowing that if God gave her a son, she would dedicate him to God’s service, to our own day, people have tried to talk God into giving them what they want.
The problem is, God isn’t transactional. He created everything. We don’t have anything He needs, so we don’t have anything to trade in order to get something back. As St. Paul asks in the Bible’s book of Romans, “Who has given a gift to [God] that he might be repaid?” (11:35, English Standard Version).
The good news is that we don’t need to trade with Him. Jesus promised us, “It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). God has already made all of His goodness available to each of us, all the time, forever. It’s only a false sense of ourselves as mortal and material that causes us to feel separated from God, Spirit, and to think we need to negotiate with Him. As we begin to learn that our true nature is spiritual, His image and likeness, we start to understand and demonstrate the reality of our forever unity with Him as His beloved child.
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