Is God in our Debt?

Comedian Pete Holmes was recently a guest on The George Janko Show, where he had a candid conversation about all things spirituality and religion. I haven’t watched the entire discussion, but the bits and pieces I’ve seen were insightful, to say the least.

One of my previous blogs touched on this interview regarding the doctrine of annihilationism. You can read that here. However, in this post I wanted to address something Holmes said because it strikes a cord with many who operate out of a distorted view of Christianity.

Holmes was discussing how he and his ex-wife married young, and explained the events that led him to abandon his faith.

My wife and I were both believers, and we got married when I was 22 and she was 24. And then she ended up having an affair and leaving me, which it sounds easy to scapegoat her—that’s not what I’m doing. What came to the forefront for me at that moment was I thought I had a deal with God. I didn’t smoke, I didn’t drink, I didn’t swear, I witnessed to people, I believed in the Bible, I read, I prayed—I did everything correct. And then I felt like He sort of left me twisting in the wind.

Holmes’ deconstruction of sorts can be attributed to his understanding that God owed him something. To him, God didn’t keep His side of “the deal.” He thought that if he did X, Y, and Z, then God is obligated to make his life a breeze, a type of prosperity gospel. His ex-wife had an affair committed adultery against him and that, along with his rejection of Hell, caused him to draw away from historic, orthodox Christianity.

This is certainly the same story of many who come to reject the Bible’s plain teachings, just in different ways. People believe their relationship with God is transactional, a kind of divine quid pro quo. But the faulty logic is believing God is at our disposable, that He is simply supposed to attend to us—that we are the center of the universe.

I’m not saying this is easy to practice in everyday life. Times get tough; days are burdensome; minutes feel like hours and hours like days sometimes. Life is excruciating at times. Suffering happens. People cheat. Life is simply messy.

But God doesn’t withdraw from us when life is messy. And the reality of life being messy isn’t an indicator that God is somehow unfaithful to uphold His side of the supposed bargain. The moment we understand our relationship with God is not transactional is the moment we can experience true freedom in Christ. God doesn’t owe us anything; not a penny. Our relationship with the Father is not based on what we can give to God—for as Paul said, “Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid” (Rom. 11:35)?

We cannot give God anything—and He therefore cannot be in our debt—“for from him and through him and to him are all things” (v. 36). God owns all things.

The reality of God not being in our debt is the foundation for understanding that our relationship with Him is not transactional. It doesn’t matter how faithful I am at reading my Bible, praying, witnessing, and the like. Suffering, heartache, frustration, and other negative experiences will come my way regardless. And none of those things mean God is somehow unfaithful or not good to me. It means, more than anything else, that God is good and wise and faithful even amid our pain, our suffering, our heartbreak. He uses difficult periods to mold us more into the image of His Son (Rom. 8:29).

I can’t imagine going through what Holmes went through. I feel for him. But the answer is not to turn away from God, as if He didn’t keep His promises. God is good whether we feel good or not. God is faithful even if life is full of catastrophe. Just look at the book of Job; just look at the Apostle Paul; just look at Peter and so many other biblical figures.

Our relationship with God is ultimately not transactional because of the cross of Jesus Christ. Jesus paid the penalty for our sin, lived a righteous life on our behalf, and rose again on the third day for our justification! We don’t have to relate to God via transaction, but only through the perfect merits of His Son.