The default mode of the heart of every human being is to try to earn a place at God’s table. That is what we would do if we were left to ourselves and we weren’t paying attention to our own hearts.
Strangely, that is true of every human being. Even those human beings who haven’t yet surrendered themselves to trusting Jesus. Even those human beings who deny that there is a God who lovingly made them and wouldn’t give much thought to him. We have the double-minded ability to both defy God and make demands on him at the same time.
So, we human beings default to trying to work for our value and our place. We selfishly and slavishly spend our energy doing, doing, doing with the vain hope that it will earn us something…that we would finally be good enough, smart enough, and that (doggonit) someone would like us. Like us enough to give us a place at the table.
(Thanks for the wise words, Mr. Smalley)
So the clear commands of scripture seem to be the pathway to being accepted by God. If we do them, keep working, keep striving, keep sacrificing, then eventually we will have done enough to either earn a place at the table or be able to demand one. We become a human doing rather than the human being, defined by our actions and easily forgetting that God has bigger and deeper desires for us.
He is not primarily looking at the scope of our works the but the state of our hearts. He knows that all we do flows out of all of who we are, so he goes after our hearts. If he transforms our hearts to be like His Son’s heart then what will naturally follow (by default) is the kind of life his Son lived (lives!)
We are invited to trust the Father so our default more would be like the Son’s. The default mode of Jesus’ heart, always loving, and always knowing we are Beloved by the Father like he is.