As I usually do at the Men’s Shed, for smoko, I made myself a coffee and then took a biscuit out of the communal biscuit tin.  One of my Men’s Shed friends looked a little puzzled and then remarked, “John, you’re not supposed to have a biscuit are you?  It’s Lent!”  Well, he was right about one thing: It was Lent!

Lent is the forty-day season in the church-year leading up to Good Friday and Easter.  In many Churches today Lent passes without much thought or comment.  Do we really need a forty-day period of preparation for Easter?  After all. the Supermarkets have been selling hot-cross buns since the beginning of January.  Some churches will use this time to focus on the journey of Jesus to the cross in their preaching and liturgy.  This period of forty days was also used in the early church as a time of preparing new converts for membership in the Christian church.

However, what was behind my friend’s question is the idea that during Lent we make some sacrifices or do some acts of self-denial such as fasting – or in this case, forgoing a biscuit with one’s morning coffee.  Such restraint during Lent can be helpful if it’s approached the right way.  The idea was that every act of self-denial during Lent would help us to think about the great sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.  As such it‘s a spiritual discipline that many find helpful.

The big problem however is that it’s all too easy to see our acts of self-denial as something that earns God’s favour rather than as something that helps us to focus our thoughts on the cruel death of the Lord Jesus Christ.  I suspect that in the mind of my Men’s Shed friend I needed to do this to stay on the right side of God.  In the Middle Ages this dominated popular thinking.  Lent was an ideal time for collecting some Brownie-points with the Almighty.  God, it was thought, would be doubly pleased with any act of self-denial made during the season of Lent.  This leads to a horrible confusion of the work that Jesus did for me with the work that I now do for Him.

The point is that God doesn’t do Brownie-points.  It’s more than a little sad that many folk have the idea that God is the great Book-keeper in the sky.  He records all our wrongdoing but He also records the good that we do – and as long as the good we do outweighs the bad, God will smile favourably upon us.  Foregoing a biscuit with my morning coffee might just get me an extra entry on the good side of the ledger.

No!  The good news of the gospel is that it doesn’t work that way.  By His death and resurrection Jesus scored all the Brownie-points we will ever need.  God’s favour towards us rests totally on the finished work of Jesus Christ, and us receiving that by faith – that plus nothing.  In fact, think about it: if you had to contribute just one percent to your right standing with God, could you ever be confident that you had done that one percent well enough?

Forget about God as the great Book-keeper in the sky who tallies up our good deeds on the one side of a ledger and our sins and mistakes on the other side of the ledger.  The only book that matters for us is, what the Bible calls, the Lamb’s Book Of Life and your name is in that book if you’ve put your trust in what Jesus achieved for you at Easter.  Then you may still want to forego a biscuit with your morning coffee but it won’t be in an attempt to earn some Brownie-points with the Almighty, but rather as a reminder of Jesus’ wonderful sacrifice unto death that brought you life.

John Westendorp