Why you can never do enough to earn your salvation

Tom Crenshaw April 30, 2025

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One of my favorite preachers is Steve Brown who was formerly pastor at the Key Biscayne Presbyterian church in Florida. Steve is an author, speaker, and now a seminary professor.

If you have ever heard Steve on the radio, you will never forget his voice as he was a radio disc jockey before he got saved. I have always loved his teaching, and for years I received his weekly sermons which I carefully filed away.

Recently, I have been re-reading his expositional messages on First Peter, which he taught in 1974.

To provide you with a flavor, I share with you a part of a message he taught on "Helpful Hints for Holiness" (Part 2) October 27, 1974."

Steve writes, "The Christian view of sin is a radical view. Jeremiah 17:9 goes against the American folk religion. It says the heart is deceitful above all things."

The Christian view of God's grace is a radical view.

Ephesians 2:8-9 says, "For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God... not because of works, lest any man should boast."

"The central theme of the Bible is that God has done it all... that there is nothing you can do to achieve your salvation. You can't be good, or pure, or righteous, or loving, or kind enough; you can't promise God on a stack of bibles that you'll be the finest father coming down the pike. You can't do any of those things, because your salvation is totally, absolutely free."

"The Christian desires to live a holy life not to achieve salvation, but to please the one who, in spite of radical sin, acted with radical grace. In other words, we try to be good, holy, set apart, different, righteous, not so that God will love us. He already loves us. We do it so that we might please the One who loves us so much."

Steve writes, "In Pittsburgh this week, the pastor was talking about a friend, and he was trying to illustrate a point, and his son was sitting in the congregation.

He said, "Robert, stand up." The boy almost died, but he stood up.
The pastor said " Robert, are you my son?"
And Robert said, "Yes, dad, of course I am your son."
And the pastor said, "Robert, are you always doing the right thing?"
Robert grinned and said, "You know, daddy, I don't do the right thing all of the time."
And the father said, "Do I love you when you do the wrong thing?"
Robert said, "Of course you do, dad."
The father asked, "When you do the wrong things, are you no longer my son?"
The boy smiled and said, "Of course not, dad."
And his dad said, "Do you ever lose your sonship because of the wrong things you do?"
Robert said, "Of course not."
"Then son, what you must do, since you are so secure in your sonship with me, is to go out and do all kinds of bad things."
And the son broke in, "Oh no, dad, I couldn't do that."
The father asked, "Why not?"
The boy paused a moment and then said, "Because, dad, you know I love you."

Steve had it right. The reason we love and continue to love, and the only reason we do it is simply because He first loved us.

In Tales of a Tidy Oxcart, Chuck Swindoll shares a story written by William MacDonald and taken from his book The Grace of God.

MacDonald writes:

"To seek to earn merit, or purchase salvation is to insult the giver. Imagine yourself invited to a banquet in the White House by the president of the United States. You are seated at a table that is filled with the choicest of foods. Every effort is made to give you a most enjoyable evening. At the end of a lovely visit, the president stands at the front door to bid you good bye. What do you do? As you leave, do you press a dime into his hand and say, 'Thank you very much for your kindness. I enjoyed the evening very much. I realize it has cost you a lot of money, and I want to help you pay for the meal'? Is that the proper response to his kindness? On the contrary, it is a rude and insulting gesture. So it would be with God's grace."

Yes, God's grace is radical, so radical that it seems almost too good to be true!

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Tom Crenshaw serves as Connections Pastor of the New Monmouth Baptist Church (non denominational) where he previously served as a three year interim.He has been married to Jean for almost 50 years, and they have four children, all of whom are teachers.Tom loves perennial gardening, umpiring high school baseball, coaching baseball and football, fishing for small mouth bass, rooting for his favorite team, the Cleveland Indians, and listening to ‘real’ country music, the classic kind. Learn More »

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