BP-005: What Do You Want?
$5 Worth of God
Berean Paper Status
Division:
Theology, Grace, and Christian Discipleship
Classification:
Scriptural, Personal, and Reflective Analysis
Primary concern:
What we want, what we are willing to give for it, and why grace can be difficult to receive when acceptance has always felt earned.
BP-005 begins with a simple question—What do you want?—and follows it into desire, sacrifice, childhood acceptance, God as Father, discipleship, and grace. Its central question is not merely what we are willing to pay for what we want, but what happens when God offers something we cannot pay for at all.
Abstract
“What do you want?” The question follows us through life. A child wants the pain to stop. A teenager wants to become somebody. An adult wants love, security, success, family, purpose, peace, recognition, forgiveness.
Eventually another question follows: What are you willing to give to get what you want?
Every desire can create a pathway. We exchange time for achievement, money for possessions, vulnerability for love, comfort for growth, and sometimes integrity for something we have decided we cannot live without.
Yet Christianity introduces something that does not fit neatly into that economy of exchange: grace. Grace cannot be purchased. That creates two very different spiritual problems.
Enough to Feel Better
One person wants the benefits of God without the transformation of God.
“Give me just enough God.”
Surely I Must Pay
Another desperately wants God but cannot believe that His acceptance could possibly be given without earning it.
“Surely I have to pay for this somehow.”
Central proposition: Every pathway begins with a want. The question is not merely what we want, but what we are willing to give—and what we are willing to become—in order to have it. But there is one thing we cannot purchase: grace.
1. What Do You Want?
To the crying child at the YMCA, the question meant something immediate: What will make this better? But life keeps asking it in larger forms. What do you want to do? Who do you want to become? What kind of life do you want? What do you want from God?
Jesus encountered a wealthy young man who wanted eternal life. He came running, knelt before Jesus, and asked what he needed to do. Eventually Jesus touched the thing the man could not release, and the man went away grieving.[1]
He wanted something. He simply wanted something else more.
Desire exposes us.
Nothing we pursue in this world is entirely without consequence. Education costs time. Achievement costs effort. Love costs vulnerability. Forgiveness costs pride. Relationships cost convenience. Integrity sometimes costs opportunity. Even hatred has a price. So do resentment, addiction, and revenge.
We are always exchanging something.
What do you want?
What desire is strong enough to set your direction?
What are you willing to become?
What might you surrender, justify, or normalize in order to get what you want?
That returns us to footholds and pathways. One decision becomes easier the second time. The repeated route becomes familiar. The familiar pathway becomes a road. And roads have destinations.
2. $5 Worth of God
Wilbur Rees wrote a brief reflection commonly known as Three Dollars Worth of God.[2]
Cost of Living Adjustment
We have adjusted the amount to five dollars.
Apparently even a carefully rationed portion of the Almighty has been affected by inflation.
Nothing's free.
The joke works because Rees's customer is trying to conduct a transaction. He wants enough God to provide comfort but not enough to disturb his life. Enough reassurance. Enough religion. Enough eternity to feel safe. But not enough God to require transformation.
“I want ecstasy, not transformation.”
There it is. Forgiveness without repentance. Peace without surrender. Assurance without obedience. A Savior who will save me, but preferably one who will refrain from interfering with the rest of my schedule.
I want heaven. I am less enthusiastic about taking up a cross. I want God in the building. I just do not necessarily want Him rearranging the furniture.
Paul describes the grace of God that brings salvation as a grace that also teaches believers how to live.[3] Grace is not merely pardon. Grace begins a pathway.
But Rees's customer is not the only customer.
“Do not change me too much.”
He wants comfort without surrender.
“Surely this cannot be free.”
He wants God, but cannot believe acceptance could come without performance.
I understand the second customer better.
I can understand salvation intellectually. I can explain that salvation is by grace. I can read, “For by grace are ye saved through faith.”[4] I know the words.
The problem is receiving them.
If you spend enough of your life learning that acceptance follows performance, grace can sound almost suspicious. Where is the catch? What do I have to do? How good do I have to be? How long will this acceptance last? What happens when I fail? When does the other shoe drop?
3. The Price of Acceptance
Trying to Be Good Enough
I did not get spankings when I was little.
I got beatings.
There was a sharp difference. My father ruled with a closed fist.
I remember praying to God that I would make it through the day without being beaten. I wanted to be good enough for my father.
What did I want? Safety. Acceptance. Approval.
A child does not construct a sophisticated theology of works and grace. A child simply learns: If I perform correctly, perhaps I will be accepted. If I fail, something bad may happen.
Living in Someone Else's Wake
My brother was six years older. Quarterback. Pitcher. Lifeguard.
He was not “super” in the casual way we throw that word around today.
He was Super Boy.
A few trips onto the football field and a few versions of “Why can't you do this like your brother?” were enough for me.
I went to band. I refused to spend my life standing in his shadow. I have never regretted it.
In my own mind I have sometimes thought about James, the brother of Jesus—not because Scripture says he shared my experience, but because I understand something about having an older brother whose identity seems to enter the room before yours does.
Eventually you have to discover who you are. Not who your brother was. Not who your father expected you to be. You.
Sometimes changing pathways is not rebellion. Sometimes it is survival.
When “Father” Is a Difficult Word
Christianity asks us to call God Father. For many people that is immediately comforting. For others it is complicated.
If your earthly experience taught you that fathers evaluate, compare, punish, withdraw approval, or demand performance, it is easy to carry those expectations into theology. We may know better doctrinally and still react differently emotionally.
“For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.”
—Romans 8:15[5]
Adoption is not a wage. A child does not clock in every morning and earn another twenty-four hours in the family.
The relationship comes first. Then the child learns how to live inside that relationship.
That order matters. Christian obedience is supposed to grow from acceptance. It is not supposed to be an endless attempt to purchase it.
4. The Package at the Altar
This is where grace becomes difficult for me.
I can picture myself going down to the altar carrying a package. Everything is in there: failure, sin, regret, things I should have done, things I should not have done, things I cannot repair, things I still do not understand.
I put the package down. I ask God to forgive me. Then I walk back to my seat.
But there is a string tied to the package.
I sit down. And after a while I start pulling.
Surely He cannot be expected to handle all of that. That is too much. It is not fair to give Him this part. I ought to take responsibility for that piece. Maybe I need to fix some of it first.
So I pull.
And eventually the package that I supposedly surrendered is sitting beside me again.
The String
Taking the package back feels responsible. It can even feel righteous.
But somewhere underneath it is the belief that Christ's grace is sufficient for ordinary sinners and ordinary sins—just perhaps not for all of mine.
That sounds humble. It is not. It quietly places my judgment of my sin above God's declaration concerning His grace.
5. Grace Violates the Economy
Almost everything in life teaches us exchange. Work and receive wages. Pay and receive merchandise. Perform and receive recognition. Break the rules and receive consequences.
Then the gospel announces:
“Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”
—Romans 3:24[6]
Freely.
That can be an offensive word to anyone who has spent a lifetime measuring worth by performance.
Earn it
Work harder.
Do better.
Improve your bargaining position.
Make yourself worth accepting.
You cannot pay for this
You cannot make God owe you.
You cannot bring enough good behavior.
You cannot pay the balance.
The balance has already been paid.
That does not mean sin is cheap. It means grace was costly to the One who provided it and freely given to the one who receives it.
There is a difference between something being free and something costing nothing.
So perhaps our inflation joke contains more theology than we intended. We raised Rees's three dollars to five. Nothing's free.
Except grace.
And even that sentence needs explanation. Grace is free to us. It was not free of cost. Christianity places that cost at the cross.
“For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
—Romans 6:23[7]
A gift ceases to be a gift when the recipient receives an invoice.
6. Free Grace, Costly Discipleship
Jesus also told His followers to count the cost.[8] He spoke about taking up a cross.[9] Following Him could cost social standing, possessions, relationships, comfort, and sometimes life itself.
So which is it—free or costly?
Gift
Salvation is not purchased by discipleship.
Response
Discipleship is the life that follows salvation.
Grace is not the reward for carrying a cross successfully. We carry the cross because grace has already changed who we belong to.
The order cannot be reversed. Otherwise Christianity becomes another version of the childhood bargain:
“I will be good enough, and then perhaps my Father will accept me.”
The gospel reverses it:
The Father has received you. Now learn to live as His child.
This is also where footholds and pathways return. Desire itself is not always evil. Wanting love, safety, acceptance, success, or relief from pain is not evil. The danger begins when something we legitimately want becomes valuable enough that we will surrender something more important to obtain it.
For some, the foothold is appetite. For others, pride, money, sex, approval, resentment, or power.
And for some of us, perhaps the foothold is an old fear:
I am still not good enough.
That fear can create a pathway of its own—one where confession never produces peace because forgiveness never feels complete, every failure threatens the relationship, and grace is constantly examined for hidden conditions.
Where we keep one hand on the string.
7. What Do You Want?
So we return to the child at the YMCA.
“What do you want?”
I have answered that question differently throughout my life.
Safety and identity
I wanted not to be beaten.
I wanted my father's acceptance.
I wanted to be good enough.
I wanted to get out from underneath my brother's shadow.
I wanted to find something that was mine.
God
I want God.
But perhaps one of the hardest things God has asked me to give Him is my belief that I still have to earn Him.
That is a strange surrender.
I know how to give something up. Grace asks me to stop trying to contribute to something Christ has already accomplished.
I know how to carry a burden. Grace asks me to put it down.
I know how to bring the package to the altar.
Grace asks me to leave the string there too.
8. Judgment
Wilbur Rees described the person who wants a small enough portion of God that nothing important has to change.
That person needs to hear:
You cannot have transformation without being transformed.
But there is another person who needs to hear something different: the one who believes God's grace surely has limits, who keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop, who confesses and then retrieves the confession, who believes everybody else can receive grace but quietly suspects that his own package may exceed the weight limit.
That Person Does Not Need Another Invoice
He needs to understand the gift.
No condemnation
“There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.”[10]
The gospel does not say: Bring Me the parts you think I can handle.
It does not say: Clean up the package before you leave it.
And it does not say: Tie a string around it in case I need you to take some of it back.
Grace means leaving the package. All of it.
Grace has no purchase price. Following grace may cost us everything. Those statements do not contradict each other. One tells us how we are accepted. The other tells us what happens when we begin living as people who have been accepted.
And perhaps that finally changes the question.
Not: How much God can I afford?
Not: How much must I pay before God will accept me?
But:
What do I want?
I want God.
And then:
What am I willing to give Him?
Bring the package.
Leave the string.
Grace has no invoice. Stop pulling the package back.
Notes and References
- Mark 10:17–27. The rich young ruler seeks eternal life, but his response reveals the competing allegiance of his possessions. Read passage ↩
- Wilbur Rees, Three Dollars Worth of God. The original reflection asks for three dollars' worth of God. The five-dollar amount used in this paper is an intentionally humorous cost-of-living adjustment. Open source ↩
- Titus 2:11–14. The grace that brings salvation also teaches believers how they should live. Read passage ↩
- Ephesians 2:8–10. Salvation is God's gift and is not produced by works; the passage then describes believers as created in Christ Jesus unto good works. Read passage ↩
- Romans 8:14–17. Paul contrasts bondage and fear with adoption, describing believers as children and heirs of God. Read passage ↩
- Romans 3:23–26. All have sinned, and justification is described as being given freely by God's grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Read passage ↩
- Romans 6:20–23. Paul contrasts the wages of sin with the gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ. Read passage ↩
- Luke 14:25–33. Jesus instructs prospective disciples to count the cost. Read passage ↩
- Mark 8:34–37. Jesus connects discipleship with self-denial, taking up the cross, and following Him. Read passage ↩
- Romans 8:1. Paul declares that there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. Read passage ↩
- 1 Peter 5:6–7. Believers are instructed to cast their care upon God because He cares for them. Read passage ↩
Additional Notes
Personal material: The childhood experiences described in this paper are personal testimony. They are offered to explain why grace, acceptance, and the biblical language of God as Father can be experienced differently by different people. They are not offered as a universal psychological theory.
Scripture text: Scripture quotations use the King James Version. Interpretive conclusions should be tested against the linked passages.
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