Resumé

Deuteronomy 9:6
Therefore understand that the LORD your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stiff-necked people.

It’s easy for us to get wrapped up in our own self worth. Just look at how we go about getting a job. We write out a resume and bring it with us to our anticipated future employer. We put everything down on that document that makes us look fantastic. Our education, career achievements, civic group memberships, experience in the specific field, and even, in some cases, our church involvement, all listed as a true and accurate representation of who we are and what we are like. But is that the truth?

It’s not the whole truth; it’s a portion of the truth, the part we all want our future boss to know about us. We seem to leave out all of the bad things that we’ve ever done. Why? Because we are bent on getting the job based on our good efforts and reputation. Deep down inside, we know that if we were to disclose everything, we’d never get the job!

Fortunately, the Israelites were dealing with God and not man. God intended on giving them the Promised Land, not based on anything that they did, but based on His own good grace. Imagine if they had brought their full resume to God as an example of their hard work and expertise. Imagine if God had made His decision based on their accomplishments. Surely that wouldn’t have gone well for them. Let’s see, there was idolatry, complaining, lack of trust, lying, stealing, cheating, and a little more idolatry. Boy, that would cinch it, don’t you think?

The same holds true for us today. We have no need to bring a resume to God of who we are. For one, He knows who we are! He knows that we’d leave out all of the bad stuff and only tell Him about the good things we’ve done. That’s why He made it real easy, just like He did for the Israelites; it’s not because of our righteousness that we are going to inherit the riches of His glory, but because of His righteousness. He, through Jesus Christ, made the way for us.

Our resume is now written on clean paper with the blood of Christ. When God reads it, He still sees everything: the good, the bad, and the ugly (props to Clint Eastwood). The difference is that He reads it all as it’s written in the blood of His Son, and He sees perfection.