God Helps Those Who Help Themselves

If you polled a room full of people and asked which line was a Bible verse, this is the one most of them would pick. God helps those who help themselves. It sounds like Scripture. It sounds wise. It has that firm, proverbial ring to it.

It is not in the Bible. Not close to in the Bible. And once you see where it actually came from, and what it actually teaches, you will understand why it is the one on this whole list I most want to pull out by the roots.

Let me trace it for you, because the trail is interesting. The sentiment is ancient, older than the church. You can find it dressed up in Aesop's fables, in the old Greek idea that the gods lend a hand to the man already straining at the wheel. The exact English wording shows up in 1698, in a book on government by a man named Algernon Sidney. And then it got famous in America because Benjamin Franklin put it in Poor Richard's Almanack in 1736, right next to his other snappy bits of self-improvement wisdom.

That is the pedigree. Aesop, a political philosopher, and Ben Franklin. Good company, useful advice for running a farm or a business. But it is Franklin's gospel, not God's, and the two say opposite things.

Because here is the actual gospel, and I want you to feel how completely it reverses the slogan.

"For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly."

Romans 5:6, NASB 1995

While we were still helpless. Not while we were helping ourselves. Not once we had cleaned up and made the first move and shown God we were worth the trouble. While we were helpless, and, a couple of lines later in the same passage, while we were still sinners and even enemies of God, Christ died for us. That is the whole scandal of the thing. God did not wait for us to get our act together. He stepped in precisely because we could not.

Do you see how backward the slogan is? God helps those who help themselves puts you first. You make the effort, you earn the assist, and God rewards the self-starter. The gospel puts God first, entirely, and it finds you exactly where you have no strength left and no leg to stand on. One is a philosophy for ambitious people. The other is good news for drowning ones.

This is not a small correction. It is the difference between two entire religions. Every man-made religion on earth runs on some version of God helps those who help themselves: do enough, try enough, climb high enough, and the divine will meet you at the top. Christianity is the one that says you will never climb high enough, so God came all the way down to the bottom, to the helpless and the ungodly, and did for you what you could never do for yourself. Take away that one truth and you do not have a slightly different Christianity. You have no Christianity at all.

Now let me guard against a misunderstanding before you email me one, because I can hear it coming.

None of this means God blesses laziness. The same Bible that says Christ died for the helpless also tells the man who will not work that he should not expect to eat, and sends the sluggard to go watch the ant and learn something. Scripture has plenty of respect for hard work, diligence, and taking responsibility for your life. So do not hear me saying that faith means sitting on the couch waiting for God to do your job.

But keep two different things in two different boxes, because the slogan smashes them together and that is where it does its damage. Working hard at your job, your marriage, your land, that is ordinary diligence, and the Bible is all for it. Earning God's saving help, doing enough good to make yourself acceptable to Him, that is impossible, and the Bible says so plainly. The first is wisdom. The second is the exact thing Jesus came to end.

So work hard. Provide. Take responsibility. Help yourself in every ordinary way a grown man or woman should.

But when it comes to the thing that actually matters, the rescue of your soul, stop helping yourself. You cannot, and the wonder of it is that you do not have to. God does not help those who help themselves. He helps those who cannot, which is every last one of us, and that is the best news you will ever hear.