Chapter 4 of 13
Do I Have to Be Good Enough First?
By The Living Bread · Last reviewed · 8 minute read
The short answer
No. You do not have to be good enough first, and you could not be. The Bible teaches that we are saved by grace through faith, as a gift, not by our record. Jesus came for the sick, not the well. You come as you are, and He changes you after.
The question underneath the question
If you have ever thought you needed to get your life together before you could approach God, you are in very good company. It may be the most common objection to coming to Christ, and it rarely arrives as an argument. It arrives as a feeling: I am too far gone, too ashamed, too much of a hypocrite, too recently in the thing I should not be doing. I will come back when I am better.
This feeling comes from something real. We know that God is good, and we know that we are not. The mistake is in the next step, the assumption that the distance between those two things has to be closed by us before God will meet us. That assumption feels so natural that it takes a deliberate act of listening to hear that Christianity says the opposite.
What Jesus said about the sick and the well
The Gospels tell of a dinner at which Jesus ate with tax collectors and notorious sinners. The religious leaders of the day were scandalized, and said so. His answer is one of the most important sentences in the faith.
“When Jesus heard it, he saith unto them, They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
Read it again as if for the first time. He did not say He came to call the righteous to a tidier life. He said He came for those who knew they needed a doctor. A hospital does not require patients to be well at the door. It would make no sense. The point of the place is the healing.
Jesus told a story that sums up the matter, about a younger son who demanded his inheritance, left home, spent every cent, and ended up feeding pigs. When he decided to go back, he rehearsed a speech about working as a hired servant. He did not get to deliver it.
“And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.”
The father in the story is looking down the road. He sees his son while the boy is still a long way off, and he runs. Not walks, runs, and embraces him before the son has said anything. The speech comes afterward and is not even needed. If you want to know how God greets those who turn toward Him, that is the picture Jesus chose.
Why you cannot be good enough
Here is a harder truth, said gently: if the gate to God required being good enough, no one would pass through it, including the best of us. The Bible says this without drama.
“For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;”
That is not an insult, it is a leveling. The person who has done the most visible wrong and the person who has done the most visible good stand on the same ground in front of a God who sees the heart. The Bible does not deny that some people do worse things than others. It says the difference is not what decides this question. What decides it is whether anyone has paid for what separates us from God, and the claim of the gospel is that someone has.
This is why the Bible speaks the way it does about works.
“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:”
“Not of works, lest any man should boast.”
Grace means a gift that is not earned and cannot be. If you could earn it, it would be a wage. If you needed to deserve it, it would be a reward. Neither is grace. The gospel is the announcement that salvation has been paid for, and that what is asked of you is the empty hands of trust.
The two ways it goes wrong
People miss this in one of two opposite directions, and both are worth naming.
The first is the person who says: I am too bad. They are looking at their list and imagining that it is too long for even God to cover. They may have done something they can barely say aloud. For them the news is that the length of the list is not the point. The cross covers a whole life, not a selected part. Read what the Bible says to the one who fears this.
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
The second is the person who says: I am good enough. They are looking at their list and finding it respectable. They keep the faith at arm's length because they do not feel in need of rescue. Jesus was gentler with the openly broken than with this person, because the self-sufficient have the hardest time receiving a gift. The path for both is the same: say honestly where you are, and take the hand that is held out.
Will I have to change?
Yes, and it is worth being clear about this too, because grace is sometimes misunderstood as permission to stay as we are. The point of the gospel is not that God overlooks the damage. It is that He heals it. Those who come to Christ are changed, but the change is the result of belonging, not the entry fee. A child does not earn the family. A family shapes the child.
“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”
The old things pass away and the new arrives, and it arrives because someone is now alive in you, not because you finally mustered the willpower. This is why Christians speak of being born again, which you can read more about in the chapter on what it means to be saved. The change is slow and often uneven. It comes by the help of the Holy Spirit, in a community of people also in the middle of it. If you have tried to change yourself by force and failed, the good news is that you are not asked to do it alone ever again.
What about the things I am ashamed of
Shame deserves its own paragraph, because it is the most effective lock on the door. Shame says: if they knew, they would not want you. It insists that your past has made you permanently unwelcome.
The Bible's answer is not to tell you your past did not happen. It is to tell you what God does with it.
“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.”
A broken and contrite heart is not the thing God rejects. It is the thing He receives. If you can only come with the wreckage, come with the wreckage. We have met many people for whom this was the entire discovery: that God was not waiting for a better version of them but for them. If you are carrying something heavy and do not know where to put it, can God forgive me? and am I beyond forgiveness? hold longer and tender conversations.
“All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.”
That sentence is as short and unconditional as a sentence can be. Whoever comes to Him, He will in no wise cast out. Not "most." Not "those who deserve it." Whoever.
A note on people who have used this against you
Some readers arrive here because someone in the church once used religion as a weapon: a list of rules, a conditional welcome, a look of disgust. If that is you, we are sorry, and we would only say that it was not Jesus who did that. The Jesus of the Gospels went out of His way to be with people the religious establishment refused to touch. If you need to go slowly, the chapter on doubt and being hurt by the church was written for you.
So what do I actually do
You do not need to fix anything before you come. You come, and ask. If it helps to have words, here are some, offered as ours.
A prayer in our words, not God’s. Use your own if you like.
If that was true as you said it, you have begun. There is more to walk through in how to say yes to Jesus, including what that moment is, what it is not, and what to do the next day.
Walk this with someone
You do not have to walk this alone, and you do not have to hurry. Living Bread is a free home, with no ads, where a person can read the Word, pray with real people, and be known by a family in Christ. If you would like company for the next step, it is there. If not, that is fine too, and the rest of this page stands on its own.
Questions people ask
Do I need to stop sinning before I can become a Christian?
No. Christians are not people who have stopped failing, they are people who have been forgiven and are being changed. You come to Christ as you are, and the change follows from belonging to Him.
Can God forgive the worst things I have done?
The Bible says the blood of Jesus cleanses from all sin and that He will in no wise cast out anyone who comes. No sin is too large for the cross, though real repentance is the way into that forgiveness.
What does grace mean?
Grace is God's undeserved kindness, a gift you cannot earn. In Christianity, salvation is by grace through faith, not by good works.
If salvation is free, why try to be good at all?
Because those who are loved want to love back, and because Christ changes a person from the inside. Good works are the fruit of salvation, not its price.
What if I come to Jesus and then fall back into old habits?
Christians still stumble. The Bible promises that when we confess, God is faithful to forgive. Faith is a walk with someone who helps you up, not a test you can fail permanently.
Where to go next
More on the site: Can God forgive me?Am I beyond forgiveness?What is grace?What is sin?How to repentCome to Jesus: short answers to saving questionsRead Luke 15Read Mark 2