You should not consider yourselves worthy of praise!

Luke 17:7-10

When a servant comes in from plowing or taking care of sheep, he doesn’t just sit down and eat, but first prepares his master’s meal and serves him his supper before he eats his own. And he is not even thanked, for he is merely doing what he is supposed to do. Just so, if you merely obey me, you should not consider yourselves worthy of praise. For you have simply done your duty!”

Food for thought!

Jesus is teaching us something we so often forget: we can never put God in our debt and can never have any claim on Him. When we have done our best, we have done only our duty; and a man who has done his duty has done only what, in any event, he is expected to do. What this means is that, God made us not only good but also capable of doing good; being and doing good is human. And whenever we do or be good, we are only doing what we were made to do and be; we only fulfill our duty. In other words, when we have done our best, we have done only our duty. God made each one of us the best he could make. We are inherently good, very good: "Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good! (Gen. 1:31)

This is why God told Cain, when this man was failing in his duty to do and be good to his brother Abel: "If you do well, won't you be accepted? And if you don't do well, sin is lying in wait for you, ready to pounce; it's out to get you, you've got to master it." (Gen. 4:7). God was only reminding Cain that he can master sin, because was made to master sin and do well.

This is the reason why, a successful life is the life that ends well; a failed life is the life that fails at doing good. When we do good, we only do what God expects us to do. For this reason, when and if we say, I cannot change, or that, I cannot do better, or that, I cannot stop doing evil, we only insult God, because He made us good and not evil. And if and when we do or be good, we don't deserve a credit as such, because we have simply done our duty. Our duty is to obey the Lord, and do what he tells us to do. To him be praise and glory and honour, both now and forever.