I [Henry] grew up reading the Bible every day because I loved it. I had my own Good News Bible. From the fourth or fifth grade on through high school, I read my Bible every night.
When I got to college, I made a deeper commitment to God and joined a discipleship group that enforced a daily quiet time. Every week the group asked, “Are you having your quiet time?” I began to dread that question. Suddenly, when I didn’t read the Bible and pray every day, I felt guilty.
Reading the Bible was something I had always loved doing. But when it become a requirement with negative consequences—when I felt had to do it or I would be condemned—I no longer wanted to do it. I moved from a world of “want to’s” to a world of “shoulds.”
In this chapter we will look at this supposedly Christian belief that can drive you crazy: “‘Shoulds’ are good.” We will look at how we feel about duties we think we should do.
The word should expresses obligation, compulsion, duty. It implies that we have no choice; that if we do other than we should, we are bad or condemned.
Saying that shoulds that make us feel bad or condemned are not good is a difficult position to defend, for most of us have a deep sense of obligation. We should fix dinner for our family. We should get to work on time. We should stop overeating. We should stop spending beyond our budget.
Then the shoulds invade our spiritual lives. We should set aside time for Bible study, serve on that board of directors, love our next-door neighbor who gossips. The problem arises when we do things in order to be good, instead of because of the blessings we will gain by doing them. The problem is doing good things from a sense of obligation instead of out of genuine love.
Our goal as Christians is to love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind, and to love our neighbor as ourselves (Matt. 22:37 – 40). We cannot love unless we are free to not love—and see the consequences of both choices.
The underlying concept here is freedom. The traditional Christian concept of freedom is that we are free from specific ceremonial practices of the Mosaic law: We don’t have to follow much of what the Old Testament commanded because Christ fulfilled those injunctions in New Testament times. However, real Christian freedom is more than just freedom from laws. It is freedom to choose life; freedom from fear, guilt, and condemnation when we make a wrong choice; freedom to choose love instead of avoiding guilt.
Freedom comes through grace. When we fail to be something we are not, or when we do something we shouldn’t have done, we are truly free from condemnation through God’s grace. We no longer have to do anything. Yet why do some Christians refuse to believe that they are free? What are the consequences of this thinking? And finally, what in particular is the joy of true freedom?
Scripture often refers to the human race as slaves. They are owned by and absolutely subject to the will of someone else. They must obey—or else—whether the master is a person or an influence or a habit.
We are slaves to sin. “What I want to do I do not do,” said Paul, “but what I hate I do” (Rom. 7:15). We seldom enjoy the destructive lives we often live; but we are “sold as a slave to sin” (v. 14). We get angry at our spouses. We overeat. We drink too much. We spend too much. We put things off. We criticize our neighbors. No matter how hard we try, we find that we have to agree with Paul. The good we want to do, we do not do—and we practice the very evil we hate. Why don’t we do things that are good for us and that would make our lives better?
Because by nature, we are not free. We are slaves to the law of sin and death. As long as we are under the law, we will fail—as much as we try and as good as our intentions may be.
The person who trusts Christ as Savior is out from under the law of condemnation. She is “in Christ.” This means that when God looks at her, he sees the righteousness of Jesus. Legally, she is not guilty (2 Cor. 5:21). No matter what she may be doing, she does not bear the legal guilt or condemnation, because Christ bore the guilt once for all. The consequence of sin for the Christian is never condemnation or punishment from God. The Christian is perfect in God’s eyes because he is looking through the lens of Christ.
Experientially, however, we can be very much under the law. We can feel and act as if we will lose love if we sin. Emotionally we are still under the law. We feel that if we do not do as we should, we are bad or condemned and that we deserve to be punished. To the degree that we experience guilt, anger, and loss of love when we do not do as we should, we are still under the law.
There are at least five major consequences of being under the law.
The Bible says that the “law brings wrath” (Rom. 4:15)—first, the wrath of God. God is angry at offenses against him just as we get angry when someone hurts us. If we are under the shoulds of the law, then we expect God to be angry at us. Second, we get angry back at God. We resent him and his rules, and we want to move away from him. Third, we become angry at ourselves. Wrath is a natural fruit of the law.
Mary had struggled with her weight since she was twenty-five. At forty, she had gained and lost hundreds of pounds on every kind of diet you can imagine. She felt good when her weight was low, and angry when she fell off her diet. She would say vicious and angry things about herself, calling herself a string of brutal names. To her, the law—the emotional consequences of her failure—brought wrath more than it brought permanent weight loss.
When we are under the law, we are in a state of guilt and condemnation, subject to feeling guilty when we fail. We feel guilty, bad, or condemned if we do not do what we should.
Yet condemnation and guilt are not options for the Christian; only godly sorrow is (2 Cor. 7:8–11). Godly sorrow is sadness at having hurt God or someone else; it is focused outward on others. Godly sorrow produces change in us. Worldly sorrow is a feeling of badness; it is focused inward on ourselves. (Godly sorrow is distinguished from guilt, or worldly sorrow, more thoroughly in the next chapter.)
Because Rob had trouble reaching his financial goals for the family, he felt guilty. He made plans, but never did he stick to them. So he felt bad—but he didn’t change. He became so overwhelmed with bad feelings that they paralyzed him, and he was unable to learn how to do better. Not until he dealt with his feelings of badness was he able to feel true remorse about the irresponsibility that led to his failures.
So if one feels bad or guilty or condemned about what he should do, he is emotionally and experientially under the law. If one feels sad or sorry about where he is, then he will be motivated to change. He is motivated by love. He will want to do better for himself and the ones he loves. Feeling guilty is “worldly sorrow” (2 Cor. 7:10); feeling sorry is godly sorrow, the key to true motivation. It is based not on wrath at self, but on love for others.
To unlearn our feelings of worldly sorrow, or guilt, is terribly difficult for most Christians to hear, not to mention to practice. Though they think that guilt is helpful, the Bible clearly teaches the opposite. Yes, we should feel sorry when we fail. That motivates us to change. But we should never feel guilt and condemnation. We have been freed from those so that we can get our minds off the badness of our inadequacies and onto the lovelessness of our behavior.
The writer of Hebrews says it this way: “How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!” (Heb. 9:14). We have been cleansed, “once for all by his own blood” (v. 12), so that we are free from guilt to serve out of love.
Another consequence of living under the law emotionally is that it separates us from love. The law is hostile toward us. The law of God plainly says that the “soul who sins … will die” (Ezek. 18:4). Death is separation from God. In other words, to be under the law implies that God does not love us, does not relate to us when we are not as we should be. If we do not do what we should, the law says, then God will not love us.
But the gospel says that God loves us whether or not we do what we should. In fact, it says that God loved us “while we were enemies,” even before we were interested in doing as we should (Rom. 5:10).
Jim’s life changed when he realized this truth. A pastor who had been trying for years to break free from compulsive sexual behavior, Jim finally came to the hospital for depression after he was caught soliciting a prostitute. He felt thoroughly unlovable and condemned. As he told his story to the group, he expected them, too, to condemn him because he had failed so miserably.
But he was amazed to find that his little group of recovering addicts accepted him exactly as he was. They did not withdraw love from him for his failure. They confronted him about how he had hurt his wife and family, but they never withdrew their love. Their acceptance proved to be the missing ingredient in his life and helped him get out from under the law and conquer his compulsive behavior. Finding out that he would not be hated when he failed changed his heart.
If we feel unloved when we do not do as we should, that means we are still under the law. Yet the New Testament teaches that nothing we do can separate us from the love of Christ—we are totally loved as we are. We have “gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand” (Rom. 5:2). This means that the love and grace of God is something that we stand in and cannot be removed from, no matter who we are or what we do.
We should never feel that we jeopardize God’s love for us when we fail his expectations. Certainly, sin has other consequences we must face—but being separated from God’s love is not one of them.
The fact that sin increases when we’re under the law is a confusing and destructive consequence. When we face something we need to do, we tell ourselves that we should do it. Yet the Bible says that when the shoulds become law, we’ll sin even more. The instruction of Paul in Romans is clear about this: “The law was added so that the trespass might increase” (5:20), and “I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death” (7:10–11).
In other words, Paul teaches that if we feel that the shoulds are laws with legal consequences, we will sin more, not less. The law will arouse within us the desire to sin more (Rom. 7:5). To our legalistic minds, this sounds like the opposite of what we suppose actually happens. Isn’t it true that the more we tell ourselves we shouldn’t do this or that, the more obedient we’ll be?
If we feel we should do certain things because punishment awaits us if we don’t, we have not died to the law (Rom. 7:4), and the law will have power over us. In other words, the very method by which we are trying to change will produce failure.
We are not saying that standards, which tell us what we should do, are bad. On the contrary, they are good. But if we think that we are condemned if we do not live up to the standards, we are still under the law in the legal and emotional sense, and sin will increase.
Whatever we do because we feel we should or because we have to is of no benefit. Our motivation is not love. Yet the reason behind all of the commandments, all of the “shoulds,” is love. The shoulds have their place, of course, in this scheme of love: They are standards that tell us how we may better love God and others. But if we behave a certain way because we should, instead of because we want to, it profits us nothing.
Motivation is everything to God. If our motivation is compulsion or a feeling of obligation—a “should”—it is not love (2 Cor, 9:7). Paul would not even accept a gift unless it was “spontaneous and not forced” (Philem. 12–14).
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. (1 Cor. 13:1–3)
We may sacrifice in all sorts of ways that we should, but those actions can be meaningless unless we give because we love. If we do something only because we think we should—because we would feel unacceptable if we didn’t—then we’d be better off saving our energy.
Because of these consequences, freedom from the shoulds is crucial. Only when we are free can we love freely. If we are in slavery to the shoulds because of guilt or fear, we are not ready to love. We must first be set free. Slaves do not love; sons and daughters do.
This sounds too much like license, some object. If we aren’t condemned for what we do or who we are, why should we even bother trying to do the right thing? If we have total freedom, why not do whatever we want to do?
It’s a natural objection to grace. Perhaps you feel yourself objecting to the total freedom we described above. We all have a strong legalistic streak that simply cannot let us believe what the Bible teaches about grace. We can’t accept that grace is free and complete, and that we can’t do anything to add to it in any way.
The Bible anticipated this reaction. “What shall we say, then?” Paul answers us. “Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” (Rom. 6:1–2). The biblical response to total freedom is a refusal to live in death any longer. It is ridiculous to be freed only to want to return to jail. In verse four the apostle Paul says, “We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”
For the first time we have a chance to be free from a life of death, and we have the opportunity to live a new life. We have been saved from what we are by nature—wickedness, evil, greed, envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice, gossip, slander, God-hating, insolence, arrogance, boasting, disobedience, senselessness, faithlessness, heartlessness, and ruthlessness (Rom. 1:29–30). And who wants this kind of life?
Still, the worried legalist in us asks, “But if the ‘shoulds’ will not keep us in line, what will?”
The Bible’s answer is threefold. First, our love of God will keep us in line. The relationship and friendship we have with him is so great and empowering that it motivates us to be more like him and to not offend him. “God’s kindness leads you toward repentance” (Rom. 2:4). We do not want to hurt someone we love (Eph. 4:30).
Second, our love and deep connected relationships within the body of Christ will keep us in line. When we love others and are connected to them, we don’t want to hurt them, and our love for them constrains us. As the Bible says, “Do to others what you would have them do to you” (Matt. 7:12). Those relationships will also serve to discipline us. When we are out of line, other people whom we love and who love us will come to us in love and truth to tell us when we are wrong.
Third, we would be miserable living a life of sin (unless we are in denial). We usually recognize that the ways we live are not that satisfying. We get tired of our behavior patterns that cause problems in relationships, that set us back in life. When we finally figure out that the real problem is us, not everybody else, then we join Paul in thinking that we, too, may have a new life. We can have life, or we can have death. At any rate, we worry no longer about not doing as we should. Instead, we focus on the misery of our failed lives and the pain we have caused those we love.
The Bible offers no middle ground between the two options of life and death. Both are reality. Life consists of honesty, love, responsibility, forgiveness, fulfillment, and the like. Death consists of dynamics like deceit, separation, irresponsibility, judgmentalism, and un-fulfillment. Paul puts it like this: “Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace” (Rom. 8:5–6).
At this point Christians enter the deeper life. They have been Christians for a long time, but they’ve been stuck. For years they have continued behaviors and personality patterns they have tried often but vainly to forsake and repent from. The chief reason for that failure? They were living under the “shoulds.” They were motivated by fear, guilt, and feelings of badness.
There comes a time, however, when some Christians arrive at a state of genuine and shameless mourning. It is here they want to change, not because they know they ought to, but because they hate the hypocrisy, the lust, or the idolatry of their lives. They are dismal when they think what they’re missing.
This is the beginning of what Jesus calls “poverty of spirit,” which brings them to grace in a much deeper way than ever before. They find that they have to accept the fact that though they cannot change, they are okay in God’s eyes as they are, and that he wants to help them even in their badness, failure, and inability.
Then they begin to let others know them in that state (James 5:16), they get their minds off the guilt and the “try harder” cycle, and they begin to connect with the love extended to them from God and others. They also begin looking deeply at their own problems—and that is when they begin to change. This is what has come to be called recovery.
The true motivation that brings change is hating one’s life (Luke 14:26), then hungering and thirsting for something better. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled” (Matt. 5:6). This is very different from the guilt that comes from trying to do what we should out of fear and guilt. Guilt says, “I am so terrible.” Love says, “I want to live.”
Are shoulds good? Do they help us? The Bible’s answer is a qualified yes (Rom. 3:31). The way that the Bible wants us to look at the shoulds is very different from the way we normally look at them.
Biblically, shoulds are what we need to do to live. Shoulds are the perfect law, our guide for life. They are reality. Doing what we should brings about a certain result, such as life and goodness. The Bible does not say, however, “You should, or else you’re bad.” It says, “You should, or else you will suffer and lose” (1 Cor. 3:15).
I finally came to understand this in college. I knew that if I wanted to live in a way that would bring life and goodness, I needed to read my Bible and pray. It would help me have the relationship with God that I wanted to have. But I learned that I would not lose the love of the Christian community if I did not read my Bible and pray everyday.
Shoulds are good in the sense that they are standards by which we see how we’re doing. God’s shoulds guide us on the way of life everlasting. They are the light on our path.
If we want to live, God’s law is the way to life. As David says, “Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law” and “Direct me in the path of your commands, for there I find delight” (Ps. 119:18, 35). In God’s design, the law is intended to be a standard by which to evaluate ourselves.
God’s shoulds help us to see where we need to grow, where we need to change. But when we see the discrepancy between who we are and who we need to be, we go to him for help in getting there. We do not crawl away from him in guilt because we haven’t arrived yet spiritually, hiding and feeling bad because we are not doing what we should. The law is not judging us in a legal way, but guiding us in a loving way. It tells us what we need to do.
When we do things because we think we should or we will be condemned, we are trying to do things right. But doing right is not the Christian answer, because doing wrong is not the problem. Doing wrong is only a symptom of the problem. The real problem is separation from God and each other.
Because we are born alienated from God, because we are separated from him and enemies with him (Rom. 5:10), we are hostile toward him (Rom. 8:7). We are cut off from him and do not have a relationship with him. When we are living apart from God, we are like dead people trying to be alive. Death, the Bible says, is not the end of life, but separation from God, the source of all life.
Salvation through Jesus Christ reverses this problem. Christ brings us back into relationship with God. We are reconciled to God (Rom. 5:10; 2 Cor. 5:18–21). We are connected to life again, and we produce the fruits of life instead of the fruits of death.
The essence of salvation is moving from being out of relationship with God into relationship with him, from being cut off from him and under the law of sin and death to being his heirs and receiving his grace. Decrees against us tell us what we should be like and what we should do, and when we are not being or doing this, we are condemned. Even if we live a decent life and fail in only a few points (which no one does), we are still condemned (James 2:10). In salvation, however, there is no condemnation (Rom. 8:1).
What does a life out from under the shoulds, out from under the law and in relationship with God look like? Let’s look at two areas of life, relationships and performance.
In relationships, being out from under the law means that we are free to love. We do not have to love God or anyone else (Josh. 24:15). We are free to love whomever we please. But, looking in the mirror of God’s law, we realize that if we do not love, our lives will be empty. We begin to see that a life without fulfilling relationships is worthless, has little meaning, and can even cause harm to others.
Being out from under the law means that I see my failures to love as a serious problem, a cancer in my soul. I do not grovel in guilt because I have cancer; I am not condemned for my cancer. But I see it as a serious problem for which I need immediate treatment, or I will die. I become very sad and concerned about my condition.
Being out from under the law also means I do not put others under the law. They are free. I do not condemn them, get angry at them, or withdraw my love from them if they fail to love me in the way that I want. So many marriages are legalistic, under the law. If one partner fails, the other judges, condemns, and withdraws love. The partners live out the essence of the law, and it always produces death—in this case, the death of a relationship.
What do you do inside when your wife does not love you in the way that you want? In your perception of her, does she become bad? You are living under the legal shoulds when you conclude, “She should treat me in a certain way or she is bad.” This attitude is judgmental and self-centered, and it never leads to resolution.
When we love people, we give them total freedom as God gives us. We accept them as God does us. They do not have to love us. When they fail to love us, or choose not to love us, we do not withdraw our love from them. We may confront them and make them aware of their failure. We may express our sadness about their choice. Sometimes we may have to invoke tough consequences. But we do not condemn.
When we evaluate our performance, we look at what we should be doing, but we do not condemn ourselves. When we fail, we own our failure. With grace, we do not need to be defensive, for we are not condemned.
Guilt says, “I should be different, and if I’m not, then I’m bad.” Grace says, “I see the standard, and I’m not measuring up. I’m in trouble. I need to change if I’m going to live and have what I desire. If I want certain outcomes, I need to change.” This is different from changing to avoid being bad.
When we live out from under the law, we begin looking at the quality of our obedience and stewardship. If in a realistic evaluation of them, we see they aren’t up to standard, we are sorry. We realize that this is not how we want to be and we begin to seek God’s help to change. In a phrase, we hunger and thirst for righteousness.
We are motivated to change because we want a different life for ourselves and for our loved ones, and out of love for God. Repentance works if it is motivated by a desire for something different, for something better than we have. Repentance merely to get the shoulds off our back always fails. To the contrary, prayer and Bible study aimed at finding God always work.
Compare two children, both of whom take piano lessons. One practices because his parents tell him he should and make him feel bad if he doesn’t. When he moves away from home, he forgets music altogether. The other student practices because she wants to be a concert pianist. Her parents can’t keep her away. This kind of motivation is lasting and is what every great doer has in his or her soul.
Coming out from under law means changing from “have to” to “want to.” This does not mean that we always feel as if we want to do what is right. But it does generally mean that we want righteousness. Jesus did not want to go to the cross; but he wanted what it would give him: our salvation. In the same way, we may not want to do individual deeds of obedience, but we want the end result of our deeds. That is the true “want to.” I want the end result, so I will do what I do not want to do in the immediate moment. Maturity expects delayed gratification.
The shoulds want us to “have to.” We must or we are bad. We have no choice. Shoulds used in that way will always fail.
Be freed from shoulds, and you will start to live. You will be free to desire God and his life.