Gift of Grace #5 - The Performance Trap
Description
In "The Performance Trap," Dr. Kurt Bjorklund explores Romans 2:17–29 to reveal how we often stack rocks of group identity, knowledge, and good behavior to earn God's acceptance—when grace was never meant to be earned. Discover why living from acceptance rather than for it changes everything about how we see ourselves, others, and God.
The Performance Trap: Why Our Best Efforts Will Never Be Enough
Have you ever felt like you needed to do more, know more, or be more to earn God's approval? If so, you're not alone. In the fifth installment of the "Gift of Grace" series, Kurt unpacks Romans 2:17–29 to expose a subtle but dangerous tendency we all share: the temptation to stack rocks.
The metaphor comes from a parable Kurt has been using throughout this series. Imagine sons who were swept downstream from their father's castle into a foreign land. The only way back is up the river, and one son decides he'll build his way home by stacking rocks. It's an impossible task, yet he keeps at it, convinced his effort will eventually bridge the gap.
That's what Paul addresses in Romans 2:17–29. He's speaking to people who believed their religious credentials, biblical knowledge, and moral behavior would earn them standing with God. And while the original audience was Jewish, Kurt is quick to point out that we fall into the same trap today—just with different rocks.
Rock #1: Group Identity
Paul begins by addressing those who "call yourself a Jew" and "rely on the law and boast in God" (Romans 2:17). For first-century Jews, their ethnic and religious identity was a source of tremendous pride. They were God's chosen people, after all.
We may not claim Jewish heritage, but we have our own versions of this rock. Maybe it's our church background, our family's faith legacy, or being part of a denomination we consider theologically correct. Kurt quoted Tim Keller's observation that "dead orthodoxy makes the church into a religious cushion for people who think they are Christians, but in fact are radically, subconsciously insecure about their acceptance before God."
The danger is subtle. We can attend the right church, hold the right beliefs, and surround ourselves with the right people—all while missing the point entirely. As Larry Osborne writes in Accidental Pharisees, "We're still drawn to the idea of being part of an elite and exclusive club. We're still suckers for the concept of spiritual superiority."
Rock #2: Knowledge
Paul continues: "If you know his will and approve of what is superior because you are instructed by the law... an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of little children, because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth" (Romans 2:18, 20).
Knowing Scripture matters. Theological education matters. But knowledge can become its own kind of rock when we start believing that what we know about God is what makes us acceptable to God. Kurt was careful to clarify: "I'm not saying that knowledge doesn't matter or that knowledge of God's Word isn't important. It is. But what I am saying is if we simply take and say, 'The knowledge is the thing that puts me in good stead with God,' then we're in a dangerous place."
Pride in being knowledgeable can actually distance us from the humility that faith requires.
Rock #3: Behavior
Finally, Paul turns to behavior: "You, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal?" (Romans 2:21).
This is perhaps the most common rock we stack. We compare our behavior to others, keep mental scorecards of our good deeds, and quietly assume our moral track record earns us points with God. But Paul's point is devastating: none of us can meet God's standard through behavior alone. "You who boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law?" (Romans 2:23).
Kurt illustrated this with a story about taking his four sons sledding during a major snowstorm—and getting stranded at the bottom of a hill without a phone. When he got everyone home safely, he jokingly tried to negotiate their silence with promises of pizza and car money. It didn't work. The point? When there's a gap between the standard and our performance, we can minimize it, redefine it, or excuse it—but none of that actually closes the gap.
The Heart of the Matter
Paul's conclusion cuts through all our rock-stacking: "A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code" (Romans 2:28–29).
What matters isn't the external markers we accumulate but the internal reality of a heart transformed by grace. And that transformation doesn't come from our effort—it comes through faith in Jesus Christ.
Kurt put it simply: "We do our good things from acceptance, not for acceptance." That distinction changes everything. When we understand that we're already fully accepted in Christ, we stop performing for God's approval and start living from the security of His love.
Questions for Reflection
Which "rock" are you most tempted to stack—group identity, knowledge, or behavior—and how might that be keeping you from fully resting in God's grace?
What would it look like this week to live from acceptance rather than for acceptance in a specific relationship or responsibility?
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Tim Keller (from his work on Romans)
"Dead orthodoxy makes the church into a religious cushion for people who think they are Christians, but in fact are radically, subconsciously insecure about their acceptance before God. So every Sunday, people gather to be reassured that they are all right. Various churches offer different ways of reassurance."
Larry Osborne (from Accidental Pharisees)
"Two thousand years later, not much has changed. Those of us who want to be numbered among the highly committed still hate the idea of being average or ordinary. We're still drawn to the idea of being part of an elite and exclusive club. We're still suckers for the concept of spiritual superiority. Sure, we no longer call ourselves Pharisees. We wouldn't be caught dead doing that. But we're not so different."
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Welcome. It’s great to be together today. I want to take just a couple moments and share some good news before we get into the teaching. Just some things happening here around Orchard Hill.
Every year, Orchard Hill is funded by your giving, primarily week to week. And then at the end of the year, we do something we call year-end giving, or it’s a party. And we ask those of you who call this your church home just to pray about an extra gift. We talk about some of things that we’re hoping to do, where maybe God is leading us. And every year, many people, many families participate in this.
Last year, we talked about some of those things, and we had more people participate in giving at the end of the year than we’ve ever had, which was fantastic. And we had set a target of $1.5 million toward kind of future projects. And you exceeded that in your giving, giving almost $1.6 million at the end of the year. So that’s just phenomenal. Thank you for participating in that. And that’s coupled with meeting and exceeding the weekly goal throughout the year.
Now you hear that, you might say, “Well, that’s great. I don’t need to give for a few months, right?” That’s wrong. Just want you to know, because of your generosity, what that means is that each campus will be able to tackle some physical projects, that ministry initiatives that we’ve talked about will be able to move forward, and then that our real estate acquisition opportunities are still in front of us, especially around our Bridgeville campus, because this has allowed us to have some money that’s very specifically tied to that.
And along with that, I want to let you know that we have two groups that are currently meeting to launch new campuses of Orchard Hill. One in Beaver Valley and one in the Mars-Gibsonia area. We bought a piece of property, an old church that had been upfitted very beautifully in Beaver Valley. And in Mars-Gibsonia, we’ve had a group that’s been meeting and we have been just praying about working through where we could meet. And I’m happy to just share with you today that we have a place now where we’re going to be able to meet. And it is a place that’s called the Keene Theater, which is kind of, if you see the map here, it’s the red dot, it’s kind of toward Route 8 and 228 on the Gibsonia-Mars border.
And here’s a picture of the Keene Theater, which is part of the St. Barnabas complex up there. And the people of St. Barnabas have been absolutely great to work with. And if you’re looking for a place for somebody who needs care, I recommend the people there. And then here’s a shot of the inside. This is a 350-seat, 348-seat theater.
And we’re just really excited about what can happen there, how God’s working and what that’s going to mean in that space and for what’s coming. So again, thank you just for your generosity and participation in the mission of the church.
Let’s pray together. God, we know that church is not about buildings and budgets, but it is about life change, and that you use the dollars that are given and the facilities to facilitate life change. And that’s what we pray will continue to happen in each location of Orchard Hill. And that the giving that people have done over the years, which has allowed for the acquisition of campuses in the past, the expansion of the Wexford campus, the kids student wing, all these different things would lead to more and more people just coming to find and follow you. And God, today as we’re gathered, I ask that you would speak and that my words would reflect your Word in content and in tone and emphasis. And we pray this in Jesus’ name, Amen.
We’ve been in a series that we’ve called the Gift of Grace. And we’re working through the first several chapters of Romans. And grace is a word that really means God’s undeserved goodness to us. And we could even say it’s really God’s unilateral, undeserved goodness to us—that we don’t do anything that makes it so that God owes us grace. It’s something God just decides to give.
And we’ve been working through the first few chapters of Romans. And what’s common in the first few chapters of Romans is in order to understand the gift of grace, we have to understand the need. And so in some ways, these chapters are not the lightest and the cheeriest because they talk about the human condition and how desperate we are for God’s grace. But in order to appreciate God’s grace, we need to understand how desperately we need His grace.
And on the first week that we gathered on this series, I told a story that was the parable of the river that kind of gives context for these first three chapters of Romans. And the story was basically, there were sons who lived in this castle in a beautiful land, and they were told never to go into the river. And they touched the river and they were swept downstream to a foreign land that wasn’t nice like their homeland. And the mountains were high. There was no way to go back except up the river.
And one of the sons decided that he would make his home in this new land. And that was Romans chapter 1, verses 18 through 32, where he just basically says, “This is my life now. I don’t care about my father. I don’t care about where I came from or anything like that.”
Another son sat and kept score about the other son who was living all in the new world in which they were at. And this is Romans 2:1-16, where somebody compares themselves.
And then we said that there was another son who would be the rock stacker, who would try to say, “I’m going to build my way back up the river.” And maybe you’d say, “Well, I wouldn’t do that. I would try to build a helicopter or figure something else out.” But for the sake of the analogy, this is the son who just stacks rocks and says, “I have to build my way back home.” And that is in some ways the account of Romans chapter 2, verse 17 through 29. It’s the rock stacker. It’s the person who uses their goodness, their religion, as a way to try to get God to owe them grace.
And so what we’re going to do today is just talk about the rocks that we might stack that Paul in Romans 2 talks about.
So the first rock is this: it’s the rock that says, “What group do you identify with?”
In Romans chapter 2, verse 17, what we see is that the very first thing that he says is, “Now you, if you call yourself a Jew, if you rely on the law and boast in God...” And so he says, if you look at your Jewishness as being a thing that is somehow helpful for your standing with God, it’s like you’re taking a rock and you’re putting it in the river, and you’re saying, “That is the basis on which God will accept me.”
Now, here’s my guess, and I’m pretty certain that this will be mostly true today. Very few of us here would be like, “Well, I’m a Jew, therefore I’m good.” And so this passage in some ways seems far away from us. But group identity is something that we can do without being into the whole Jew-Gentile distinction. And what I mean by that is to the degree that any of us say, “Well, God likes me and accepts me because of my heritage, because of my family, because of my church background, because I have the right kind of church background,” that we would somehow feel good about ourselves means that we’re counting on a group identity. It’s like being a rock stacker.
In Tim Keller’s work on Romans, he writes this about kind of our way to see this passage. He says, “Dead orthodoxy makes the church into a religious cushion for people who think they are Christians, but in fact are radically, subconsciously insecure about their acceptance before God. So every Sunday, people gather to be reassured that they are all right. Various churches offer different ways of reassurance.”
Now, here’s what he’s saying. Not that there isn’t something to be reassured about, but if our reassurance isn’t in Jesus Christ and it’s in our rightness to do something, then we’ve in a lot of ways started stacking rocks.
He goes on to say that there are some different ways in churches, and these are just his suggestions that we do this. He says there are legalistic churches. They produce detailed codes of conduct and detailed doctrines. Members need to continually hear that they are more holy, more accurate than the liberals who are wrong. They functionally rely on their theological correctness. Sound doctrine equals righteousness.
Then he says there’s what he calls power churches. Power churches put a great emphasis on the miraculous and the spectacular works of God. Members need to continually have powerful or emotional experiences and see dramatic occurrences. They rely on their feelings and on dramatic answers to prayer. Great emotions equal righteousness.
And then he says there are sacerdotal churches that put a great emphasis on rituals and tradition. Guilt-ridden people are anesthetized by the beauty of the music and the architecture, the grandeur and the mystery of the ceremony. Following liturgy equals righteousness.
Now again, you may say, “Well, okay, that seems a little far-fetched. I don’t know that that’s what I do or how that really works.”
Larry Osborne writes about this similarly in a book that he called Accidental Pharisees. Pharisees are the people in the New Testament who did a lot of things right. And from their identity, their group identity, they felt good about themselves. Here’s what he says: “Two thousand years later, not much has changed. Those of us who want to be numbered among the highly committed still hate the idea of being average or ordinary. We’re still drawn to the idea of being part of an elite and exclusive club. We’re still suckers for the concept of spiritual superiority. Sure, we no longer call ourselves Pharisees. We wouldn’t be caught dead doing that. But we’re not so different.”
So group identity says, “I belong to the right group, therefore I’m okay.”
Here’s the second rock that sometimes we stack. And that is knowledge. Verse 18 says, “If you know His will and approve of what is superior because you are instructed by the law...” And then he goes on to say in verse 20, “...an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of little children, because you have in the law the embodiment of knowledge and truth.”
And so he says, “If you know God’s Word and you know what’s right, and you have the proper knowledge that you study, you understand biblical truth, then you can count on that for your standing with God.” And so in some ways, what he’s saying is there are people who stack the rocks of knowledge and say, “I know more, therefore I’m good.”
Now let me be clear. I’m not saying that knowledge doesn’t matter or that knowledge of God’s Word isn’t important. It is. But what I am saying is if we simply take and say, “The knowledge is the thing that puts me in good stead with God, then we’re in a dangerous place.” Because what this can do is it can lead us to have pride in being knowledgeable.
Here’s what verse 19 says: “If you are convinced that you are a guide for the blind, a light for those who are in the dark...” So he says, if you’re the person who says, “I know the Bible, I can help the people who are blind, who are in the dark, who don’t know what I know,” then again, you’re a rock stacker.
Here’s the third rock that sometimes we stack, and that’s behavior. Verse 21 says, “You, then, who teach others, do you not teach yourself? You who preach against stealing, do you steal? You who say that people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor idols, do you rob temples? You who boast in the law, do you dishonor God by breaking the law?”
And so what he’s saying here is, “Look, you say that you do the right thing. You teach others to do the right thing. But are you actually doing it yourself?” And so he’s saying behavior can become a rock that we stack.
Now again, I’m not saying behavior doesn’t matter. Behavior absolutely matters. But what I am saying is that if we say, “My behavior is what makes me acceptable to God,” then we’re in trouble because none of us can ever be good enough to meet God’s standard.
And so what Paul is doing throughout this passage is he’s saying, “Listen, you can’t stack rocks and get back to God. You need God’s grace. You need what Jesus has done on the cross.”
Here’s verse 23: “You who boast in the law, you dishonor God by breaking the law. As it is written: ‘God’s name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.’”
And so what he’s saying is, “Your rock stacking, your belief that you’re good enough because of your group identity, your knowledge, or your behavior, actually dishonors God because it says you don’t need what Jesus did on the cross. You’re good enough on your own.”
Then he gives this illustration. He talks about circumcision. Now, circumcision was the sign of the covenant between God and the Jewish people. It was the physical mark that said, “You belong to God’s people.” And he says in verse 25, “Circumcision has value if you observe the law, but if you break the law, you have become as though you had not been circumcised.”
And what he’s saying is, “Listen, the external sign doesn’t matter if your heart isn’t right. The group identity doesn’t matter if you’re not actually living in relationship with God.”
And then he says this in verses 28-29: “A person is not a Jew who is one only outwardly, nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a person’s praise is not from other people, but from God.”
And so what he’s saying is, “What matters is not the external things that you do, the rocks that you stack. What matters is your heart relationship with God. And that heart relationship with God comes through faith in Jesus Christ, not through your own goodness.”
Now, here’s what this means practically for us. We live in a world that is constantly telling us to stack rocks. We’re constantly being told, “You need to be good enough. You need to do enough. You need to know enough. You need to be part of the right group.”
And what the gospel says is, “Stop stacking rocks. You can’t build your way to God. You need God to come to you. And that’s exactly what He did in Jesus Christ.”
Jesus came to earth, lived a perfect life, died on the cross for our sins, and rose again. And because of what Jesus did, we can have a relationship with God. Not because we’re good enough, not because we know enough, not because we belong to the right group, but because of what Jesus did.
And so when we understand that, it changes everything. It changes how we view ourselves. We don’t have to be proud because we’re not good enough on our own. We don’t have to be insecure because we’re fully accepted in Christ.
It changes how we view others. We don’t look down on people who don’t know as much as we do or who don’t behave as well as we do because we recognize that we’re all in the same boat. We all need God’s grace.
And it changes how we live. We don’t live trying to earn God’s acceptance. We live from a place of already being accepted. We serve God not to earn His love, but because we’ve already received His love.
Let me try to illustrate this with a story. We had a fairly good-sized snow here this last week. And the last time we had a snow this big was several years ago. And when that snow happened, my boys—I have four boys—were all in grade school age, basically, maybe one of them was in small middle school.
And when the snow started that time, there was a big forecast of snow. My wife had actually gone to Ohio to visit some friends. So I was home with the four boys by myself. And if you’re a single parent dad of multiple kids, you know that when you’re left by yourself, you have one primary job: keep everyone alive until the other person gets home. So that was my job.
Now, I always try to be an overachiever. My thing was always whenever my wife would go away, I’d try to have everything clean and right, give my kids great meals, and then when she’d come back, just say, “Yeah, everything’s great. You have an awesome life.” That was kind of my thing. She didn’t love that.
But so it starts to snow, and I decide I’m going to do something fun. I’m going to take the boys and we’re going to go sledding. And so we get in the family minivan, we drive to the sledding hill that’s not very far from our house. And in order to access the sledding hill, you have to drive down this hill and park toward the bottom. And so we drove down, we parked at the bottom, and I had that moment where I thought, “I hope the snow doesn’t come down so much that I get stuck down here.”
But we went. We sledded for a while and had a great time. And I hadn’t brought my phone because I didn’t want it to get wet or have anything happen. And so I get back in the car and I start to drive up the hill and it doesn’t work.
So now it’s kind of pushing into the dark zone of the day, like twilight dark. And I have four boys stuck at the bottom of a sledding hill. No one else was there because, well, it wasn’t smart. And I didn’t have a phone.
And so I get my boys and I say, “Okay, we’re going to get up and we’re going to go walk home. No problem here.” So we start to walk home, and from where this is, in order to walk home, you have to walk on a fairly busy road. Now, there weren’t a lot of cars out, but there were still a few cars. And so we’re walking single file down this road, kind of in the dark. No phone, trying to get home in the middle of a blizzard.
So we get home—everybody’s good, by the way, they’re all alive. We get home and I say to them, I say, “Hey, listen, you know, I don’t know that we need to tell your mom everything that just happened here.” I offered to help them with the purchase of their first cars. Little did they know I had planned to do that anyway. I offered them pizza for a month.
And you know what happened? As soon as their mom got home, they’re like, “You wouldn’t believe what happened. We walked down the middle of the road in the blizzard. Dad had us in single file. It was the most dangerous thing ever.”
Now, we have here a gap. Okay, what is the standard that I needed? Safety. Okay? I did not provide perfect safety.
Now, here are my options. “It wasn’t that bad. You know, forget about it. I mean, everybody’s good. Everyone’s here, aren’t they? Nothing happened, okay?”
Or I can say, “You know what? Safety isn’t my thing. Sledding’s my thing. That’s what I do. I’m the sledding dad, not the safety dad.”
Do you see what happens when we start to do this?
But what we need ultimately is to come to Jesus and say, “You are the one who makes it possible for me to have standing with God. And it has nothing to do with the rocks that I’ve stacked.”
Now, don’t misunderstand. I don’t think that this means that we don’t do the things that are sometimes represented by the rocks. But what I want us to see is that what we need is a bigger cross, a bigger Jesus, and that we do our good things from acceptance, not for acceptance. We do what we do to honor God from acceptance, not for acceptance. That is radically different.
And as soon as we do it for acceptance, we’re letting our goodness creep in and our pride creep in. And this is one of the reasons sometimes I’ll have people say, “Well, why don’t you give more ‘you shoulds’ as part of the preaching?” And I understand kind of the thought process, and certainly Jesus has those, like, “Go and do likewise.”
But here’s the unintended consequence of a lot of “you should” statements. And that is we start to say, “I do things for acceptance, not from acceptance.” And the gift of grace that God gives through Jesus Christ is, you are accepted because of Jesus, not the rocks you stack.
And that makes God worthy of our worship. It makes our cross big instead of small. And when the cross is big, then we start to say, “Why wouldn’t I want to do the things that God calls me to do? Because He is worthy. And He has called me to something that is better than what I can call myself to.”
And that is why there’s a gift of grace.
Let’s pray. God, we ask today that You would help each of us not to count on the rocks that we stack, but to count on the grace that is seen through Jesus Christ. God, for some of us, that might mean, even in this moment, just a change of mindset because we’ve thought that it’s our goodness, our group identity, our knowledge, something about us that has commended us to You, and help us to see that we only have standing with You through Jesus Christ.
God, for some of us, we’ve known this, but we unintentionally go back to being rock stackers to try to explain the gap between Your standard and our behavior. God, instead help us to make much of Jesus and what He’s done on the cross. And we pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Thanks for being here. Have a great week.
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DISCLAIMER: This transcript was generated using artificial intelligence and may contain errors or omissions. While every effort has been made to ensure accuracy, this document should be used for reference purposes only and may not reflect the exact words spoken during the original sermon. For the most accurate representation, please refer to the original audio or video recording.
