When we lose sight of the fact that common grace is grace and not our due, we become like travelers who bemoan poor overnight travel accommodations and forget the paradise that is our final destination.
Few people would disagree that a sense of entitlement permeates our culture. But as the Preacher said, “There is nothing new under the sun” (Eccl. 1:9). While shifts in worldview over the past few decades may have poured gasoline on the fire, a sinful sense of entitlement was sparked for the first time in the garden of Eden, and since that day, this tendency to sinful entitlement has been embedded in our fallen DNA.
Entitlement can be defined as the belief that one is deserving of certain privileges. The belief itself may be true or false. People might believe that they have a certain right when they do in fact possess an actual right, or people can believe that they have a certain right when no such right exists. Thus, there are times when entitlement is not, strictly speaking, a sin but rather a legal right in a well-ordered society. For example, if I purchase a car, it is legally my property. I hold the legal title to the vehicle. I believe that I possess the right to that car, and my belief is in line with reality.
However, this legitimate entitlement can turn into a sinful expression of an entitlement mentality if my five-year-old niece spills a drink in the back seat and ruins the interior, or if I am the victim of a parking lot hit-and-run. It’s at those points of pressure that my sinful response to God’s providence can expose a more insidious entitlement mentality in which I think I am owed pristine automobile upholstery or a risk-free parking lot.
In the Reformed world, we (hopefully) embrace wholeheartedly the belief that we are by nature children of wrath, dead in our trespasses, unable to save ourselves, and completely dependent on the righteous life and substitutionary death of Jesus Christ to be reconciled to God and made His children. We extol the grace of God in salvation and would never say that we are owed the right to become children of God or that we are entitled to His saving grace. Therefore, the problem with our sinful entitlement mentality usually lies not in our understanding of special grace but rather in our understanding of common grace.
