How can I repay the Lord for all the good he has done for me? I will take the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord. (Psalms 116:12-13)
“How can I repay the Lord?” is meant to be a rhetorical question. There’s no way we could ever repay God for creating us in his image. For sustaining us every moment of our lives. For giving us his one and only son to bear the wrath we all deserve for our rebellion and sin. Trying to repay God would be like trying repay a trillion-dollar-debt. It’s impossible. Unfortunately, many people still try. They don’t like being indebted to anyone, so they try to do enough good works to pay God back for all the good works he’s done for them. But their efforts are interest-only payments on a debt that can never decrease.
Instead, the Psalmist calls us to repay the Lord by taking the cup of salvation and calling on the name of the Lord. Which means calling on God’s name to be saved from his judgment, then continuing to call on his name for the power to keep serving him. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:10, “By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.” We can only repay the Lord for his past grace by continuing to lean on his present grace for the power and motivation to serve him. Ironically, it’s only when you take your mind off yourself and your hard work that you’re empowered by God’s grace to do consequential hard work.