In 1736 Benjamin Franklin printed a line in Poor Richard’s Almanack that Americans have been quoting ever since: “God helps them that help themselves.” Many people would place it somewhere in Proverbs. It is not in the Bible: not in the King James, extra books included, and not in the modern World English Bible. The idea is older than Franklin, from a Greek fable, and the Bible says something very close to the reverse about how God’s help arrives.
Older than Franklin
In the fable, a driver’s wagon slides into a ditch, and he stands beside it praying to Hercules. The god appears and tells him to put his shoulder to the wheel and drive his oxen, and then pray. The story belongs to the collections that go under Aesop’s name, and the moral is fair enough for a wagon in a ditch.
The only places the words “help themselves” appear in a King James Bible are three verses in the extra books some editions print between the Testaments, and none of them says this.
While we were yet without strength
For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.
Romans 5:6 (KJV)
The people in Paul’s sentence have nothing to bring. They are “without strength,” and the timing is God’s: “in due time.” Two verses later Paul says it again, harder:
But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:8 (KJV)
Without strength, ungodly, sinners, and at verse 10, “enemies.” Paul picks his words from the bottom. Help came to people who could not help themselves, and it came first.
Work, in its place
Scripture does honor work.
Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest.
Proverbs 6:6-8 (KJV)
Paul told the Thessalonians, “if any would not work, neither should he eat,” in 2 Thessalonians 3:10, and verse 11 says whom he meant: some among them were “working not at all, but are busybodies.” Paul means a man who refuses to work. The verse says nothing against a man who has been looking for work for months and cannot find it. Work matters, and the Bible honors it. What the proverb on the almanac gets wrong is how the rescue starts. The ant lays in her food in a summer she did not make.
Paul puts the order in three verses:
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.
Ephesians 2:8-10 (KJV)
The rescue first, then the walking. Anyone pulled out of the water is expected to walk home, and nobody asks them to swim first to prove they were worth the trouble. The exiles in Jeremiah were told to build houses and plant gardens inside a promise they had not earned, and the work was how they lived in it.
But doesn’t James say faith without works is dead?
James 2 says it in so many words, and the case he gives explains what he means by it.
If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.
James 2:15-17 (KJV)
James is talking about a person who says warm words and hands over nothing. The works are the evidence that faith is alive, the way a pulse shows life. He never says God waits for you to rescue yourself.
James does name a first step, two chapters later: “Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you,” in James 4:8, and in verse 10, to humble yourself before the Lord. Look at what comes first there. It is turning toward God and getting low, which is the opposite of managing on your own.
Help that arrives first
Jesus told a story about a son who ran out of money and came home with a speech ready, offering to work as a hired servant. He never got to the part about the hired servant. “When he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him,” in Luke 15:20. The son did walk home. The father ran the rest of the way.
The almanac puts the price at the front. In Romans 5 God rescues first, and he rescues people still without strength, and the work you do afterward is your answer to being found. If you are worn out this morning, the son in that story is a good place to stand: keep walking toward home, and know that the father in that story ran out to meet his son. James’s promise holds for anyone who gets low before God: “Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.”