It’s Not an Exam or a Bargain

The following quote comes from Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis (p. 126-127):

I think every one who has some vague belief in God, until he becomes a Christian, has the idea of an exam, or of a bargain in his mind.  The first result of real Christianity is to blow that idea into bits.  When they find it blown into bits, some people think this means that Christianity is a failure and give up.  They seem to imagine that God is very simple-minded!  In fact, of course, He knows all about this.  One of the very things Christianity is designed to do was to blow this idea to bits.  God has been waiting for the moment at which you discover that there is no question of earning a pass mark in this exam, or putting Him in your debt.
Then comes another discovery.  Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God.  If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already.  So that when we talk of a man doing anything for God or giving anything to God, I will tell you what it is really like.  It is like a small child going to its father and saying, “Daddy, give me sixpence to buy you a birthday present.”  Of course, the father does, and he is pleased with the child’s present.  It is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think that the father is six-pence to the good on the transaction.  When a man has made these two discoveries God can really get to work.  It is after this that real life begins.  The man is awake now.