What’s Wrong With “God Helps Those Who Help Themselves”?

Jay Leno once conducted a series of interviews with random people on the street and asked them to name one of the Ten Commandments. One of the most common responses was, “God helps those who help themselves.” That’s troubling because not only is it not one of the Ten Commandments, but it’s not in the Bible at all.

Where did it come from anyway?

You hear echoes of the saying in one of Aesop’s fables where a man calls to the goddess Athena to ask for help during a shipwreck, and she tells him to try swimming first. There’s also a parallel in the Quran, (Surah Ar-Ra'd 13:11) where it says, “Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves.” The English writer, Algernon Sidney, was the first credited with the phrase in the 17th century, but Benjamin Franklin helped to make it popular.

Why is such a popular saying at odds with the teaching of the Bible?

“God helps those who help themselves” is trying to deal with the passive mentality that asks God to do things that we can easily do for ourselves. “Did you mow the lawn?” “No, but I prayed that the grass would stop growing.” Nobody thinks this is a healthy attitude.

But instead of the warning, “God doesn’t help those who refuse to help themselves,” the popular saying gives a commentary on the kind of person God does help. People who “help themselves” are presumably hard-working, independent, and responsible. In fact, it sounds as if they’re so capable that God’s help at that point sounds more like a reward.

There are three reasons why that doesn’t line up with the Bible’s teachings.

1. God helps people who can’t help themselves

While there are many ways that we can help ourselves, in some of the most important ways, we are unable to. For example, God says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). How do we change ourselves when we have a chronic sin-sick condition? The Bible says that we can’t but then teaches that we can be saved by grace: “he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy” (Titus 3:5).

2. God helps people who realize they need help

God doesn’t help those who help themselves because the pride of independence is what keeps us from turning to God for help. In John 15:5, Jesus said that we’re like the branches to his vine and then added, “Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” We need God to do anything of lasting value in this world and having the humility and faith to recognize that is the first step toward getting well.

3. God’s help of people helps them help themselves

The Bible’s teaching isn’t that God just does everything for us, however. The idea is that His help in our lives enables us to do things we never would have been capable of. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:17, for instance, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come." When we turn to God in faith, we have His love motivating us, His strength enabling us, and His hope encouraging us. It’s a new day with new possibilities.

In the end, the saying "God helps those who help themselves" falls short because it misrepresents the heart of the Gospel. The Bible teaches that we are not self-sufficient beings, capable of earning God’s favor through our own efforts. Instead, we are deeply in need of His grace, love, and strength to do what we could never do on our own. Real transformation happens not when we rely on ourselves, but when we acknowledge our need for God and allow Him to work through us. It’s not about proving our worth; it’s about receiving His mercy and living empowered by His Spirit. That’s the true source of lasting change.

In