R.J. Rushdoony: We tend to move from gratitude for grace into autonomous expectations of entitlement

Louis XIV, after the fearful defeat of his army at Ramillies, said, "God seems to have forgotten all I have done for him." Men are ready to affirm salvation by grace, and then to believe that they have now merited various blessings. Men and women marry, feeling at first privileged to have one another, and then their lives become one of expectations and demands; they expect to be loved rather than loving. Men feel elated at getting a prized position but are then resentful that they are not showered with advantages for doing their work. The economy of our lives shifts easily from grace to expectations. Since man's original sin is to believe that he can be his own god, and his own source of law and order (Gen. 3:5), all men readily forget grace and live in terms of their expectations of God and man. The peace offering, and the many psalms which echo it, requires us to live in gratitude towards God and in community with one another. (Rushdoony, Commentary on Leviticus, p. 66).