Tag: God’s Grace

God’s Ways Are Not Our Ways

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

The adage, God’s ways are not our ways, comes in handy when we are faced with hardship and tragedy. When things go awry, when that message comes, that phone rings, that letter arrives, that event happens, we try to make sense of it. And when we can’t, we resolve to comfort ourselves with a bit of spiritual and intellectual surrender as we reluctantly whisper, God’s ways are not our ways. This small and meager confession brings us some answer and comfort to our desperate whys (all of them). When we do not understand—in our grief and sorrow, our anger and frustration, our loss and suffering in the midst of emotional and physical chaos and tumult—considering that God might know and (somehow) still be in control provides us a relatively safe space to process and move through what we are experiencing and feeling.

Interestingly, I rarely hear this adage used when something good happens to us. When someone gets good news, accomplishes the daunting task, finds acceptance into this or that, receives promotion, not many of us would even think to say, God’s ways are not our ways. We may say Praise God! Or, What an answer to prayer! Or, You worked so hard for ________! But not, God’s ways are not our ways. Why? Because that little adage casts a big shadow of doubt over whether one really earned this or that good thing. And we, who live in the west and especially in America, really like thinking we’ve earned the good things that come our way. We like to think that this or that good thing is fair, because, well, I’m kind of a good person or I’ve been working really hard or and well my lack of good things means it was my time to get good things so I still earned it by not having anything good for a while…

Now, I’ve been a bit hyperbolic here. In the temporal realm and according to the ideological leanings of the kingdom of humanity and the way natural law works, surely, many good and bad things happen to us that actually are products of our effort. But there’s a point to be made, God’s ways really are not our ways. In what seems good or bad, in what feels fair or unfair, in what seems earned or not earned, God’s ways are not our ways. As our Matthew passage tells us, neither the ways of God nor the ways of the reign of God operate according to our ways.

Matthew 20:1-16

According to Matthew 19, Jesus is in the region of Judea beyond the Jordan (v1) where pharisees challenged him about divorcing one’s wife for “any cause” (vv3-12), he blessed little children (vv13-15), and aggrieved the rich young man with the truth about it takes to be “perfect” and store up treasure in heaven (vv16-22), adding the admonition that it is harder for a rich person to get into heaven than a camel through the eye of a needle—an answer that terrified the disciples (vv.23-26). Then, Peter (desperately?) asked for assurance of reward for leaving everything and following Christ; Jesus responds that they will have thrones and will receive a hundredfold and eternal life (vv27-29). But then Jesus adds (cryptically), But many will be last who are first and first who will be last (v30).[ii]  

V30 is the reason for “the Kingdom of Heaven is like” of chapter 20[iii] (a story found only here in Matthew[iv]). Matthew’s Jesus explains what he means by reordering first and last in the Reign of God[v] by telling the story of a wealthy vineyard owner and day-laborers. According to Matthew, Jesus began,

For the Kingdom of Heaven is like a person as master of the house who went out early in the morning [6am] to hire workers for his vineyard. Now, after agreeing with the workers for a denarius for the day’s work, he sent them into his vineyard (vv1-2).

(Obvs.) Everything seems on track at this point in the story. A “denarius”—a Roman Coin—was also the standard wage for a full day of labor. The vineyard was a common agriculture setting in Palestine (as well as within in FT imagery). But then Jesus goes on. The vineyard owner continues to go to the marketplace and fetch laborers for his vineyard. He goes out at the third hour (about 9am) and sees others standing unhired in the place of assembly and he said to them, You, you also go into the vineyard. And I will give you whatever is right (vv3-5a). And they go into the vineyard and work (for an unknown wage). (Coolcoolcool.) Then, the vineyard owner in like manner did it again three hours later at noon (the sixth hour) (mmmkay); and again, in another three hours at 3pm (the ninth hour) (huh…) (vv5b). While Jesus’s story became curious, it’s not all that wild considering the amount of work that might be needed in a vineyard. But then, Jesus continues; the man goes out again at the eleventh hour (5pm) and…

…found others standing there and he says to them, “why have you stood so here the whole day unhired? They say to him, “No one hired us.” He says to them, “You, you also go into the vineyard” (vv6-7).

(Wut.) Here, Jesus’s story flirts with the ridiculous. Who, in their right mind, hires anyone at the last hour of the workday let alone hires the ones no one else wanted[vi] to hire? But then, Jesus’s story jumps over ridiculous into wild.   

Now evening came and the lord of the vineyard says to his administrator, “Call the workers and return to them their wages beginning from the last ones until the first ones.” And they came, the ones [hired] about the eleventh hour received at the rate of a denarius. And when the first came they supposed that they will receive more; they each also received at the rate of a denarius (vv8-10).

All expectations are thrown out the window here. Jesus has not only turned the tables but has just flat out (metaphorically) flipped them. When Jesus goes on to say that they muttered against the house manager giving a list of burdens endured while working as long as they did and the injustice[vii] of making those who worked only one hour equal to they who worked twelve (vv11-12), both Jesus’s audience and Matthew’s side with them.[viii] The offense and frustration at this financial injustice is the point.[ix] The Reign of God, according to Jesus, is nothing like the kingdom of humanity. Those called into the vineyard, no matter how early or how late, cannot hold the lord of the vineyard hostage to what is considered, in human terms, fair; the lord of the vineyard is no one’s debtor. As Jesus tells his audience,

But the house manager answered one of them and said, “Friend, I do no act wickedly toward you. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what is yours and go; and I wish to give to the last as I also give to you. Is it not permitted for me to do what I wish with what belongs to me? Or is your eye evil because I, I am good? In this way, the last will be first and the first last (vv13-16).

Rather than going out to the marketplace to find workers to give him what he pays for, the lord of the vineyard has gone out to find all the vulnerable—whose bodies, lives, and livelihood are dependent on precarious work conditions[x] and capricious employers[xi]—with the goal not to extract labor from them but to provide for each of them, whether they earned it or not.[xii] The lord of the vineyard is foolish and uncalculating; according to Matthew’s Jesus, so, too, is God (especially in comparison to human standards and systems of evaluation).[xiii] Where the kingdom of humanity operates (barely) within the metric of a meritocracy, God’s reign does not; “God rules by grace, not by desert.”[xiv]

Conclusion

The story Jesus tells is a story about God and not about humans. It is a parable, and it’s meant to bring the hearer to a conclusion about the reign of God; it’s not (solely) an object lesson on how to run vineyards or how to manage employees. This is a text neither about capitalism nor socialism—no union boss is going to, rightly, settle for such behavior between employer and employee. We should not reduce the power of this parable by making it into an action plan; we, in the temporal world, must keep an eye to what is fair and what isn’t, where provision is needed and where reward is earned, where exploitation and negligence is happening. To keep the power of the parable is to allow it to bring us to its conclusion, to expose us and our preconceived ideas and assumptions about God and God’s reign, and to remind us that we have more in common with those whom we deem unworthy than we do with God, our creator, the master of our house. And this is the point: God’s ways are not our ways. We definitely need Christ.

Jesus’s parable is about God (full stop). It tells us something about God and how God delights to give beyond what any human can imagine, beyond all human defined fairness, beyond human merit, and beyond human captivity to envy[xv] and ideals of deserving; [xvi] God delights to give not according to what is deserved but what is needed.[xvii] God is good and just and gives to all beyond expectation;[xviii] none are more deserving of the reign of God than others.[xix] This insight into God and God’s reign reminds us who we are (creatures) and keeps us humble, refusing the tendency to make God and God’s grace, mercy, forgiveness, and love based on merit. God’s ways are not our ways.[xx]

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] πολλοὶ δὲ ἔσονται πρῶτοι ἔσχατοι καὶ ἔσχατοι πρῶτοι.

[iii] Anna Case-Winters Matthew Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible Eds Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 245. “Although Jesus accommodates Peter’s ambition with a vision of reward ‘at the renewal of all things,’ he finishes with a caution that ‘the first will be last and the last first’ and proceeds to tell the parable of the generous employer by way of illustration. It is yet another instance of shocking reversals.”

[iv] Case-Winters, Matthew, 245. “The parable of the laborers in the vineyard is found only in Matthew.”

[v] R. T. France The Gospel of Matthew The New International Commentary on the New Testament. Gen. Ed Joel B. Green (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 747-748. “It thus stands as a comment on the discussion of rewards for discipleship in 19:27-29 and on the saying about the last and the first which concluded that discussion and which is repeated after the parable in v.16. It is therefore about the reversal of human expectation in the kingdom of heaven—which, in various ways, has been the dominating theme of the whole of ch. 19.”

[vi] France, Matthew, 750. Maybe the later laborers came to the marketplace later and missed early morning hiring (not lazy).[vi] “They are victims rather than culprits…” and maybe (especially considering the very last group) “least desirable workers, passed over by other employers; they are thus the ‘last’ in more than a purely temporal sense. Which makes it the more surprising when they are eventually rewarded as well as any.”

[vii] France, Matthew, 748. “Why then do we still feel that there is something wrong? Because we cannot detach ourselves from the ruling convention that rewards should be commensurate to the services rendered. When one man is ‘rewarded’ far in excess of what has been earned while another receives only the bare sum agreed, we detect unfair discrimination.”

[viii] Case-Winters, Matthew, 246. “When it’s time to pay up he pays the last ones to arrive first, and beyond all reasonable expectation, he pays everyone a full day’s wage—even those who only worked one hour! When those employed form the early morning receive a day’s wage, they grumble….This equalizing is unacceptable. The latecomers do not deserve so much. Readers may sympathize with the grumbling of the all-day workers.”

[ix] Case-Winters, Matthew, 246. “However the characters in the parable are understood, this is a story of reversals and unexpected equalization. It presents a generosity that goes beyond calculation to grace. Hearers today may make theological connections. Our ‘calculating’ ways are brought up short by God’s incalculable grace.”

[x] France, Matthew, 749. “The day laborer did not have even the minimal security which the slave had in belonging to one master. There was no social welfare program on which an unemployed man could fall back, and no trade unions to protect a worker’s rights. An employer could literally ‘do what he chose with what belonged to him’ (v.15). In such a setting no work meant no food for the family.”

[xi] Case-Winters, Matthew, 245. “In this ‘forgotten corner of the economy’ workers are very vulnerable. The work is often difficult, strenuous, and dangerous. One if vie reports being injured while working and having no medical care. Their biggest day -to-day worry is getting paid. Employers give them bad checks to hire them at one rate yet pay less when the works is done to vanish when it’s time to pay up.”

[xii] Case-Winters, Matthew, 246. “The grumblers seem to begrudge the full day’s wage generously given to everyone—even to those who had not worked a full day to ‘earn’ it.”

[xiii] France, Matthew, 749. The vineyard owner, “…he was acting compassionately to alleviate the hardship of the unemployed. It is unlikely that he needed the extra workers, and his excessive payment of them speaks for itself. Commercially, the man is a fool. And God is as uncalculating as that.”

[xiv] France, Matthew, 748. “The God who lavishly clothes the flowers and feeds the birds (6:26-29) delights to give his servant far more than they could ever deserve from him. It is that principle, rather than the disappointment of the whole-day laborers, which is the main focus of the parable, but their very natural disappointment and sense of unfairness helps readers to reexamine how far their reactions are still governed by human ideals of deserving rather than by the uncalculating generosity of the kingdom of heaven. In the kingdom in which the first are last and the last first there is no room for envious comparisons.”

[xv] France, Matthew, 751. “By contrast, the calculating comparison of rewards is a mark of the ‘bad eye’ which is a biblical image for stinginess and jealously…”

[xvi] France, Matthew, 748.

[xvii] France, Matthew, 750. “The principle appears to be of payment according to need rather than desert.”

[xviii] France, Matthew, 751. “The God who is generous far beyond what could be expected is also never less than just. But to think in terms of contractual obligations is to miss the point of the kingdom of heaven. God’s ‘goodness’…is fair. More generous than that.”

[xix] France, Matthew, 751. “The blessing of eternal life is the same for all. Some are not more saved than others.”

[xx] France, Matthew, 752. “No one has a right to preeminence or to a higher reward in the kingdom of heaven. In the gloriously subversive words of the Dodo in Alice in Wonderland, ‘Everybody has won, and all must have prizes.’ It is all by grace.”

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What Now?: New Creatures by God’s Grace

“‘Dear Lord God, I wish to preach in your honor. I wish to speak about you, glorify you, praise your name. Although I can’t do this well of myself, I pray that you may make it good.’”[i]

Introduction

Continuing with our journey through Romans, we find ourselves in the first half of chapter 6. Here, Paul is addressing claims coming from the Roman church, specifically claims that if believers sin more than God’s grace abounds more. Paul is clear here, while we are justified by faith apart from works, we must not intentionally pursue sinful behaviors that drag and disrupt God’s revolution of the divine mission of love, life, and liberation in the world for the well-being of the neighbor to the glory of God. (Plus, we will have enough unintentional sin in our lives, we don’t need to pursue it!) We are, according to Paul, new creatures born of the waters of Baptism and are now defined by love, life, and liberation, and therefore voluntarily re-yoking ourselves to that which is indifference, that which is death, that which is captivity is not only anathema but also cut off.  

Romans 6:1b-11

Paul begins with a refutation of what is considered (by some scholars[ii]) to be a quotation from some at Rome, What then will we say? May we continue to sin, with the result that grace might superabound? Hell/ck no! We who have died to sin, how will we still live in it? (vv1-2). The question Paul asks in return is the driving theme of the chapter. It is also, especially for us, a crucial question for those who are justified by faith apart from works. Rather than the event of justification being a license to intentionally sin, it is an exhortation to live a new life. It is a gift given to be enjoyed—this is what the incarnate word is. Remember, back in chapter four, Paul gave a crystal-clear explanation of the gospel summarized by the events of Christ’s death and resurrection, [Jesus] was handed over for the sake of our trespasses and was raised for the sake of our acquittal/being pronounced justified/righteous (4:25). If we claim to believe in Christ, then we’ve come to the end of ourselves and have entered union with God by the power of the Holy Spirit. To intentionally return to the behaviors of the kingdom of humanity is to deny this belief and faith, it is to deny Christ and what Christ achieved for us because it is contrary to the very grace of God.[iii] In a sense, the claim Paul refutes makes God’s grace a human endeavor; for Paul, this is a μὴ γένοιτο! In the economy of God’s activity in the world and, especially, toward humanity, emphasis cannot fall on humans sinning to bring God’s grace. Rather, it must fall on God’s gracious activity in giving us God’s grace. Those who have been saved from the life of the dead are ushered into the life of the living and there’s no going back and certainly no human-centered way to make God’s grace abound more than it already is in Christ by the power of the Spirit. This is why Paul can then write,

Or are you ignorant that whosoever of us was baptized into Christ Jesus we were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with him through the baptism into death, so that just as Christ was raised from death by the glory of Abba God, even as also we might walk in the newness of life (vv3-4).

Paul then explains more,

For if we have become grown together with [Jesus] in the likeness of his death, but also we will be [grown together with him in the likeness of his] resurrection. Knowing this that our old person was crucified together with [Christ] so that the body of sin might be abolished, so that we are no longer a slave to sin, for the one who dies has been declared to be righteous from sin (vv5-7).

Paul anchors the believer’s new life not in the old life and person of the kingdom of humanity, but in the new person who is of the reign of God and who identifies (by faith) with Christ’s death and resurrection. This new person is born from the trifold dipping of Christian baptism, marking the fullness of the invested Godhead and our identification with Christ in the tomb.[iv] For Paul, this is all the believer needs to cling to. The believer does not need to take matters into their own hands and cause God’s grace to manifest; God’s grace is (already) made manifest in their lives (in its fullness) because they believe. Now, it is also shared out and into the world as they proceed to live into their resurrected new life and leave the old person and body of sin to the kingdom of humanity (like: “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead” Mt. 8:22, Lk. 9:60). These ones are grown together with (bonded to) Christ,[v] just as they were previously bonded to and grown together with sin and the old person. Therefore, they cannot return to the old way, old life, and old person. Again, Paul is refuting any notion that believers must return to sin to make God’s grace abound; the believer causes God’s grace to abound in the world as they live into their new life by the power of the Spirit and by faith in Christ and in union with God.[vi] (But they cannot cause God’s grace to become more present in their own lives than it already is by returning to sin.) Thus, believers become midwives of God’s grace by God’s grace and are encouraged and exhorted to go further and deeper into the world bringing God’s love and grace to all, especially the oppressed. Anyone who identifies with Christ by faith and baptism has identified with Christ in his death and will identify with him in his resurrection; herein is our justification: for the one who dies is declared righteous from sin. Sin is no longer in control and no longer boss (so, too, the law[vii]); God is now in charge of this new life, and Paul exhorts the Romans to live as such going forward and not backward. Saying,

Now, if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. Knowing that Christ, being raised from death, dies no longer, death no longer rules him. For he, he died, once for all he, he died to sin; but he, he lives, he, he lives to God. And in this way, you, you reckon yourselves to be dead to sin and living to/for God in Christ Jesus (vv8-11).

Conclusion

For Paul,[viii] Christ is the sacrament[ix]; it is Christ with whom we identify in both the waters of baptism and in the broken bread of the eucharist. It is not that water and bread are significant in themselves, but through them we come into contact with the dead and risen Christ; in partaking in these sacraments we identify in Christ’s three-day death and in his body broken; and as we identify so here, we can and will identify with Christ in his new life and bodily resurrection (today and tomorrow, present and future).[x] Further, to identify with Christ in his death—sacramentally and spiritually—means that we, too, like Christ our elder brother, are caused to be dead to sin, as in, sin no longer has dominion over us,[xi] eternal death,[xii] too, is rendered impotent for those who believe. (Because of Christ, death is dead, captivity is held captive, and indifference has met is own cold fate.[xiii],[xiv]) Sin’s stain and its consequence, death, are forever removed from the life of the believer;[xv] they are new creatures[xvi] (forever and daily[xvii]) no longer defined by sin but by God’s grace, no longer under the dominion of sin but under the reign of Christ.[xviii] No longer defined by death, but by life; no longer defined by captivity, but liberation; no longer defined by indifference but by love.[xix] We do not need to return…Nay! We cannot return to the sinful existence of the old person, of the kingdom of humanity; [xx] for God’s grace enters in anew every morning with God’s mercy.

Thus, we walk in all this newness, on the move because the Christian life is on the move because it is defined by Christ the gospel, defined by God and God’s Holy Spirit all of whom are always on the move looking for and seeking the beloved.[xxi]As those who identify with Christ by faith, we also identify with whom he identified: the lost, the unheard, the unvoiced, the ignored, the pushed off and pushed aside, the ones the society of the kingdom of humanity has deemed unworthy of love.

[i] LW 54:157-158; Table Talk 1590.

[ii] Martin Luther Lectures on Romans: Glosses and Scholia (1515/1516) LW 25 Ed. Hilton C. Oswald (Saint Louis: Concordia, 1972), 50. “…as falsifiers understand the passage, when they say, ‘Let us do evil,’ that is, let us commit sin, ‘That good may come’ (Rom. 3:8), that is, that grace may abound.”

[iii] LW 25: 50. “By no means, because this idea is absolutely contrary to the work of grace,..”

[iv] LW 25: 50-51. “…the threefold dipping of Baptism signifies the three-day death period and the burial of Christ, into Christ Jesus, that is, by faith in Christ Jesus…”

[v] Sarah Heaner Lancaster, Romans, Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible, eds. Amy Plantinga Pauw and William C. Placher (Louisville: WJK, 2015), 108. “The kind of participation that baptism makes possible is an incorporation into Christ that is a secure joining for a thorough sharing, a kind of bonding.”

[vi] Lancaster, Romans, 107. “For Paul, baptism is s a clear sign of leaving the dominion of sin and entering the dominion of grace.”

[vii] LW 25: 308. “But he over whom sin reigns, no matter how he resists sin, is still under the Law and not under grace.”

[viii] LW 25: 310. “thus in this passage the apostle is speaking of the death and resurrection of Christ insofar as they refer to the sacrament, but not to the example.”

[ix] LW 25: 309. “For having put on our mortal flesh and dying only in it and rising only in it, now only in it He joins these things together for us, for in this flesh He became a sacrament for the inner man and an example for the outward man.”

[x] Lancaster, Romans, 108. “By being buried with Jesus, we are made participants not only in his death but also in his resurrection. To be united with him in death means also being united with him in resurrection (6:5).”

[xi] Lancaster, Romans, 107. “[Paul] describes sin’s power as ruling power; sin has dominion over us, enslaving us to its purposes and exercising influence over us as a kind of lordship. When we are under the lordship of sin, we are bound to submit to its influence.”

[xii] LW 25: 310. “Eternal death is also twofold. The one kind is good, very good.it is the death of sin and the death of death, by which the soul is released and separated from sin and the body is separated from corruption and through grace and glory is joined to the living God. This is death in the most proper sense of the word, for in all other forms of death something remains that is mixed with life, but not in this kind of death, where there is the purest life alone, because it is eternal life.”

[xiii] LW 25: 311. “Just as the death of death means to act against death, which is the same things as life, so the sin of sin is righteousness.”

[xiv] LW 25: 311. “Because for death to be killed means that death will not return, and ‘to take captivity captive’ means that captivity will never return, a concept which cannot be expressed through an affirmative assertion.”

[xv] LW 25: 310. “This is the way sin dies; and likewise the sinner, when he is justified, because sin will not return again for all eternity, as the apostles says here [v9]…”

[xvi] LW 25: 313. “The term ‘old man’ describes what kind of person is born of Adam, not according to his nature but according to the defect of his nature. For his nature is good, but the defect is evil.”

[xvii] LW 25: 314. “The meaning is that we must undergo this spiritual death only once. For whoever dies thus lives for all eternity. Therefore we must not return to our sin in order to die to sin again.”

[xviii] Lancaster, Romans, 107-108. “Those who have died to sin because they have been baptized into Jesus’ death. By participating in the death of Jesus, the follower of Jesus is dying to the lordship of sin and accepting the lordship of Christ.”

[xix] Lancaster, Romans, 108-109. “Dying to sin means that a person dies to an old way of life, and participating in the death and resurrection of Jesus means that a person enters a new way of life. The one who was crucified conquered death, and because we share in his victory, we are no longer enslaved to sin….The proper commitment to the new dominion in which we are privileged to live is to give up sin and live for God.”

[xx] Lancaster, Romans, 107. “To follow Jesus Christ means leaving the dominion of sin and living in the dominion of grace. If that is the case, then the follower of Jesus can no longer do the bidding of sin. By changing dominions, a person has changed lords and loyalties.”

[xxi] Lancaster, Romans, 109. “…new life in Christ is not static…Rather to walk in newness of life means to be on the move, to be ever attentive to what it means to live to God and to exercise our allegiance daily.”

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