Grace - It Just Doesn't Add Up

1 "God's kingdom is like an estate manager who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. 2 They agreed on a wage of a dollar a day, and went to work.
3 "Later, about nine o'clock, the manager saw some other men hanging around the town square unemployed. 4 He told them to go to work in his vineyard and he would pay them a fair wage. 5 They went.
"He did the same thing at noon, and again at three o'clock. 6 At five o'clock he went back and found still others standing around. He said, 'Why are you standing around all day doing nothing?'
7 "They said, 'Because no one hired us.'
"He told them to go to work in his vineyard.
8 "When the day's work was over, the owner of the vineyard instructed his foreman, 'Call the workers in and pay them their wages. Start with the last hired and go on to the first.'
9 "Those hired at five o'clock came up and were each given a dollar. 10 When those who were hired first saw that, they assumed they would get far more. But they got the same, each of them one dollar. 11 Taking the dollar, they groused angrily to the manager, 12 'These last workers put in only one easy hour, and you just made them equal to us, who slaved all day under a scorching sun.'
13 "He replied to the one speaking for the rest, 'Friend, I haven't been unfair. We agreed on the wage of a dollar, didn't we? 14 So take it and go. I decided to give to the one who came last the same as you. 15 Can't I do what I want with my own money? Are you going to get stingy because I am generous?'
16 "Here it is again, the Great Reversal: many of the first ending up last, and the last first."

Matt 20:1-16 (MSG)

It's happened again.

Someone has sat down and tried to calculate how God's grace and sinful people, who will never stop sinning, add up to salvation. This has been going on for a long, long time now. Those in the "know" ever so often look over Jesus' shoulder and decide that He doesn't know a thing about accounting.

Sure could see how you'd get that idea. After all, didn't Jesus make a big fuss about that irresponsible shepherd who left 99 perfectly good and cared for sheep to go look for that one runaway? That makes no sense at all - cut your losses, write it off. New Lambs will be here come spring.

Then there was that woman who came and dumped the perfume worth a year's wages all over Jesus. What was the point in that? Just a little dab would have done the job, and then we could have waited to see if He needed it tomorrow. Got to be smart about those things.

Oh yeah, and what about that time in the temple when Jesus was watching people give their offerings. The Pharisee came forward, stated his intention to bless God and proceeded to bless him real good with a wad of cash. You could hear those coins jingle across Jerusalem, I'd bet. Then a widow-woman quietly walks up, drops two coins in - didn't even go "clink", and Jesus says she gave more?

How does that work? Jesus sounds like a guy you could swap nickles for dimes with all day long, like a little kid who doesn't know what anything is worth, and figures bigger coins are worth more.

Then I was reading that story up above from Matthew, where Jesus compares God's way of doing things - His Kingdom - to a landowner who hired people throughout the day to pick grapes. Tough work -that. 100 degree weather, backbreaking work. But he paid everyone too much - a denarius was a Roman soldier's day's wages, not some migrant's fair pay. And to compound it all, he paid them all the same. Jesus was applauding a man who had just upset the whole migrant worker market for the season. It's crazy.

It just doesn't add up.

That's the point. "Grace is not about finishing last or first. It is about not counting at all." Philip Yancey

If God was still keeping score, doling out salvation on the installment plan - seeing how well we do and rewarding us accordingly - well we would be lost. But He's not.

19 For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people's sins against them. 2 Cor 5:19 (NLT)

So what part of "no longer counting" did I miss?

23 For all have sinned; all fall short of God's glorious standard. 24 Yet now God in his gracious kindness declares us not guilty. He has done this through Christ Jesus, who has freed us by taking away our sins. 25 For God sent Jesus to take the punishment for our sins and to satisfy God's anger against us. We are made right with God when we believe that Jesus shed his blood, sacrificing his life for us. God was being entirely fair and just when he did not punish those who sinned in former times. 26 And he is entirely fair and just in this present time when he declares sinners to be right in his sight because they believe in Jesus.

27 Can we boast, then, that we have done anything to be accepted by God? No, because our acquittal is not based on our good deeds. It is based on our faith. 28 So we are made right with God through faith and not by obeying the law. Romans 3:23-28 (NLT)

And as sure as I am of "all have sinned, all fall short", I am equally sure and thankful that "our acquittal is not based on our good deeds. It is based on our faith."

Does it add up? No.

That's good, because we didn't have an integer in the hunt.

We have nothing with which to pay our debt to God.

So God did it for us through Christ.

Grace - not just amazing - it's scandalous.

Praise be to God!