“Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.” We Christians love grace. We sing about it. We love the love and kindness and mercy of God. We celebrate free forgiveness and mercy. But there is the dark side of grace—the flipside of grace.
What about the fact that grace ignores justice, and forgiveness turns a blind eye to the merits of the case? Grace gives the undeserving what they don’t deserve—the bludging layabout sponge does nothing and yet receives the reward. This is the stuff of scandals. It’s not surprising some people don’t see it as grace: to them, it’s disgrace. It‘s not favour for them, but favouritism.
Any act of real grace creates a scandal. It might be grace to receive good things for nothing, or it might be grace to receive nothing for bad things. Grace could be that you get things you don’t deserve, or you don’t get things you do deserve. But whether it is good things for nothing, or nothing for bad things, either way, grace creates a scandal.
Imagine nothing for bad things. This would be pardoning the Twin Towers murderers, or the Bali bombers? They carefully planned, prepared for, and killed hundreds and thousands of unsuspecting humans. That was a bad thing. Imagine if they get nothing for it: no punishment, nothing for bad things. That’s not grace but disgrace. Such mercy is scandalous.
Or imagine good things for nothing. Consider not turning up to work but claiming wages, bludging but making sure you get paid. Then grace is disgrace.
Our Gospel Reading was Matthew 20:1-19, the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard. Every time I have spoken about this parable, someone understandably says, “You know, Matt, I still have trouble with that parable. It’s not fair!” And they’re right. It’s not fair. It’s got nothing to do with fair or not fair. It’s a matter of grace.
You know the parable. Each worker is promised fair pay. Those hired at 9am, 12 noon, 3pm, even those layabouts and loafers who’ve been hiding out till 5pm in the evening, each is promised that they will receive what is fair and right. The last ones hired basically turn up to pick up their pay cheque. And the scandal, the offence is, that those loafers last to turn up get the same pay as those who bore the brunt of the work in the heat of the day. And to rub salt into the wounds, the latecomer done-nothing shirkers got paid first! That is, good things for nothing.
We see both types of grace in Romans 4:4-8. Romans 4:4-8 shows us grace as receiving good things for nothing, and also receiving nothing for bad things. First, good things for nothing, Romans 4:
Now when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation. (NIV)
Justice is receiving a fair wage for services rendered. You get up each morning, drag yourself off to work, day in, day out, and then at the end of the fortnight, when you receive your pay, you walk to payroll and get what you deserve.
And there is no way that you say to the paymaster, “What’s this? This is fortnight’s wage! For me! I had no idea. Wow, what a surprise. No, I can’t take it, it’s too much, I don’t deserve it.”
No one does this because remuneration for work is based on desert, on merit. You agree to work the fortnight, the boss agrees to pay you, and at the end of the fortnight, you get your wages, which you earned and which you deserve. Wages are paid as a matter of justice, of obligation.
Now the reality is that we aren’t acceptable to God on the basis of justice, or that God is obliged to accept us because we deserve it. We can’t front up to God and show off our works and get our wages. Look at verses 5 and 6:
5However, to the man who does not work but trusts God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness. 6David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works. (NIV)
The grace here is to the person who does not work. It is righteousness apart from works because the person does not work to receive justification. This is grace as good things for nothing. To put it starkly, in this great doctrine of justification, we come to God as bludgers, those who “do not work”, who come before God with no works that could earn or deserve or merit anything from him. No one has given to God so that God must repay him.
But nothing for bad things is forgiveness, and for God to not remember our sins. And that is found in verses 7 to 8:
7Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. 8Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him.
Paul has not only said that those who are justified are ‘non-workers’. Paul has gone further and said that those justified are ‘ungodly’ or ‘wicked’. We have many transgressions and sins, and we need these vile stinking sins to be covered up. We’ve got something to hide before God, and so we want God to perform a scandalous covering over of all our sins.
We don’t want God to act justly with us. We don’t want to be treated as our sins deserve, because that would be our undoing. We want God to show us favour and grace, and hide our sins from his sight. We don’t want God to be a just judge, because a just judge won’t acquit the guilty.
Acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent—the LORD detests them both. (Proverbs 17:15 NIV)
But we are guilty, not innocent. So we really should want God to pervert the course of justice. We must not ask God for justice, because if we get it, we will be punished. We want grace, because we need God the just judge to not to look on our bad works, but to cover up our wickedness and turn a blind eye to our sin and not count it against us.
Friends, to understand the scandal of grace, we must understand the scandal of our sin. It’s hard for us to understand it because we’re all in it. We think it’s normal. But the bible tells us that we are the scandal—the way we’ve treated God by ignoring him, rebelling against him, dethroning him, and wanting ourselves to be God in his place—this is the scandal. We might say, “nobody’s perfect, I’ve made mistakes”. God says, “dead in sin, wickedness, every inclination of the heart only evil all the time.” And in light of this scandal, our only hope is a thorough, well-executed cover up conducted by God himself.
The cross of Jesus is a scandal because the cover up we want can only be found there. The death of Christ has long been the scandal of Christianity. To the ancient world, to say that the Christ, the Master of the Universe, had been strung up on a cross naked and drowned in his own bodily fluids was utter folly and offensiveness. To state it was to refute it. So we read in 1 Corinthians 1:23-24:
23but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. (NIV)
But for Christians, the scandal of the cross is the glory of Christianity. This divine miscarriage of justice—to send the innocent and holy one, Jesus Christ, to a horrible execution, and to allow the guilty (you and me) to go free because of it—this is the heart and soul and engine room of our faith.
Appreciate the scandal of it all. Jesus was innocent. He was killed because he told the truth—that he was the Christ, the Son of God and God wanted this to happen. It pleased God to bruise him and cause him to suffer (Isaiah 53). It was God’s plan for Jesus to be put to death by wicked men.
Jesus, fully God and fully man, voluntarily took our sin and punishment. He was fully God, so that God is doing the dirty work himself. He is the wronged party, so he bears the cost. He is fully man, so that Jesus can properly represent us and be our substitute. That is how God satisfies his just desire that our sin be punished.
How is it fair, that Jesus die instead of us? It’s not fair. We’re not talking about ‘fair’ or ‘not fair’. We’re talking about ‘grace’. We’re talking about God’s merciful provision for us. So in Galatians 2 verse 20, we read:
The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (NIV)
The death of Jesus for us is God’s scandalous love for sinners demonstrated. Jesus loved us while we were still sinners. And realising it was the only way, Jesus went to the cross for us, innocently taking the punishment for us. And so Paul concludes in Galatians 2 verse 21.
I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing! (NIV)
If we could earn our way to heaven, do you think God would have given up his only son? If salvation could be achieved by our obedience, by our works, would God have butchered his son? There was no other way. Only Jesus’ sinless life, sinbearing death, and victorious resurrection could give us righteousness, cover over our sin, and free us from the curse of death.