When studying Matthew chapter 20 (the part where Jesus shares the parable of the workers in the field) I reflected on the different responses people had to the perceived injustice and what that showed about their understanding of grace. To remind you, the parable was about how a man hired workers, some early in the day, some very late, but in the end paid them all the same wage. He paid them each a fair wage for a full day's work.
The ones who worked longer and through the heat of the day felt that they should have been paid more than those who had worked very little. It is hard for me not to have this general feeling as well. What about you?
Well, if you're at all like me, or even if not perhaps you can understand, there is a part of me that feels like it wasn't fair for the hard workers and I lack joy over the grace shown to the other workers. Thinking about this more, I see that all workers have received grace in that they were chosen to work and get paid. I imagine there were other workers who may not have been found by the master and were given no opportunity to work. Each worker hired gets to go home and share his wage with his family and enter into that simple God-ordained joy.
So, to get practical, these underlying attitudes can majorly influence what we do and how we do it. It impacts our priorities, which come from a sense of values. To see this, let's look at Martha and Mary, the classic go-to story about priorities that is often misused because of an imbalanced application. I'll explain.
We find this story in Luke 10:38-42 and it ends with Jesus saying "Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her." That good portion being Jesus, and in this story is contrasted with the chores that Martha felt compelled to do. The point here begins to highlight that they had valued different things to different amounts and this changed what they did. It can be easy to use this as a passage to shirk duty, especially when those duties are undesirable, but the passage was not meant to cast a negative view on chores so much as a positive view of spending time with Jesus. So, we can see that what they valued influenced what they did and how they did it.
We should be careful of using a scale that puts our value of performance and duty on one side and our value of grace on the other. Because here's the thing, what sits on the opposite side of a performance-based evaluation of self and others is not necessarily grace. What lies on the other side could also be a thoughtless, carefree and unloving type of free living.
This brings me to the point of describing 2 ways in which we can miss grace.
One way we can miss grace is by valuing performance in a legalistic way. It is evident by a life of things like being ungracious, unforgiving, overly strict, proud and domineering. It can often produce a false sense of success (the frail kind that one must strive to protect and isn't really true success anyway) and on the other side can cause a person to feel defeated and hopeless.
Another way we can miss grace is by taking it for granted. This can be evident by a person leading an unprincipled, undisciplined and unloving life where they care more about themselves than others. It can feel right because these people may have great joy, but their joy is in the freedom itself rather than in Christ, the one who freed them. Personally, I've spent too much of my life allowing myself to sin while resting in the security of the grace I've been given. We have the ability to rejoice and celebrate the grace we have been given, would we celebrate by living in an unloving way? Paul puts it very well in Romans 6:22 when he says:
But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit that you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.
Romans 6:22 (ESV)
A proper understanding and appreciation for grace means that a person doesn't understand their value to be in what they accomplish but in what God has accomplished in them. A person who understands grace doesn't try to save himself by earning a spot in heaven with good works, righteous busyness and wholesome living, but rejoices in God's saving works, Jesus' perfect righteousness and sinless life. They recognize that they are sinners, just like everyone else. It also means that a person appreciates the grace offered by God and takes joy in the goodness of grace. It allows one to celebrate the graces given by God: the graces of a second chance, a new life and an eternal purpose. Once we understand that not only were we saved from something, we were saved for something, it motivates us to live life with purpose.
Appreciating grace is the key to removing feelings of entitlement as we enjoy grace shown to us and to others. Understanding grace removes the apathy towards right living and motivates one to appreciate God's holiness and to respect God's desires. So, let us not miss grace by negating it with legalism or neglecting it with ingratitude. But rather, let us allow grace to shape who we are, what we care about, what we do, and how we do it.
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