He Giveth, And He Giveth, And He Giveth Again

The word for the day is ingrate. When a person is consistently ungrateful, we call him or her an ingrate. You hold a door open for someone and they don’t say “thank-you.” You are driving and you let someone in and they do not wave. You go out of your way to tell a guy that he dropped his wallet, but you find out that he had just stolen it and only wanted the cash, and then you get punched in the face. Then you throw the wallet at him and knock him unconscious because there was like a hundred pennies in the coin pouch section. Ya. What was I talking about before? Oh – ingrates. Ya, that guy wasn’t too grateful for me throwing that wallet at him. I nursed him back to health though.

Kidding aside, we have all run into people (or may BE one) who are not thankful, and are just plain hard to be nice to. You are willing to do someone a good turn, just as long as they are aware of how put out you are to do it. We don’t even mind when no one else notices, just as long as the recipient does. When we think our good deed will go un-thanked, we second guess the whole thing. Don’t we? I don’t think it’s just me. More so, when people are demanding when there is no obligation on your part, it’s even harder. So what do you do? Well, you probably don’t throw the wallet at him.

How is Christ, as a giver, different than everyone else on the planet? There are giving people here that would have no connection to God whatsoever, and yet they still give. I was stranded on the side of the road and a guy helped me for hours to get back on the road. He ended up driving me and my family home. Not a capital “B” believer, but a believer in giving. I sure learned a lesson about the golden rule that day. But Jesus is different. His giving put him on a level so astronomically higher, that our most heroic efforts look like pocket lint in comparison.

You see, he gave not only when it was not received gratefully, but when it was taken from him by such force it killed him. His life was taken. He willingly gave what was murderously exacted from him. The very worst that the world could do was kill God’s Son, and yet it was the very thing he came to allow. Pardon the comparison here, but think of giving your wife to a rapist or your child to a pedophile. What happened to Jesus was worse. He was “altogether lovely”, “full of grace and truth”, and simply perfect. The man that everyone should have been dying to protect, died in the place of his murderers.

We are told in the New Testament to do better than just the golden rule. “Do as you would be done by” was the height of the Old Covenant. The new covenant is higher. Not just “love your neighbour as yourself” but love your neighbour MORE than yourself. The words go: “Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another.” Preference to one another should mark us as believers in Jesus. When we go without rent money to pay another’s rent, or when we offer our vehicle to one who has just crashed theirs, we are living out this kind of love. When we give and there are no thanks in return and even when we are demanded to give something that is not necessary, we are then loving like Christ. Instead of throwing your wallet at someone, open it up.

BJ

Love & Wrath

My brother Ben jokes about a product he would love to manufacture. I’m not sure if he has finalized the name for it yet, but the marketing goes like this: “Nuts and gum, together at last!” Maybe he’ll call it Gumnuts, or just Num. Regardless, it’s a terrible idea, but funny. I forgot I was chewing gum once and threw a potato chip in my mouth. It was pretty much a write off for both the gum and the chip.

Sometimes it’s hard to believe that two such antagonists could ever come together and unite on a common cause. Polar opposites repel each other. It’s simply a magnetic thing. But we find it sometimes. Love and hate are not always that far apart - and not just when two people “love to hate each other.” Love is an exclusive sort of thing. Hatred comes easy when something gets in the way of that love. You may have heard people talk about “loving the sinner and hating the sin.” (That phrase can be taken too far, but bear with me.) Sin disrupts relationships and gets in the way of love. But love and hate unite on a common cause, and that being a person. A person is a combination of soul and sin – something to be loved, and something to be hated.

When it comes to the Lord, there are aspects of Him that seem like antagonists. He is the very definition of love, and yet we find Him wrathful. He is kind and merciful, and yet He demands justice. When it comes to us, he definitely loves, but has a consistent judgmental stance toward us due to the sin in our lives. It’s like a stalemate. Neither attribute can move into check. We do not find one outdoing the other.

The Pharisees had hoped that Jesus would be a kind of chess piece. On several occasions, they “played” Him to see what he would do. They presented a woman caught in adultery, and thought they had caught Him between his graciousness and his righteousness. If he has her stoned, they win, and if he lets her go, they win. But Jesus ends up playing them instead doesn’t he? “He who is without sin may throw a stone at her first.” He caught them in their hypocrisy (where was the other adulterer?). Another time, they asked Him if it was right to pay taxes to Caesar. Jesus tells them to bring the coin for the tax to Him, and asks whose picture is on it. They say, “Caesars.” Jesus then says one of the most profound things ever uttered, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” They could not play Him, and in His responses we find that he joins these ideas of wrath and mercy, grace and justice.

These attributes are seen together no better than in the cross. Love and judgment are like the two beams of wood that formed it. There, Jesus was forsaken by God the Father whose felled wrath was pictured by those three hours of darkness. At the same time, the willingness and ability of Jesus to bear that wrath on our behalf is the epitome of love. The stalemate was over. Justice is completely satisfied by the offering of the life of the Son of God. Grace is also unfettered to lavish itself upon us because of the willingness of that offering. God is free to love us because his righteous requirements have been met by his only Son, for us.

The next time you drink orange juice immediately after brushing your teeth, remember how the attributes of God meet in Jesus. And let’s hope that my brother never gets to put nuts and gum together.

BJ