God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them. (Hebrews 6:10)
One of the temptations when the going gets rough is to think that God is
somehow displeased with us and punishing us. Everything we’ve done hasn’t
mattered to God at all. None of it is good enough. Somehow, we’ve done
something so terribly wrong that nothing else matters – even though we can’t
figure out what that thing is.
The problem of God being displeased with us and punishing us even though
we don’t know what we did to deserve it is deal with in Job. Bad things happen
to good people, period. We don’t know why, but we need to get past the silly
notion that bad things don’t happen to good people, or that good things don’t
happen to bad people. God gives grace to both and allows hardship to both. It’s
not a contest.
But today’s passage deals with the other issue: the idea that everything
we’ve done doesn’t matter to God. The reality is probably that we haven’t done
as much as we think we have, and that we’ve done more than we think we have,
but that God may not see the things we’ve done in the same way. But, putting
the evaluation of what we’ve done aside, let’s consider.
How would you like it if someone made a habit of reminding you of what a
great person they are (especially if you don’t agree)? What would your reaction
be to someone who used what they’ve done for you as the means by which to
demand that you do for them? How would you feel about a relationship built
entirely on what amounts to business transactions? Would you really want to
have to pay the cost of getting something good from God? Over and over?
And why would you want your life established on this basis? The mean
reason that comes to mind is a comforting one – that it puts us in control of
the situation. “OK, God, I helped that little old man across the road, now You
have to increase my metabolism so that I can eat what I want to and not gain
weight.” (Do we ever think that God is allowing our metabolism to be low so that
we don’t have to eat so much to stay alive – thus saving us money? I’m not
saying it’s so, just that there’s more than one way to look at things.)
More important than the simple transactionism, what should someone have
to do to get God to give them something. Do we have a reasonable wage scale? If
we do something good worth $1, what equivalent good should we expect from God.
And what if, at the end of the day, we are in the negative range? Who gets to
decide?
The wage scale was set, long ago. The wages of sin is death. No matter
what sin. No matter what the provocation. No matter what. That’s what we
deserve. All the good we do doesn’t erase that debt. But God doesn’t work on such
a transactional basis. Once the debt has been wiped out, He doesn’t operate on
a transactional basis, but on the basis of love, and so should we. He doesn’t forget
the right we’ve done, but it’s not the basis of bargaining with Him. What we do
matters, but not as a means of keeping score.
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