God Wants Sons, Not Slaves

Now in putting everything in subjection to [man], he left nothing outside his control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to [man.] But we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all of one. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters. (Hebrews 2:8-11)

Wages or Gift?

Our pastor preached that true Christianity differs from all other beliefs in that they are all about law-keeping and true belief in Christ is about grace. Assuming he is correct and the gospel is about grace as opposed to law-keeping, what kind of god(s) do people believe in that would demand law-keeping? What kind of person would want to serve such a god?

Another way Paul talks about such a law-keeping faith is one that works for wages. Wages are what is given for valued work. More work, more wages. This is not a bad thing in itself. It is only right that a person who works harder and better deserves more wages for their work. But the kind of god who gives wages for work is one that wants workers or slaves. If God gave us wages for our work, it would show that he made people to be his slaves.

Also, wages are one way to make work valuable. Indirectly, they also make a person feel valued. It is natural to feel this way. Significance is tied to work. It can be tied in a healthy way. Work builds the value of one's self. This is a good thing and part of how we are made. Work builds self-worth, but work is not the worth of one's self. It is what comes from a person who values the life they live with God and with others. People mistake work as the source of such value rather than the course of it. In relation to God, humanity warps their self-worth into selfish ambition, trying to prove to God and themselves their worth before him and others through work. Any wages earned from such work ultimately become self-justification of our worth before God. Jesus points out such a mentality in his parable about unfair wages. (Matthew 20:1-16)

But what if God does not want slaves, but sons and daughters? Perhaps this is why he gave life with him as a gift rather than wages. Wages are for valued work, gifts are for valued people. A god who merely wants slaves makes sense to us. It is an old idea and plays into our general idea that powerful people want to get work out of the sweat of someone else's brow.  What we have in Jesus is a God who loves and values people and works for us. "For God so loved the world, he gave his only Son." Gift. He values these people.

Now God did not need to love people. He is love. He does not love by necessity, but by nature. In order to make sons and daughters, God had to do more than love them. They had to become more than objects of his love; they had to become recipients. He had to enable them to love him. And even more: he had to enable them to love as he loves. People cannot do this without his direct action on them. No amount of convincing, begging, threatening, pushing, or pounding will bring such a love into a person. That is because this kind of love is what the life of God is. And no one has life in themselves but God alone. So if they are to live, he must give this life that is love to them.

Problems with God's Love

Two problems. The first is that such love can only be accepted, not forced. In making people as they are and having the kind of love he has, God could not force people to have such love. It needs to be freely given and freely received. So God has had a continuing conversation with persons and with humanity called his "revelation" in order to find those who would freely receive such love. It is not a mystery to God who those people are. They are chosen by grace, that is, they are drawn by his free gift of life and love with himself.

Some are not drawn to this gift and refuse it. Why? This is the second problem. Sin. In making people who can freely receive his gift, he made people who could freely refuse it as well. It is beyond understanding how God can make a person who can freely refuse him. And yet we see that played out in the life of Jesus, who "came to that which was his own and his own did not receive him." God made people who could reject him. It seems he did this mostly for the sake of those who would receive him. He did not want people to reject him, but was willing to have it that way so that he might have those who would receive him and become his children.

Sin proves to be a greater problem that just some refusing God. Everyone resists and refuses him. It is now human nature to do so. This does not mean that God makes us that way, but that we grow up knowing no other way. Even good homes and churches produce people broken by their sin. Better parenting and education are good, but they cannot fix this. Only new life from above takes care of this problem, but how does God get past our resistance without forcing us to love him? Conversation. Revelation. Gospel. In the end he has sent his final Word in Jesus. The Word of love, the Word of command, the Word of judgment, the Word of grace and mercy. His conversation with humanity and with each person. "Who do you say that I am?" In conversing, God finds those who would and can receive his life of love.

Beyond Forgiveness

The conversation comes to utter conversion. In the X-men world, Wolverine has his skeleton changed from bone to impervious metal, his skin and organs changed from ones easily broken and hurt, to ones supernatural in strength and healing. The process is agonizing. It nearly kills him. Repentance unto conversion is like that. The body bent on sinning is put to death and converted into another body. The heart, mind, and soul also become something else and something more.

Conversion leading to discipleship is like a seed being planted. The seed dissolves and gives way to the plant. So these bodies will dissolve and be transfigured into lasting, supernatural bodies that will "shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father." (Matthew 13:43) This body is used up in the journey to God as the inner self is renewed day by day. The promise of God is in this process of growth which is called discipleship. We learn some agonizing lessons. God's mercy continually reminds us in our struggles that his desire is for our growth in our new life, not for punishment. Punishment only comes to those who go through pain with no hope. God's grace supplies us with supernatural strength in our times of need and request, and is not just for our forgiveness. Forgiveness is needed, but also transcended.

Whatever work we may do, then, is not what brings us to God, but what God brings to us. Like Adam naming the animals in the Garden of Eden, we name our experiences before God. In our sin, we name them as opportunities to grab and take, to push and force, to come out on top and look good. As we learn from God, we find we can name our experiences places where we see God's love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, and self-control. As we name them correctly, we learn to live them as well. That is thankfulness, naming life rightly and living it well. The only life worth being thankful for is the one that God gives by giving himself to us.

And so our slavery opens up into adoption. We become like our master by his gift to us and end up as his daughters and sons. We find that we are not significant because of what we do, but what we do comes out of our significant life with God. It is like being Esther who was brought into the Persian court. We find that God has placed us in this world and in this life we have, and we can ask ourselves,  "Who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" (Esther 4:14) We are significant because of the one who places us and gives us being. Perhaps we can also learn from Esther in realizing our greatest work is in bringing our requests and intercessions before the King. We are placed to pray, to praise, to labor, to be thankful in the life God has given us. That is our significance and our value. We are not trying to overcome our lives, but have overcoming lives. That is our heritage as God's children.

Under New Managment

The sermon on Sunday got me thinking about Jesus talk about prayer in Matthew 6.

I would outline it as follows:

1. Prayer is not for managing people.
2. Prayer is not for managing God.
3. Prayer is for getting under new management.
4. Which shows up by becoming a forgiving person.

Jesus says that hypocrites pray so that others might see them. The heart of this is not public/private prayer, but the use of prayer to manage others. Prayer can be on the top of manipulative language. We are tempted to use it to get people to do what we want. We may want them to honor us or avoid us. It may be so that other people will line up and shut up. This is not about God, but about us.

Our desires play a role in prayer. Jesus would not have it otherwise. They can't play the biggest role, however. Otherwise we end up using prayer to manage other people.

Jesus says people who don't know God pray with many words so that God might hear them. The God who is absent - whether because he does not exist, or is just far away - is a source of fear. Prayer to such a God is more often a way of keeping him away rather than drawing near to him. We need such a God at times, but we don't really want him around. Instead of talking to him, we talk at him. So we might hope that our many words will somehow keep him distant while getting us what we want.

Asking is so important in prayer. But when we assume that God does not care or is not listening, we heap up "empty phrases" rather than talk with him. Asking becomes either conjuring or just a formality.

We must let go of managing other people or managing God in order to really pray. In prayer we adopt new management.

• Our Father in heaven: It's a family business. We are learning the trades of the heavens from our Father who works there.
• Hallowed be your name: The business of God has a name. We have a name under it. We long for the name of this work and the One who works to be honored, respected, and loved by all. When people hear the name of our business with God, we long for it to be a joy and relief to them.
• Your kingdom come. . . : Things on earth are not like they are in the heavens. The work and message we bring is how business is done in the heavens with our Father. The kingdom is not absent nor is it limited. There are just other kingdoms allowed to compete with God's work and Christ's business. We work to bring his "goods" to all people.
• Give us today our daily bread: Not wages. Our needs and wants fulfilled each day as we seek God and his work. We ask not because he is unwilling to give to us, but because we are often unwilling to receive from him.
• Forgive us. . . : The heart of our business on earth is our character. We come to offer forgiveness even as it has been offered to us. Forgiveness is central because all other goods from heaven come with it. Grudges destroy whatever good we hope to bring or to receive.
• Lead us not into temptation: The "competition" leads people into temptation and delivers them into evil in order to get what they want. To follow God and learn his work is to leave temptation behind and be delivered from the evil it will take us into.

I believe that basically the joining God in his business can be boiled down to one part of the prayer: "Hallowed be your name." On this all the other requests stand or fall. No other name can be sweeter than "Father." Where His name is not hallowed, there are other kingdoms which compete with his. His name is hallowed because he daily provides, forgives, and leads us.His name is hallowed because he teaches us to provide, forgive, and lead others as he would.

The final indication that we are in God's business is whether we are forgiving people. We forgive when we have the resources to forgive from our Father. We are under his management when we know his provision, his forgiveness, and his deliverance from temptation and evil. Without these we will not be forgiving, but hold grudges.

Perhaps the most obvious evidence of our lack of forgiveness is our anger and contempt for other people. A forgiving person is not an angry person. Nearly all of our reasons for anger do not have anything to do with forgiveness. They are self-justifying. Our anger indicates that we are not in God's business, but on our own, needing to "make it happen." This is why unforgiving, angry people are not praying people.