Unsettling Grace: God's Generous Love for All

Grace, undeserved, unearned, unearnable favor. Favor from God not based on anything you did. In fact, in spite of everything you've done. It's what you crave, even though you may not have had the word, it's what you crave and it's what you crave when you hurt someone you love, and it's what you crave when you hurt someone or offend someone that you need. Because in that moment, you can't take back what you've done and you can't erase the past, but in that moment, you want them to treat you, you want them to accept you, you want them to feel about you, you want them to see you in a way as if whatever you had done as if it never even happened. [00:02:07]

When correctly applied, grace really does solve just about everything. When it comes to a man and a woman in a relationship, when it comes to parents and their kids, when it comes to kids and their parents, when it comes to what's going on at work or a broken friendship or any kind of broken relationship, that grace really is the solution, when properly applied, for just about everything. But there's something interesting and mysterious about grace. There's a sense in which grace doesn't even exist until it is first experienced. Grace is just a word until it's experienced. [00:03:12]

The experience of grace requires a relationship. Where there is no relationship, there can be no transfer or experience of grace. And this is why, this is so important, this is why God had to show up among us as one of us. This is why God had to show up. We would have never known, we would have never known the grace of God without the presence of God. It would've just been a word, a term, a category that nobody experienced until they experience the presence of God. [00:03:37]

The parable of the workers in the vineyard reveals the unsettling generosity of God's kingdom, where everyone receives what they do not deserve, highlighting the radical nature of grace. It's unsettling because it seems so unfair. And one of the reasons that I believe that these are the actual words of Jesus and that these weren't written decades later by the church is because they're so brilliant, they hold together so well, and besides, anybody who could write this well would've taken credit for it. [00:17:30]

In this next statement, Jesus illuminates the absurdity of your resistance to grace, either extending grace or your willingness to receive it. In this next instant, with a single line, Jesus puts the spotlight right on my hypocrisy when it comes to the subject and the nature of grace. You ready for this? Still in the parable. "Or," He says through the vineyard owner to the fictitious person in the vineyard, and through that person to us, "Or are you resentful because I am generous?" [00:22:14]

Grace doesn't compare because grace in Jesus is always married to truth. And the truth is we have all fallen short of God's standard. Now the amazing thing, this is why, again, I can understand why you may not believe this is true, but this is the part where I just think surely there's something on the inside of you that thinks what if that were true? Because the system that Jesus leaves us with at the end of His ministry, the system that the apostle Paul and Peter and others would come along behind Jesus and tease out and explain and document for us is fairer than fair. [00:26:21]

In the kingdom of God, over and over Jesus emphasized this, everybody is invited, everybody. The people who showed up at six, the people who showed up at noon, the people who showed up at three, the people who showed up at five, everybody's invited. The know betters and did betters, maybe like people a little bit like me, the didn't know betters, so I didn't know to do different than I did, maybe people like you, and even the knew betters but did it anyway people. [00:28:12]

Everybody, everybody is invited to the kingdom of God. And everybody gets in through the same door. Jesus, Jesus, grace and truth personified. (chuckles) Jesus, who called sin sin, called sinners sinners, and then died for all the sinners. Jesus, who called sin a sin, He never backed down, sinners sinners, and then laid down His life for the sin of the sinners. And everybody comes through the same door the same way, by placing their personal faith in Christ as their Savior. [00:28:52]

Trusting that what He did on our behalf made us right with God, regardless of how unright we've been and regardless of how unsettling that might sound. [00:29:34]

The story of Zacchaeus illustrates that grace is extended to those who least deserve it, challenging our human notions of fairness and justice. Jesus shocks everybody listening and everybody in the first or second century who would read this story by saying, "I must stay at your house today." (laughs) And the disciples groan. Can't we just pass through? Are you not even paying attention to your own story, Jesus? We are passing through, and now you wanna stop and have lunch. [00:10:19]

So unsettling, so upside down, so backwards, so unexpected. Everything about it's wrong. And it was unsettling to Jesus' original audience, and it was unsettling to people for the next several hundred years who would read this account, and it's unsettling to you to the degree that you understand the context of the story because they and because we don't necessarily understand the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven, God's economy, the way that God sees the world, the way that God sees you, the way that God sees me. [00:11:22]

Jesus invites you and Jesus invites me, Jesus invites all of us to see the world differently and to see people differently and to see the people around us differently and to see our relationship to God differently. Because the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven, is characterized by unsettling generosity. And Jesus, through this parable, is asking me, and Jesus, through this parable, is asking you, can you handle that? Can you handle that? Will you participate in that? [00:24:14]