Grace and Truce: The Cutting Edge of Christmas (Audio and Text)
“Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.”
Luke 2:14
I want to share some thoughts on the message from the assembly of angels (“heavenly host”) in the Gospel of Luke, right after the angel’s announcement to the shepherds of Jesus’ birth. It’s a verse we’re all familiar with, thanks in part to the greeting card industry and the Charlie Brown Christmas Special. But I suspect it’s overlooked and even misconstrued given our over-familiarity and the woeful lack of context provided by Hallmark.
The translation favored by greeting cards, “Peace on earth, goodwill toward men,” is sufficiently vague and inoffensive that we can project onto it virtually any meaning that suits our fancy. So I think it’s worth taking a closer look at this proclamation of praise and foretelling. As always, I invite you to examine the scriptures yourself and whack me upside the head with a swimmer’s noodle should you find errors in my interpretation.
“Peace on Earth.” What Peace?
I don’t know about you, but when the angels talk of peace on earth, my skeptic’s antenna goes up. If God was intending to usher in peace on earth by sending Jesus, the results so far have been underwhelming. Since Christ’s birth, we’ve had a continual procession of wars, mass killings, and murder, not to mention lesser, everyday acts of violence and mayhem that share a common root: human beings. Just five minutes dialed into our local news station is enough to convince that peace on earth is wishful thinking at best. So let me propose an alternate and more biblically sound explanation for the angels’ announcement.
The angels aren’t referring to the wars and hostility between people. They’re referring to the rebellion and ongoing war by mankind against God. In short, God is declaring peace to human insurgents who are radically alienated from His goodness and truth. God’s peace entreaty is one that extends vertically – between God and people, rather than horizontally — among and between people. “Horizontal” peace is an outgrowth of, and preconditioned by, “vertical” peace. Jesus himself left no room for confusion regarding his mission on earth – he tells us plainly: “Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three.” (Luke 12:51-52) One of the great hymns of Christmas succinctly proclaims what the gospel is all about: “God and sinners reconciled.”
The idea that from birth we are universally at war with God is hard to swallow in our self-esteem obsessed culture. But Jesus’ entire ministry, his teachings, and indeed the cross he endured make no sense unless it is true. The Apostle Paul didn’t mince words about this reality when, speaking by the Holy Spirit, he tells believers in the city of Colossus: “Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.” (Colossians 1:21)
This universal condition of alienation is marked, Paul tells us, by the following posture: “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.” (Romans 1:21) You may ask, “How can Paul say that we know a God who is invisible and immaterial?” Paul says that although we may suppress this discomforting knowledge, we all innately know that a righteous God exists, since He can plainly be seen in the majesty, complexity, and beauty of creation, as well revealed to us through our God-given sense of right and wrong. (Romans 1:18-20; Romans 3:14)
Since the fall of humankind, from birth we are naturally predisposed against submission to God. An old saying succinctly explains this reality: “We aren’t sinners because we sin; we sin because we are sinners.” We have a deeply rooted spiritual deadness that continually resists God and His ways, and which regularly is revealed in our thoughts, words, and deeds. That deadness prevents us from even desiring to know the true God. But it does not suppress our desire for worship, for which we are hardwired. But, instead of God, in our lost condition we worship anything and everything that isn’t God. (Folks who question why Christians would worship an invisible God often have no difficulty with fans shouting and singing praises to a rock star or football player at a stadium with 80,000 other devotees.)
Dealing with individual sins is absolutely of no use unless the inner alienation – indeed, a very real rebellion against God – is dealt with first. Individual sins are but symptoms of the inner disease. Not only are we powerless to cure the disease, we typically are oblivious to it. And so corrupting is the disease that when Jesus – the light of world – comes to earth, he is far from welcomed. (John 8:12) Shortly after his gospel summation in John 3:16, Jesus tells us:
This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. (John 3:19-20)
Jesus reminds us of what the bible says elsewhere: “There is no one who seeks God.” (Romans 3:12; Psalms 14:1-3; 53:1-3) Hence, while Jesus’ life and sacrificial death are absolutely necessary for our redemption, they are not redemptively sufficient. Absent a heart that believes and trusts God, something no heart is able from birth to do, Christ’s death has zero salvific effect.
How then can anyone be saved? This actually is a question asked by the Jesus’ disciples. Jesus’ answer is remarkable: “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” (Matthew 19:26) In short, God alone is able to transform a darkened rebel heart into one that trusts God for salvation. Which raises a somewhat different question: on what grounds or basis does God perform this transformational work that converts rebels?”
The Last will be First
Jesus told an extremely offensive story, about a landowner who hired some men to work in his vineyard. (Matthew 20:1-16) The man hired some guys early in morning and agreed to pay them a day’s wage, which at that time equaled one denarius. The landowner goes on to hire more guys at 9:00 am, 12:00 pm, 3:00 pm, and then at 5:00 pm, and tells them he’ll pay them what is right. So far, so good.
But here’s the kicker: at the end of the day, the landowner tells his foreman to begin paying the workers, beginning with the last ones hired. The guys hired at 5:00 pm get a full denarius, and so the guys that were hired early in the morning, who’ve been busting their cabooses for 12 hours, naturally expect more than that. But the landowner pays them what was agreed and not a shekel more. Needless to say, they grumble and complain, as I know I would.
Hadn’t Jesus read the Fair Wage Act of 15 A.D.? The landowner appears to be terribly unjust. His bizarre behavior is not only an affront to our enlightened 21st century sense of fairness and common decency – it was even offensive to the “primitive” folks in 30 A.D. So we somewhat expect that Jesus will launch into a stern rebuke of the landowner and tell him in unambiguous terms the unpleasant future awaiting him. But in fact, it’s just the reverse: Jesus rebukes the grumbling workers who slaved all day long for that single measly denarius!
I think this is one of those times where you shake your head and walk away, or you conclude that Jesus really is God. To me, this story is evidence that the gospel isn’t a human invention. Any sensible public relations firm in Jerusalem would have advised strongly against the telling of this parable, had Jesus bothered to consult one. And what would the Wise Men have thought upon hearing such unguarded, reckless, and irrational remarks?
Well, I think they would have gotten it—they were wise men, after all. Unlike me, they would have figured out quickly that this story is about grace, an idea that rankles proud folks like us. Jesus is telling us that God’s unmerited favor often comes to the least likely and the most undeserving of people. You can be galled by that (revealing your spirit of entitlement and self-righteousness) or rejoice in it. I recommend the latter. If you are galled by it, consider the landowner’s response to the grumblers who resented getting the same as those who worked far less than they had: “Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?” (Matthew 20:15)
Jesus is telling us we’ll either get what we deserve (so no one can complain of unfairness) or we’ll get something that is far better – heaven – on the basis of Jesus’ own perfect record. Grace is getting what you didn’t earn and don’t deserve. We recoil at the kind of people God saves, which includes crooked government officials, serial killers, drug lords, adulterers, liars, drunkards, tax cheats, thieves, and even shepherds (among the lowliest in ancient Israel).
And good upstanding folks like us? We who have “earned” heaven by virtue of our respectable lives and good works? Funny, we didn’t choose our parents, where we grew up, our intellect and educational opportunities, our temperament and personality, our capacity to work and make money, etc… but we’re more than happy to take credit for anything good that our lives might produce. And so we typically find it much harder to receive grace – because we frankly don’t much see our need for it. Fittingly, Jesus ends this parable saying: “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” (Matthew 20:16)
On Whom his Favor Rests
If you’re still with me, we need to address the final puzzler of the angels’ proclamation: the idea that God is delivering peace to men “on whom his favor rests.” Which begs the question: who are the people upon whom God’s favor rests? Why isn’t it everyone? If not, how can a good God possibly play favorites – even if on many occasions favor is extended to the lowliest among us? These are admittedly tough questions, and I’ll not try to answer them in this already too long essay. I think they’re worth wrestling with, though, simply because Jesus wasn’t at all shy in declaring the idea of God’s favor to a few. In fact, he tells us openly that, “many are invited, but few are chosen.” (Matthew 22:14) And, when his disciples asked him whether many or few would be saved, Jesus’ answer was a sobering “few.” (Matthew 7:13-14) Again, any reputable PR person would have been appalled at Jesus for his lack of tact and heartless insensitivity, which in its own way probably supports Jesus’ credibility.
This is not only extremely difficult teaching, it’s humbling. It means we can’t save ourselves, and in fact we won’t even see the need or want to be saved unless God extends favor to us first. Such as we saw in the parable above, the New Testament reaffirms what Moses tells us bluntly in the Old Testament: “God has mercy upon whom he has mercy, and he has compassion on whom he has compassion.” (Romans 9:15; Exodus 33: 19) That may eat at our sense of fairness, but we might also ask ourselves, “Why does God save anyone at all?” I suspect that our sense of fairness is challenged largely because we assume that heaven is somehow owed to us, and that God would never hold us accountable for our selfish, unbelieving, and rebellious ways.
I know that’s a tough note to end on for those who have little or no faith in Jesus. Merry Christmas – you’re doomed! Trust me, though, if you’ve read this far (bless you!) there is ample hope. Most folks don’t get this far – my own informal research suggests only about 1 in 250 do. So congrats, I think.
While it’s true that you can’t gin up faith in Jesus, you certainly can ask God for the gift of faith. You can also begin to read the bible and pray for insight to understand it. Go to a church that takes the bible seriously. And ask Christian friends to pray for you, at least one of whom will already be doing so. These are all means by which God brings faith and salvation to skeptics and otherwise ornery persons such as yours truly. Oh, and you might read Tim Keller’s excellent book, The Reason for God. (Full disclosure: you’ll actually need grace to do any of the above…..)
May the Prince of Peace do a mighty work in your life this Christmas and throughout the coming year.
Merry Christmas from ProofsandSpoofs.com.