How do you feel when you go into a café – you pay for your coffee or meal – and there you see the “tip jar”. Do you feel guilty if you don’t leave a tip? In Australia we are not as used to “tipping” as in America because our rate of pay is higher. And you hear people grumbling – why should I give a tip – they get paid – I don’t get a tip for doing my job. In the US you often hear when watching a TV how wait staff say that they rely on their tips to make a living. A tip goes over and above what you owe for what you have received. The café is responsible for paying staff – you pay for your products. A tip is a bonus.
If you keep this in mind and look at today’s reading from Paul, I think this is the reasoning Paul is trying to make when it comes to God’s grace and our eternal life. He says – Now to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due. It’s what’s called a quid pro quo – you do something and you receive something in return. Over and above what is due is considered a gift – like a tip. So Paul’s line of reasoning is that what we deserve is very different to what we receive. We deserve God’s eternal judgment. But what we receive is eternal life in heaven. In Romans chapter 6 Paul will make that plainly clear when he says: For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
So Paul is making it very clear that there is nothing due to us from God that equates to eternal life. On the contrary – we deserve only death. So the good works we do, do not contribute one iota to our salvation. No. Everything we do, no matter how good is not sufficient for what we owe. That is so hard to understand but it is so freeing. Our eternal life in heaven is a pure undeserved gift from God.
It’s not a tip for the good service we’ve provided.
Paul uses the example of Abraham to explain the gift of God’s righteousness. God wanted to use Abraham (or Abram as he was then known) to show how righteousness works. Righteousness means being made right by God. And it’s there in the first verse: The Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your family and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. God was telling Abraham to leave EVERYTHING behind – your country, your family, your father’s house. God was telling Abraham to empty himself and fill the empty void with God – Go to the land “I WILL SHOW YOU”. God didn’t tell Abraham where he was going. He had to trust God leading him. And Paul says – Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. It wasn’t a reward for good works. No. Abraham didn’t know what he was doing – he was simply trusting God.
He didn’t ask “why” or “where am I going”.
And that’s where Paul makes a distinction between good works and trust. To one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due. But to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness. That’s what Abraham did. He left everything worldly behind. And this is also what Jesus is trying to teach Nicodemus.
Jesus says – no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.
There is nothing in this life that can credit us with the kingdom of God. And Nicodemus is stumped. He doesn’t understand how our earthly good works don’t contribute to God’s righteousness. Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born? Nicodemus only sees the physical born – the flesh – and can’t understand how someone goes through a 2nd physical birth.
How can I re-enter my mother’s womb and be born again?
And Jesus corrects him:
No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.
What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.
And in the next Chapter, Jesus says to the Samaritan woman at the well – God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.
Jesus uses an example Nicodemus would have understood – the venomous snakes God sent in the days of Moses because of the Israelites grumbling. To escape death there was nothing they could do except trust God and a bronze serpent that he had Moses erect and to simply look at it and believe. They were still bitten by venomous snakes but by trusting God and looking at the bronze serpent they didn’t die from the venom. Jesus says: just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. No works – just trust. And then we hear the entire work of God through Jesus in one sentence: God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. That’s it. No complicated system of sacrifices. No list of rules we have to follow. No. God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
The pure Gospel from the one whom Paul says – gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.
When we go through times of doubts of our worthiness before God it is easy to look at the things we do to comfort ourselves. But that may provide a temporary comfort but we will find ourselves need to keep going back again and again.
So instead of looking back at what we have done we look to what God has done because that is not temporary but forever. And just as Israel looked at the bronze serpent that was lifted high to save them from death, we keep looking to the cross of Jesus Christ who was lifted high so that we would not perish but receive eternal life.
