"But he answered one of them, and said, Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny?
Take that thine is, and go thy way: I will give unto this last, even as unto thee.
Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?"
Matthew 20:13-15
In church today we were talking about reconciliation and the atonement, and how Christ heals all wounds and pays all debts between us, so if we owe or are owed anything, we resolve that with Christ and not with each other.
That's hard for us to accept sometimes, because we're really angry about whatever happened, and we want justice... like in this verse. The workers who had worked all day wanted to be paid more than the people who had worked only an hour. That totally seems just to us, right?
Except, they agreed to certain wages, and they were paid them in full. They got exactly what they were promised. That *is* justice, and it has already been served. And Christ has already paid our price as well. Justice has nothing to do with it anymore, except as God administers it.
It's a good question: "Is thine eye evil, because I am good?" I think our eyes are pretty evil a lot more than we realize. We want "fairness" when we think it means we get what someone else has, but we adamantly do not want it when it means that someone else gets what we have. What the other workers want in the parable, and what we often want, is to have an advantage, or to have more. We don't seem to actually want equality--in fact the idea can even scare us if we already have a lot of something we care about. What if we lose something? We like the idea of a Zion society, but like Ananias and Sapphira, we often want the glory without the actual sacrifice (Acts 5:1-4).
It's a tough thing to overcome in ourselves, and I am definitely not saying that I am perfect in this regard either. Perhaps a good place to start today is by remembering this question, and being aware that our eyes are often evil because of God's goodness. Let's work on our covetousness and our jealousy and our desire to be better and to have more than each other. Let's work on remembering that we're all sinners, and dust, and in need of a lot of help. Let's work on loving other people enough that we want them to have what we have, and let's pray to God and ask him to help us change our hearts, and our evil eyes.
Take that thine is, and go thy way: I will give unto this last, even as unto thee.
Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good?"
Matthew 20:13-15
In church today we were talking about reconciliation and the atonement, and how Christ heals all wounds and pays all debts between us, so if we owe or are owed anything, we resolve that with Christ and not with each other.
That's hard for us to accept sometimes, because we're really angry about whatever happened, and we want justice... like in this verse. The workers who had worked all day wanted to be paid more than the people who had worked only an hour. That totally seems just to us, right?
Except, they agreed to certain wages, and they were paid them in full. They got exactly what they were promised. That *is* justice, and it has already been served. And Christ has already paid our price as well. Justice has nothing to do with it anymore, except as God administers it.
It's a good question: "Is thine eye evil, because I am good?" I think our eyes are pretty evil a lot more than we realize. We want "fairness" when we think it means we get what someone else has, but we adamantly do not want it when it means that someone else gets what we have. What the other workers want in the parable, and what we often want, is to have an advantage, or to have more. We don't seem to actually want equality--in fact the idea can even scare us if we already have a lot of something we care about. What if we lose something? We like the idea of a Zion society, but like Ananias and Sapphira, we often want the glory without the actual sacrifice (Acts 5:1-4).
It's a tough thing to overcome in ourselves, and I am definitely not saying that I am perfect in this regard either. Perhaps a good place to start today is by remembering this question, and being aware that our eyes are often evil because of God's goodness. Let's work on our covetousness and our jealousy and our desire to be better and to have more than each other. Let's work on remembering that we're all sinners, and dust, and in need of a lot of help. Let's work on loving other people enough that we want them to have what we have, and let's pray to God and ask him to help us change our hearts, and our evil eyes.
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