“Far from withdrawing, God became deeply and compassionately involved with his lonely, guilty, fearful, and insecure human creatures. Deep within him is the urge to mend broken people.”

    Jesus spoke the parable of the two sons to his opponents — specifically, the chief priests and elders of the people. His main purpose is to defend the Gospel against critics who fail to see that God cares about sinners. These opponents are particularly offended by Jesus’ practice of eating with the despised. (Joachim Jeremias, Rediscovering the Parables, p. 98) Jesus’ parable focuses on a mysterious truth about God, a paradox that lies at the heart of the Christian faith.

    If Christians fail to understand this paradox, we fall into the tragedy of the Pharisees, chief priests, and scribes. Like them, we fall victim to religious bigotry, prejudice, hatred, legalistic self-righteousness, doctrinal dogmatism, and sectarianism. Here is the paradox: Love wields more power when it loses than hate wields when it wins. The best news is the power of self-giving love at the cross of Christ: “But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself” (John 12:32).

    God’s punctuation mark for history is in the shape of a cross. We celebrate the power of self-giving love when we sing, “In the Cross of Christ I Glory, Towering o’er the Wrecks of Time.” To a culture caught up in the achievement of immediate results, such a value appears to be sheer insanity. In the deepest understandings of reality, however, we find it true that self-giving love is the greatest power.

    Why does self-giving love wield such great power? Why is it that God has opened his rule to the totally lost-the prostitutes, the poor, the proud? This is precisely the question of the chief priests and elders when they asked Jesus, “By what authority are you doing these things?” (Matt. 21:23). Their inquiry provided Jesus the opportunity to tell another story.

One day a man who has two sons tells each of them to go to work in the family vineyard. One son refuses at first to go but later changes his mind and goes. The second son immediately answers, “I will,” but he does not go.

“Which of these two sons did the father’s will?” asked Jesus. The chief priests and elders answered, “The first son.” Then Jesus said to them, “The tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you. For, John the Baptist came to show you the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and prostitutes did. And even after you saw this, you did not repent and believe him.”

Look how powerful God’s self-giving love really is!

    The rule of God is offered to all, Jesus announces. Many lost people eventually accept it. While some religious people appear to do so, they actually refuse it. God’s self-giving love wins the hearts and souls of the very people who appear to be far from God. Look how powerful God’s self-giving love really is! It changes them from sinners to saints, from persecutors to preachers, from enemies to friends of God. What else can reach sinners who are sick and hurting? What else can offer healing, wholeness, and help?

    When self-giving love is offered to sinners, it can bring about repentance and change. Self-giving love is the greatest power and the best news because nothing else has such power to change people.

    The rule of God is the rule of self-giving love. It meets us where we are, and it changes our hearts. In God’s economy, winners become losers and losers become winners. In contrast, what power has a religion that draws the self-righteous and bars sinners, that exalts doctrinal dogmatism and gets nervous about grace, that endlessly repeats its traditions and is silent about self-giving love? Its only effect is to build a wall between its members and God. So, tax collectors and prostitutes enter the kingdom of God ahead of the leaders of such a religion.

    “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, says the Lord” (Zech. 4:6)

    In other words, we all get there by grace — there’s no other way. God’s self-giving love love meets us where we are, lost and sinful, and changes our hearts.

© 2001, Prentice Meador. Excerpted from Stories That Astonish: The Parables of Jesus, HillCrest Publishing, 2001. Used by permission.
Title: "God at Work: Meeting Us Where We Are"
Author: Prentice Meador
Publication Date: May 5, 2001

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