Quid Pro Quo
“All the world religions can be placed in one of two camps: legalism or grace. Humankind does it or God does it. Salvation as a wage based on deeds alone – or salvation as a gift based on Christ’s death.”
- "He still Moves Stones", Max Lucado
The name on the front of my church is “Grace Church”. Other churches also incorporate the word “grace” in their name. But what IS grace? How is it opposed to legalism?
The standard definition of “grace” heard most is that grace is the unmerited favor of God toward man. But let’s get deeper into this concept.
Have you ever heard the Latin phrase Quid Pro Quo? This phrase means “something for something – something received or given in return for something else.” We humans learn quickly that we must work for what we get in our world. We earn wages for services we render. Quid pro quo. We earn approval and acceptance by deeds we perform. Quid pro quo. People like and love us if we help them, serve them, and make them feel or look good. Quid pro quo.
Grace is the opposite of quid pro quo. Grace is in the nature, essence, character of God. He gives and loves, without guarantee or prior evidence of any return on His investment. Not only does God not reward us for what we deserve, He gives us what we can never deserve. God returns good for evil, because when all is said and done, the best we humans can ever accomplish is tainted by sin. The product of our lives is at best flawed and imperfect. But God is grace – He does not respond to us “in kind” – He does not respond on a quid pro quo basis – something given in return for something else.
Do you understand? I don’t – not completely. On this issue, and many other spiritual realities, because we are physical, mortal, limited human beings we can only “see but a poor reflection as in a mirror” (1 Corinthians 13:12). While we may not comprehend grace completely during our earthly sojourn on this side of eternity, because of Jesus we may apprehend it by accepting and receiving it.
The very fact that grace is so unlike the way we humans operate and deal with each other – the very fact that grace seems “too good to be true” – is the primary reason why humans often do not accept this wonderful gift God offers to us all. We simply cannot believe it, for no one has ever related to us on that basis before so why, we reason, should God?
You may have noticed that there was one piece of furniture “missing” in the tabernacle and temple. No chair. No place to sit down. The lesson is obvious. The work of the priests of Israel was never done. The priests never had enough time to offer enough sacrifices to make the nation of Israel righteous. And if somehow they would have been able to find enough time, there were not enough animals to sacrifice to atone for the sins of Israel.
Likewise there is not enough time in the days of our lives to do enough good or perform enough righteous deeds, rituals or sacrifices so that we can earn our own right standing before God.
But Christ came as our High Priest and what did He do? He finished all the work of salvation. He completed all the work that needed to be done. And then what happened? “And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.” (Ephesians 2:6)
Note the verb tense – we are now seated with Christ. The Bible says nothing about your seat being reserved for you pending your good works. For those who accept Jesus Christ, no reservation needed and no waiting.
In the name of Christ, performance-based religion gives preference to who and what you know, how much you have and what you have accomplished. But Jesus offers everyone a seat in the most exclusive place in the universe, in the heavenly realms, based upon God’s grace. We are seated because of who He is, not because of who we are. The seat that Jesus offers you is freedom from the oppression of trying to work your way into God’s good graces and never being good enough. We have to admit that we are powerless to perform enough good deeds to get ourselves into God’s good graces. It is humbling to accept God’s grace – because we would rather try to “do it” ourselves.
Performance-based religion keeps us busy doing, performing, and accomplishing religious duties and obligations. Legalism expects us to work harder and do more, so that all the right things are said and done. We become trapped in an endless cycle of activity.
Authentic Christians are, of course, servants. If Jesus lives His life in us we will serve others, offering our time, talents, and treasures as spiritual acts of worship (Romans 12:1). But religious legalism can counterfeit Christ-centered service, sabotaging what Jesus does in and through us, convincing us that the things we do are obligating God to reward us. The key to this whole concept of grace versus liberalism is MOTIVATION. Is our motive in doing good works, in going to church, in helping others, to win God’s favor in our lives? Or is our motive for doing good derived from the thankfulness that God has given us salvation that we could not earn and didn’t deserve?
Do you really want what you deserve? You have probably heard about the eye for an eye principle of justice. An eye for an eye was a fundamental basis of retributive justice under the legalism of the Old Covenant. But the New Covenant eliminates religion as a “middle-man” between God and us. The message is that Jesus changes everything. The New Covenant is all about Him – it is all about God’s grace.
Consider the parable of the workers in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16). It’s a story about God’s grace and how we react to it. The owner/employer is the central figure in this drama, in control of the harvest from the beginning of the parable to the end. He is probably trying to harvest all of his grapes in one day. Farm workers who worked for him all year long went to the vineyard early in the morning while the owner went to the marketplace to look for day workers. We can see such places today in most North American cities. Potential employers drive up, discuss a job and a price, and often a number of workers will hop in the vehicle to go to the job site.
The owner of the vineyard wants to harvest all of the grapes in one day, and the initial groups of day laborers he hires are not sufficient to get the job done in the time available. The owner makes several trips back to the marketplace to hire more help. Finally, he makes one last trip. It is an hour before dark. Again, he hires more workers.
After the end of the day, it is pay time. Now we come to the moral of the story, and why all of this background is provided. Jesus is now going to help us understand more about God and His amazing grace, as well as provide some insight into human responses to God’s grace.
Lo and behold, all workers get the same generally accepted pay for a day’s work – one denarius. The owner, in stipulating that the last hired be paid first, must have wanted those who worked longest and hardest to see what he would pay the others. Had he done things differently, those who worked through the heat of the day would have taken their pay and gone home. But the owner wanted them to not only experience his grace, but to observe his grace at work in the lives of others.
The all day workers were upset because of what they perceived as a lack of equity and fairness. Our world, our culture, and our economy work on the principle of barter – I work for you and you pay me a fair wage. Quid pro quo. The harder I work, the longer I work, the more I believe I should earn. But effort, merit, and ability are not factored into grace.
God is not good to us because we have been good to Him. God is good to us because He is good. His goodness does not depend on us. On the other hand, God’s grace does not reject us and require retributive justice for our sins.
Retributive justice requires a direct connection between the crime and the punishment. The crime and the pain inflicted must be returned to the one who is deemed to have initially caused it. The closer and more exacting the punishment fits the crime, the more sense of closure humans tend to have. We believe that retributive justice is fair because the punishment fits the crime.
There are many on-going feuds, battles, and wars in our world that are nothing more than an attempt to ensure that justice is done via the eye for an eye principle. A literal and strict application of this principle often amounts to nothing more than escalating violence, as each party attempts to vindicate itself and its cause as it responds to strikes and counterstrikes.
Consider the conflict in the Middle East between Jews and Arabs. Israelis say, “You can’t make peace with the Arabs.” Palestinians say, “You can’t make peace with the Jews.” They are locked in a vicious cycle of violence. Both sides seek revenge – the eye for an eye desire to see the other side suffer because of the pain and misery they have directly or indirectly caused over the centuries. Both sides are keeping score with the grim justice of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth driving action and reaction.
An eye for an eye can encourage us to focus on the inadequacies and shortcomings of others. It’s much like the arguments that little children have when parents intervene in their fighting and quarreling. “He started it” is the normal human justification and reaction.
Jesus comes into our world of recrimination and revenge proclaiming grace that will end human squabbles and fighting. He tells us that it doesn’t matter who started the fight or battle. He tells us that any idea of ensuring that the bad guys get what is coming to them is based in our worldly kingdoms, not in the kingdom of heaven. Basically all humans are born “bad guys” and deserve retributive justice. And we can’t “earn” our way out of what is coming to us. “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23). What we deserve, what we earn – our paycheck – is death. That’s the only logical end to our lives because we have all sinned and find ourselves unable to pay the debt of our sin by our own efforts. A lifetime of reparation by good works, by perfect church attendance, by formal prayer three or more times a day, by feeding the poor or evangelizing the lost – or by any other beneficial, moral, and ethical action – will not erase our sin and earn us a ticket into God’s kingdom.
Humanly, we would attempt to do it ourselves rather than accept God’s grace. And religious legalism capitalizes on our pride. It seduces us by promising us that we can earn our own way into God’s good graces. Performance-based religion is a harsh and stern slave driver. Religious externalism leads tens of millions into the swamp of despair and frustration where they are doomed to a lifetime of endless toil trying to please and appease the gods of religion. Isn’t it ironic that legalism threatens humans with hell if they don’t measure up and perform, but in reality the hell it threatens is the hell it produces in the lives of its slaves?
Apart from Christ we cannot be freed. I know, for I have been to religious hell and by God’s grace returned to tell you about it.
I know many “good” and sincere people, many of them dear friends, who are deceived by the premise that what they are doing is making God happy. They absolutely believe that what they do has some impact upon their salvation, and that in the end God will reward them for the unique and sometimes bizarre things they do and believe.
These people believe that in the end God will be obligated to reward them because they have earned it, fair and square. We find it hard to accept the outstretched hand of our Savior. It’s difficult to accept God’s grace – especially if grace has been trampled on by the particular name brand of legalism that has bewitched and brainwashed us. It is excruciating to face the truth that we cannot deserve anything other than death for all of our works.
Paul tells us in Romans 6:23 that our paycheck for everything that we do, good and bad, is death. But in the same breath, in the same verse, he tells us that the good news is that eternal life is free of charge.
Thank God that He has made a way to spare us a life and an eternity of fairness. We do not get what we deserve in this life, no matter how hard we try to ensure that we do. Not getting what we deserve means that there are times when we suffer loss and receive injustice. But the rest of the story is that God offers us His grace. God’s grace is something else that we do not deserve.
IF WE ACCEPT GOD’S GRACE, THE TIMES IN OUR PHYSICAL LIVES WHEN WE DO NOT RECEIVE WHAT WE CONSIDER TO BE JUSTICE PALE BY COMPARISION WHEN WE REALIZE THAT GOD FORGIVES US OF THE MANY THINGS WE DO DESERVE.
NOT GETTING WHAT WE DESERVE IS, IN THE END, FAR BETTER THAN RECEIVING EVERYTHING WE DO DESERVE.
THAT’S GRACE!
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