Understanding Why Grace Isn’t Fair
My almost-five year old (who currently thinks she is 15) has got to the stage of saying that things are “unfair” if she doesn’t like them.
“No, you can’t have any chocolate tonight. Treats are for the weekend.”
“But that’s not fair!”
“Can you tidy your toys away please?”
“That’s not fair!”
You get the general theme in our house at the moment.
Justice and Fairness
The idea of fairness is something we pick up really early on. It’s built into how we learn to play, how to share, how to treat each other. There is that teaching-game that if you want to someone to know how to be fair, you get them to cut up a cake but don’t tell which slice will be theirs.
We root ideas of fairness is reciprocity. We want people to have the same as us, or more precisely, we want to have the same as everyone else. If someone has something we don’t, or we have to do something that other people don’t then it feels unfair. We instinctively feel that this is wrong.
Fairness and equality are the ground in which our sense of justice is planted. We like our justice to be reciprocal. If you are good, you get rewarded. If you are bad, you get punished. It’s not fair when the good get bad things, or when the bad get good things. Of course, what we regard as good or bad determines our sense of justice and fairness! This still applies to the person who thinks that by birth or strength or wealth it is perfectly fair for them to abuse and exploit the peasant, the poor, or the weak.
We tend to import that reciprocal sense of justice and fairness into Christianity. Often without really thinking about it. We see examples of this with the kind of bargaining prayer that people sometimes make. Things like saying to God they will do this thing if God answers that prayer. Or believing that God will bless you with wealth or health or power or whatever because you’ve prayed enough, or given enough money or whatever.
We Want God to be Fair
It’s also why we really really like the idea of God as being an equal and fair judge. That ultimately everyone will be judged and people will be found to have passed or failed and rewarded or punished accordingly. For those of us believe ourselves to be saved and safe in God’s security and salvation, it is a nice feeling, maybe even a little bit of a superior feeling, to know that we have been sensible enough to believe in God and we know are the people doing the right thing so we will get what we deserve and all those sinners out there won’t get what we are going to have.
This way of thinking is rooted in an idea of spiritual scarcity. The value of salvation is because not everyone will get it. So if I’ve managed to be saved and have got faith in God, then it’s valuable because not everyone has it. My salvation is valuable because it is mine, because of my faith and my discipleship.
This misses a fundamental point.
God’s Grace Isn’t Fair
Jesus tells the story of labourers in the field. Some spend all day. Some half a day. Some barely an hour. All doing the same work, but for different amounts of time. Yet they all get paid the same at the end of the day. Sounds unfair, right? The labourers certainly thought so! So do most people who hear this story.
We think it is unfair because our sense of justice is rooted in a sense of scarcity and competitive value. If I work for 8 hours and get paid the same as someone who works for 1 hour, that takes away from the value of what I have done. Why shouldn’t I have just worked for 1 hour? What was the point of doing all that extra work if I am not rewarded for it?
Jesus says that it’s the owner’s right to pay out of their generosity whatever they want to for the work that is done. It is a gracious and gratuitous gift to the one who has done less to be paid the same as the one who has done more. But for the one who has done more, that is felt to be unfair. It is only felt as grace by the one who needs it. Not by the one who feels scandalised and undervalued.
Rethinking Justice
To get our head around grace we need to do a few things. First, we need to let go of our idea that justice and value is determined by scarcity and competition. Second, we need to understand that grace is essentially unfair. No one deserves God’s grace. It is poured out as a gratuitous gift. Third, we need to remember that we are the people who benefit by grace and to stop thinking that it is unfair if anyone else gets God’s grace as well.
I, you, we, do not deserve God’s grace. There was no way that we could come to faith in Jesus without God’s grace going first to allow us to do so. We are entirely unable to overcome our sin without the work of the Holy Spirit in our life. We could not know God without God revealing God’s self to us in the first place. We are dependent on God.
I could not save myself. I have not earned my salvation, and I cannot deserve my salvation. It always goes behind what I am capable of repaying, and it will always be more than something that I could ever deserve. The overwhelming love of Jesus is never something that I earn or can claim because of my own effort.
Jesus chose to die for us. I am dependent on that gift. Grace for me is always unfair, and it is God who pays the cost of that unfairness. This is what God’s justice looks like. God’s justice is not dolling out rewards or punishments based on a code of rules. God’s justice looks like healing. It looks repairing. It looks like taking broken things and making them whole again. If you think justice is about punishment then you have never fully thought about your own position under judgement.
This should challenge my perspective on judgement and justice. How can I ever judge another person if I am dependent on God’s grace? Who am I to speak of justice when it is grace that has saved me and not any kind of virtue or goodness?
Gatekeeping Salvation
Yet all too often we want to gatekeep salvation. We struggle with the free and undeserving nature of grace. We think that justice means people need to be punished and that salvation is only for those who have done what we have done or for whom have been willing to do what we have done. If anyone can get it, it feels cheapened to us. If people don’t have to do the work for salvation, then what is the value in what we have? If everyone receives grace, then I’m not special anymore.
But we need to embrace the unfairness of grace because it is only in its unfairness that we benefit. Do not ever think that you have earned God’s grace. You haven’t. You don’t deserve it. You have not earned it. It does not belong to you and you are not entitled to it. It is a gift, given to you. So do not try and gatekeep that which God has given to you even though you do not deserve it.
Even your faith is only possible because God’s grace has gone before you to enable you to believe in the first place. So even your faith is not ever something you can boast in but only ever something you must be grateful for.
It’s unfair, but that’s grace baby! When you let that become part of your awareness of life, and of your relationship with God, you will find your relationships with other people will become a while let better!
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