Grace and Disgrace part 2

In my last blog, I wrote about how we tend to view people through the lens of disgrace, while God views us through the lens of grace.  When someone does one bad thing, we tend to write off all the good things about them--to us they are in a state of disgrace.

On the other hand, God views us with grace--despite the fact that we are sinners by nature (also by action), God writes off all the bad things about us when He looks at the one good thing Jesus did.

In other words:
Our disgrace-filled mindset: Allowing one bad action to overwhelm all good in a person.
God's grace-filled mindset: Allowing one good action (by Jesus) to overwhelm all bad in a person.

That's a little over-simplified, but it works as a summary.

Obviously, it's not good that we treat people by the rule of disgrace, when God is treating us by the rule of grace.

In Matthew 18, Jesus tells a story about a servant who was in debt to his master.  Verse 24 says the man owed 10,000 talents.  A talent was 20 years wages for a day laborer.  Just for comparison purposes, if you worked at California minimum wage 8 hours a day, five days a week, one talent is the same as $332,800.  So, if you owed someone 10,000 talents, that would be $3,328,000,000  ($3.3 billion).

Obviously, if you owed someone $3.3 billion personally, you would be in enormous debt.

In the story, the master is going to take everything from the servant, including his family, but decides to forgive the debt instead.  The servant asked to have more time to pay back the debt, but the master decided to just eat the loss of 10,000 talents.

After the servant's debt was forgiven, he found a fellow servant who owed him 100 denarii (v. 28).  A denarius was about one days' wages for a day laborer.  So, by California minimum wage, one day's earning would be $64.  The second servant owed the first one 100 denarii, which would be like owing someone $6,400.

The second servant couldn't pay the first, so the first one had him thrown in jail.  The master heard what happened, re-instated the debt of the first servant, and had him thrown in jail and tortured.

When we convert the numbers to modern approximations, we see how ridiculous the servant was.  If someone forgave you for a $3.3 billion debt, you would surely not care about the $6,400!

Jesus says that when we fail to forgive others in spite of God's forgiveness of us, we are doing the same thing!

In fact, after Jesus says the master threw the servant in jail to be tortured until his debt was paid, he says, “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart."

When we allow people's sin to put them out of our good grace, we not only are ruled by disgrace, but we are choosing to live outside the rule of grace.  God views us through that lens, but He doesn't have to, and Jesus gives us fair warning that we can place ourselves back in debt.

So, all that to say...Forgive!

Forgive people when they sin against you.  Forgive people when they sin in general.

Don't keep a record of wrongs (1 Corinthians 13:5).  When we live based on disgrace, we look at all the good things people have done in light of the bad.  Instead, we ought to assume the best in others (1 Corinthians 13:7--love "always hopes").

Look at the good and bad things people have done in light of the fact that you have been forgiven and commanded to love.