Not Many Wise

From Gospel Translations

In the year of our Lord 1999, 96 percent of Americans claim to believe in God. Only 70 percent of Britons do.Life magazine recently celebrated the contrast, and boasted that American religion is “proudly diverse . . . one nation under Gods.”

In the cover article of the December 1998 issue, Frank McCourt described his Irish Catholic boyhood and his later doubts. His conclusion: “I don’t confine myself to the faith of my fathers anymore. All the great religions are spread before me, a great spiritual smorgasbord, and I’ll help myself, thank you.”

The apostle Paul, however, was not stoned in Lystra, put in stocks at Philippi, and sent in chains to Rome to add one more choice to a spiritual smorgasbord at Athens. Then, as now, there were many “gods” and many “lords,” but Paul wrote, “For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth . . . for us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we live” (1 Cor. 8:5–6).

Paul wrote these words to answer a question from the Corinthian church. It had to do with the worship of many gods in their city. Social meals were held in temples, and any steak at the butcher’s might have come from meat offered to an idol. Should a Christian eat such food? One group knew that an idol wasn’t anything in this world; all food comes from God, and someone waving it before an idol didn’t harm God’s good gift. Others, however, still were fighting off past involvement in idolatry. They refused to eat food that might have been offered to an idol.

To eat or not to eat: who was right? That was not the whole question, as Paul knew. The deeper issue was the pride of those who knew their liberty in Christ. They boasted in their better knowledge, and looked down on their weaker brethren. Knowledge, Paul wrote, puffs up, but love builds up. Later in the letter, Paul’s unforgettable love chapter drives the point home. At best, our knowledge is partial, for we do not know as we shall, nor as Godknows us.

“As God knows us” — Paul gave knowing a deeper force. “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God” (Rom. 11:33). Our knowing has to do with our knowing the Lord, who knows us and loves us. Knowing the Lord means knowing love. Love does not flaunt its knowledge or insist on its rights. If eating meat would lead another to sin against his conscience, love will not eat.

Loving God and neighbor are God’s great commandments; they mark the death of pride. “Everyone proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord” (Prov. 16:5). The prayer that Jesus taught his disciples destroys Pharisaical pride. (Don’t recite the Lord’s Prayer;pray it and see what happens to your pride.) Yet Peter pridefully boasted that even if all the other disciples were to deny Jesus, he would never do so. He rated himself number one among the disciples, not only in his knowledge but in his love.

Jesus, on the way to Jerusalem and the Cross, had to deal with disciples who argued about their places in the kingdom. Peter reminded Jesus that they had left everything for Him. “What’s in it for us?” he asked. Jesus assured him that they would receive a hundred times over for what they had left, plus the inheritance of eternal life. But, he added, “many who are first will be last, and the last first” (Matt. 19:30).

To undercut their pride and ours, Jesus told a story to His disciples. The setting of the parable is familiar in Southern California. As the sun is rising, shadowy figures gather near a market square. They are laborers, waiting to be picked up for work in orchards, fields, or vineyards. Jesus described a landowner who came at dawn and hired workers for his vineyard at the going wage, a denarius a day (Matt. 20:1–16). He came again at 9 a.m. and hired others, promising them a fair wage. Again at noon, and even at 3 p.m., he did the same thing. About 5 p.m., he came yet again and found some still standing there. Surprised, he asked, “Why have you been standing here idle all day?” “Because no one hired us,” they answered. So, only an hour before quitting time, the employer sent them to work in his vineyard.

That evening, when the baskets had been turned in, the laborers saw that the last to be hired were being paid first. For their hour of work, these latecomers were paid a denarius. The employer was more than fair! The ones hired early must have been thinking, “At a denarius an hour, that would be. . . .”

But those hired earlier also got a denarius. When a single denarius was put in the palms of the men employed at dawn, they complained. It wasn’t fair. They had sweated all day long under the sun, but they had received no more than those who had worked for one hour in the cool of the evening.

The landowner gave a brief answer. They had contracted to work a full day for a denarius. They had been paid as agreed; now they should take their money and go. “Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?” (niv)

Jesus then added, “So the last will be first, and the first last.”

Workers today might demand arbitration in such a situation! But what was the complaint of those who were first? Not that they had received too little. Their contract had been fully honored. Rather, it was that others got too much. They were envious of the good fortune of those latecomers. Envy is pride knocked down. They were first, and claimed that right. Nobody else would get their position or pay. But God says, “I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy” (Rom. 9:15). The vineyard is His (Isa. 5:1–7). Dare we say that God is not free to give others better than they deserve? Our pride demands not only first place, but full credit for being there. We will get salvation the old-fashioned way: We will earn it. Hear the elder brother in the parable of the prodigal son: “‘Lo, these many years I have been serving you; I never transgressed your commandment at any time’” (Luke 15:29b). He did not understand the heart of his father, who pled with him to welcome the prodigal and join the feast. God’s justice must be trusted, and so must His grace. God is not less than just, but more.

Be warned, Simon Peter — God’s blessings are rich beyond imagining. But at the entrance to His kingdom, everything is reversed. Presenting earned wages there is laughable. A Jewish mother asked Jesus for the best seats in the kingdom for her two boys, James and John. But who is first in the kingdom? “‘Listen to me, O Jacob, and Israel, My called; I am He, I am the First, I am also the Last. Indeed My hand has laid the foundation of the earth’” (Isa. 48:12–13a). Jesus is the First, the Son of the living God. But He for our salvation became last. He led the disciples to Jerusalem, where He would be made sin for us, and give His life a ransom for many. The Cross dispels our wrong-headed illusions about deserving better than God gives. We must confess with the crucified thief that we receive the due reward of our deeds. Our only claim to the Father’s mercy is the sacrifice of the Savior. Jesus became last that the last of lost sinners might be first in glory with Him. When the flight to glory is called, the first-class passengers are children and widows, prodigals and prostitutes. From the dark streets of the inner city, from the back roads of the country, the poor, the lame, the oppressed come crowding into the Father’s house. “Not many wise . . . not many mighty” (1 Cor. 1:26). Not the proud but the humble, for no one can boast before God.

Peter fled weeping from the courtyard where he had denied his Lord three times. He witnessed the Cross, and was restored by the risen Lord. He later wrote, “Be submissive to one another, and be clothed with humility. . . . Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time” (1 Peter 5:5b–6).

Pride is not biodegradable. It will not self-destruct. Only the Cross is the death of our pride. It must be broken there, to dissolve in tears of penitence. Only then can we take the towel, gird ourselves with humility, and begin to serve one another in the love