Moving from Justification to Sanctification

The Gospel of Matthew contains an image of God's judgment.  Those who are judged righteous, symbolized by sheep, are characterized as having engaged in acts of mercy; clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, and visiting the prisoner.  Those who are deemed unrighteous, symbolized by goats, are deemed unrighteous because they have not done these things.

This text is typically interpreted in a moralistic manner and as a code of ethics (i.e. a list of things that disciples should do).  I think this type of reading misses the point of the story.  In the story, the righteous and the unrighteous are being judged without having had access to this story that tells them what to do and what not to do.  They have not been told this story and put on notice of what is expected of them because they are characters in the story.

This story is not giving us a code of ethics.  Rather, the acts that distinguish the righteous from the unrighteous are given as examples of the things that the righteous will naturally do, and the unrighteous will naturally not do.  In the ancient near east, sheep were considered to have a good nature, and goats were considered to have an evil nature.  Those with a good nature naturally do things consistent with their nature, and those with an evil nature naturally do things consistent with their nature.

In the Wesleyan tradition, the good news is that we believe in the principle of sanctifying grace: we see conversion as a gradual process that begins with the moment of justification; when we choose to acknowledge Jesus as our Lord and live a life imitating him.  Justification begins a lifelong process of trying to change our nature.  When our nature is changed, it will be our natural proclivity to engage in the type of acts that are described in this story: we don't have to be given an exhaustive list of things to do; we don't have to be told how often to do them.  We just do them naturally because it is our nature to do them.

God's Gift of Free Will

Matthew's gospel contains a parable where a landowner leases a vineyard to tenants.  This was a common practice in the ancient world.  The tenants would produce product for the owner, and the owner would periodically send agents to collect his profit.  The tenants would be given a small amount of the profit in return for their labor.

In the parable, the landowner's tenants kill the agent who is sent to collect the profits and keep the profits for themselves.  This was highly unusual, but not unheard of in the ancient world.  The landowner would obviously respond by replacing the tenants, and the tenants would obviously flee after their criminal actions.  If the tenants were caught, they would be put to death.

What is shocking about the parable is that the landowner continues to do business with the tenants, even though the tenants continue to murder the agents that are sent by the landowner.

God is the landowner and human beings are the tenants.  We have been given free will, and we have done terrible things to ourselves, each other, and to God's creation.  We often do the most damage while we think that we are acting in God's name.  Despite this, God continues to be in relationship with us. 

The message of the parable is for us to truly face ourselves and who we are.  The parable was directed to the religious authorities of Jesus' day.  Like the religious people of our own culture and of other cultures, it can be more difficult for us to see the damage that we do.  We have the capacity to be holy, but to be the people that God wants us to be, we must always acknowledge the damage that we continue to do as the tenant's of the landowner's vineyard.