Punishment

I know that many of your reading this will claim wholeheartedly that you’re saved by grace. You’ve received your “get into heaven free” card from the Father. You’re happy, glad and sassy in this divine truth. Yet how many of you are harboring the hidden thought that a day of judgment is coming where the entire Heavenly court will turn its eyes upon you as your lifetime Blu-ray DVD, complete with Morgan Freeman narration, will be activated showing all the “stuff” you’ve been an accomplice in?

Have you ever considered the shear lunacy of this thinking? Not only for yourself, but for everyone. How can you believe in the nature and power of grace to be so…so…so inadequate – yes that is the word, inadequate – that it would leave you out to dry just when you need it the most? Is this just some kind of hoax that you think the trinity fabricated before creation so that they could catch you off guard at the last possible moment and beat the living daylights out of you?

John tells us that God is love. But does that only apply until some last day when His true vengeful self will finally have a say in how miserably we’ve managed to run things here on earth? But…but what about the verse that claims vengeance is of the Lord? In case you didn’t realize it, you too are a lord on this earth, and while The Lord of the universe has exacted His all of His vengeance upon a cross, you still have to deal with your vengeance.

What! Did I just say that you have a responsibility in this walk of grace? Yup! Until you get your mind renewed to the fact that it is not your mind anymore but Christ’s, you are going to be in a constant state of conflict about the retribution that is due you. Sure people hurt you, some quite severely, but as the writer of the book of Hebrews asks, did you bleed from it like the kind of blood loss Jesus experienced to forgive them, and you too for that matter?

This is where the rubber meets the road. Jesus, a sinless man, takes on the sins of the world and is crucified in one of the most horrific scenes to ever happen in all of eternity in order to pay the full price of death for the entire world. Buried, he then goes to hell, the lowest place for all humanity and beats the snot out of the adversary and his minions, takes the keys of their authority and resurrects, or returns to life. He then ascends to the Father and cleanses the Heavenly temple with his blood which declares that no one will ever have so great an offense that prohibits them from reaching to the Father. Finally, he sits down in an over-sized throne right next to the Father and waits for every single person to realize that their enemy is now a foot cushion in a royal decor sponsored by the trinity.

But wait! Someone doesn’t think that this is enough. No, in their belief of how God should act, He needs to keep His anger pent up, day after day, month after month, years and centuries after years and centuries, until finally some angel blows a horn and it’s “game on” for the home team! Balderdash! (If you will note, in this archaic word is the letter “b” and “s” giving it the same meaning in today’s slang.)

These people have significance issues. Their significance is in beating the hell out of people either here and now or there and later. Why don’t they just accept their truth that the grace of Christ did not fulfill everything that it was intended to do? Or that when Jesus said, “…it is finished!” he really was hallucinating and was just having visions of some northern country where people have blond curly hair and smoke salmon and eat pickled herring!

Am I crazed! Yes! Why are you torturing yourself? What do you gain by not believing that finished is really a completion to an entire saga spanning the past, present and future dynamics of human existence? How can it be so hard to grasp the fullness of grace just for your own self and not realize it has done the same for everyone? Do you really want what you deserve? Then don’t ask for grace, ask for mercy. Maybe then the pain you feel won’t seem so bad in the end. After all, it is what you expected.

But if you asked for grace, it was given to you in a measure you can’t comprehend. It covers, enfolds, wraps and hides you from all manner of discovery. It elevates you, cleanses you, champions you, guides you, enthrones you, worships you from a completed intention of the Father of grace. It will continue to amaze you for the remainder of eternity as wave upon wave of its grandeur crash upon you in total abandonment of love. In it you will discover the extent of “finished” and realize that it’s not a line that you cross but a cross that has aligned you.

But that leaves us with that word: Retribution. It is an interesting word and concept. Let’s look at the definition of the word from the good old boys at dictionary.com

ret·ri·bu·tion
noun
1. requital according to merits or deserts, especially for evil.
2. something given or inflicted in such requital.
3. Theology . the distribution of rewards and punishments in a future life.
Origin:
1350–1400; Middle English retribucioun < Middle French < Late Latin retribūtiōn- (stem of retribūtiō ) punishment, reward as result of judgment, equivalent to Latin retribūt ( us ) (past participle of retribuere to restore, give back; see re-, tribute) + -iōn- -ion

Now I want to pick out something in the origins of this word. Notice the reference to see “re-” and “tribute.” While the definitions at dictionary.com are good for these, I’m going to use the fine folks at Merriam-Webster to supply our understanding of tribute.

trib·ute
noun
1a: a payment by one ruler or nation to another in acknowledgment of submission or as the price of protection; also: the tax levied for such a payment
b(1): an excessive tax, rental, or tariff imposed by a government, sovereign, lord, or landlord
(2): an exorbitant charge levied by a person or group having the power of coercion|
c: the liability to pay tribute
2a: something given or contributed voluntarily as due or deserved; especially: a gift or service showing respect, gratitude, or affection
b: something (as material evidence or a formal attestation) that indicates the worth, virtue, or effectiveness of the one in question Origin:
Middle English tribut, from Latin tributum, from neuter of tributus, past participle of tribuere to allot, bestow, grant, pay, from tribus tribe
First Known Use: 14th century

If you’re not familiar with the prefix “re” it means to return to the original; as an example consider the word “reborn” which means to be returned to the original birth. When you place re- in front of tribute, obviously you get retribute, which leads us to retribution. So let’s go explore something unique in this word that may very well change your entire concept of God’s justice.

The entire world justice system today is based on retribution. We all recognize it in the biblical phrase, “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” Do something wrong and a price needs to be exacted to balance the scales of justice. Someone does you wrong and you expect compensation, even to the point of making your future secure from “pain and suffering” that you’ll ruminate on. This manner of “doing” business is evident in all kinds of social discourse, even to the point of “unfriending” someone because they said something you didn’t approve of and the price that they have to pay is not being able to see any more pictures of tortured animals in human clothes.

Under this form of justice a price is always expected either in money or time and in most cases it’s both. Occasionally the ultimate price of life is what must be exacted for the offense. This is the Judeo-Christian ethic after all! Don’t get me wrong here. I’m not saying that this method of justice is…is…that’s all I’m going to say about that.

There is a passage in the book of Matthew where Jesus is dealing with this matter of retribution in the justice system of the day. This is the same passage where Christians learn to turn the other cheek when someone slaps you. At the end of this matter Jesus states that if someone asks you to walk a mile with them then you should go two miles. This sounds “Christian” right, but do you know what law Jesus is referring to? Probably not.

In the Roman occupation of Israel, there was a law that if any centurion told you to carry his gear for him, you were required by law to do it for him or…you get the point, literally! The only restriction to this law was that you could only carry it for him one mile. Any distance longer than this mile would place the centurion in violation of the law! Jesus is promoting insurrection of a governing power by carrying their gear for a greater distance then they want you to do it!

Can you imagine the thoughts running through the head of a centurion who has you carrying his gear? He knows that the mile is coming to an end and you’re not getting yourself ready to drop everything; no, you’re gleefully shifting the weight higher so that you can go further! He’s in a panic, sweat beginning to form on his brow as he takes each cautious step. He knows what will happen to him for forcing you to go further than the mile. But he hasn’t forced you, you willingly gave. It will be his punishment that he’s trying to avoid as he pleads with your to drop his gear. Yes, he pleads with you! How is this for retribution!

If I was successful in giving this description, most of you have been salivating waiting to get this guy for what he did to your freedom. Keep those feelings in mind because what I want you to consider about this concept of retribution now is to examine it from the other side of what “tribute” means. It means a gift or service showing respect or gratitude. (Gratitude=grace) It shows value, virtue or worth. When you place the prefix “re-” onto this meaning of tribute you get a definition that speaks volumes on the grace of God’s justice. It demonstrates that the gift given to you was to show you respect and establish your value and worth to the Father as it was in the beginning of all eternity.

Is God a god of retribution? Before this moment I would have had to say no, emphatically no! However, seeing the evidence placed before me in the various meanings of the root words that this word is derived from, I would have to say that God, by his very nature and the nature of His kingdom, is a God of retribution. His justice has paid the price in such a manner that each one of us has been returned back to our original value, respect and worth of His plan.

Imagine if this form of retribution was what the world’s justice system operated from. What would happen if you went to court only to hear every single time that the price had been already paid and that the defendant was free to go? That is what grace is all about. You can’t go into a court and ask for mercy if grace has already paid the price. If everyone has been restored to their value and worth by the gift of one man, how can the old definition of retribution still be the predominate mindset in the Judeo-Christian ethic?