I expect the issue of minimum wage will come up in Congress again this year. There are good arguments on both sides - Those who are in favor of raising it will argue, rightly, that you can’t support a family on a minimum wage job, and that people who “work hard and play by the rules” should be able to make it. Those who aren’t in favor of raising will argue, rightly, that by far the most people who are working for minimum wage are either in entry-level positions and can be expected to move up to higher wages fairly soon, or they are students who aren’t yet trying to raise a family.
Well, the arguments are too big to get into here, and I’m not an economist anyway, but I was really struck by the words: “Dead-end job” and “living wage.” There’s such a connection, isn’t there, between work and life? A dead-end job isn’t just one that doesn’t pay enough to pay the rent and buy the groceries, it’s also one that doesn’t go anywhere. It’s a job that doesn’t give satisfaction, a sense of purpose and worth. And that’s a serious thing, because God made us to work, and to enjoy our work, and to get satisfaction from our work. Even before the fall, Adam and Eve were assigned the job of taking care of creation. The reformers, Martin Luther and Calvin and all that crowd, rediscovered the spiritual value of work, and taught that God honored all honest labor. And he does - even the boring, repetitive tasks that characterize minimum wage jobs, and even the boring and frustrating parts of high-powered careers, and especially the no-wage jobs that go into making a home.
But there’s still a big difference between a dead-end job and a job that leads somewhere. A living wage is more than the paycheck; it’s all the rest of the things that you come home with, like being valued, feeling that you’ve made a contribution, feeling that you’ve stretched and grown. From a teacher sparking a sense of discovery in a student, an accountant getting the books to balance on the first run-through, a sales rep landing a big account, feeding your family on tomatoes you’ve grown yourself - whatever gives you a sense of accomplishment is an important part of being a whole person. God made us that way, and work that fulfills is a really major blessing and gift.
There’s a similar difference between dead-end religion and living faith.
A dead-end job may put the meals on the table and keep the bank from taking your house back, but it doesn’t fulfill. Dead-end religion may keep you on the straight and narrow and it may keep the wolf from the door; God gave us the rules for a reason. A society that keeps the commandments is a much nicer place to live than one that doesn’t. But it doesn’t get you anywhere beyond temporary security. It doesn’t open up a door into a place full of meaning, and enjoyment, and satisfaction, and growth. It does not, in fact, lead you to God.
Working hard and playing by the rules is good - but it isn’t enough. Good works are good - but they don’t get you to God. You can earn a roof over your head and new shoes for the kids, you can earn the respect of your neighbors and a peaceful life, you can even earn fame and wealth and power. But you can’t earn your way to God. No matter what you do.
That’s what Paul means in this part of his letter to the Romans. “If Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God... Now to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due.” Abraham had a lot he could have boasted about; after all, he was a wealthy man, with flocks and herds and servants so numerous that he and his nephew Lot had to split up because the country wasn’t big enough for both of them. But none of the things that raised his standing with his neighbors cut any ice where his relationship with God was concerned. And the wages Abraham had received from his works, that is his prosperity and so on, were at least in some sense something he had earned. But Abraham’s relationship with God, his place in the history of Israel as the Father of God’s covenant people, that was a gift. And it came because Abraham trusted God, not because Abraham did good things.
You see, God gave us the law as a gift, to keep us from destroying ourselves by accident. When we work hard and follow the rules we have already received the benefit of the law. Because the law keeps us safe, like a fence; it keeps us from falling off the cliff. But the law doesn’t point us the way to the top. It keeps us from killing ourselves, but it doesn’t give us life.
And people mostly know that, in their hearts. And depending on what their priorities are they respond to religious legalism in different ways. For some people, not falling off the cliff is good enough. Others, however, want more from their religion. Some go through the motions, but invest their lives in other things. Others, having found the religious forms to be empty, abandon the idea of God altogether. Some people, still hungry, dabble in other forms of spirituality. And some redouble their efforts, as if by being super-legalistic, or super-pious, or super-something, they can somehow break through the sound barrier into a spiritual transformation. They think that somehow, if they just do enough, that God will be pleased with them and open the door.
Paul did that. That’s why he persecuted Christians. He thought it would make God happy. Later, in the 16th century, there was a German monk who spent hours in the confessional, beat himself with a whip, and wore scratchy hair shirts in a vain attempt to try to make God happy. You may have heard of him; his name was Martin Luther. Some people wear their hair a special way, or eat special foods, or dress in a particular way because they think it will make God happy. When my godchildren visited me in New Jersey a few years ago, we drove to Harrisburg, through Amish country, and stopped and did touristy things along the way. At one of the shops, my then five-year-old goddaughter Emma asked the young woman at the cash register why she wore a white hat over her hair. I don’t remember exactly how she phrased her response, but it was something like, “because God wants us to.” And Emma, bless her clear-sighted five-year-old heart, said, “But God loves you no matter what you wear.”
And that’s just what Martin Luther finally discovered. On a visit to Rome, he was on his knees climbing the stairs of the cathedral, probably on his knees, because that’s what they did, and saying a prayer of penance with each step, when it suddenly struck him that there is really only one thing that pleases God.
The book of Romans is some of the finest theology ever written. It is Paul’s masterpiece, really, explaining how it is that what Jesus did for us is able to reconcile us to God, and how salvation history all fits together, and how we should respond to God’s incredible gift. It’s the book that Martin Luther hailed as the cornerstone of the reformation doctrine called “sola fide” or faith alone. But it’s pretty rough going, sometimes, complex and knotty.
You can find the basic principle of the whole book in a single sentence, however, in the book of Hebrews. “Without faith it is impossible to please God....” [Heb 11:6] That’s what it takes to make God happy: faith. Yes, the rules are important, the moral and ethical standards that God gave us to live by - but without faith, they just get us through the day. And this faith isn’t just about believing in your head. It’s far more about trusting with your heart, and then choosing to act as if God is really real, and re-ally trustworthy. Hebrews puts it this way: “...anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.” [Heb 11:6]
Hebrews is talking about the kind of faith that says, "Not only do I believe God is real, I also believe that He wants a relationship with me, so I'm going to live for Him instead of living for myself.” Faith is a risk. It is taking a chance on God. Faith is putting all of your eggs in one basket, like Abraham did. With faith, there can be no "Plan B" option. You can't say, "Well, if I'm wrong about Jesus, maybe Buddha or Mohammed or just being nice will get me into heaven." In 1 Corinthians Paul said, basically, “If God isn't real, if Jesus Christ isn't who He said He is, then we are fools and should be pitied above all others.” Because the Christian faith is a decision to live against the tide, to follow a different drummer. God asks us to bet our lives on him. And that is the kind of faith that pleases God, the kind of faith that God rewards with real life, eternal life. Those rewards show up in three important ways.
In the first place, PROMISES BECOME REALITY.
A little further on in Romans 4 Paul retells Abraham’s story, to explain what he means by faith. “[Abraham] did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what He had promised.” [v. 20 21] It’s an amazing story, really. God told Abraham that he would become the father of a great nation, and would be blessed beyond description. God told Abraham to look at the stars in the sky and try to count them, and then said, “So shall your offspring be.” This may not sound so remarkable; two people can produce more than a million descendants in just a few hundred years. What made God’s promise unbelievable was the fact that Abraham was almost eighty years old, and so was his wife, Sarah. It was a little late for them to be thinking about starting a family. Yet the Bible says... “Abram believed the Lord, and He credited it to him as righteousness. [Gen 15:6] This means Abraham put his faith in God, and it made God happy. Almost twenty years later Sarah did, in fact, give birth to a son named Isaac. Paul says, in Romans 4:13 14, that it happened because Abraham had faith in God's promise, and God rewarded Abraham's faith.
You see, when we put our faith absolutely in God, His promises become reality. What has He promised us? It would almost be easier to list what He hasn't promised us. He hasn’t promised, for instance, a Mercedes Benz.
What kind of promises do I mean? Well, being American, we often think in terms of material blessings. And yes, God has promised to supply our needs [Phil 4:19]... He will answer our prayers [John 15:7] ...He will heal our diseases and redeem our lives from the pit [Ps 103:3 4]... He will bring about ultimate justice [Is 42:1] ...He will wipe away our tears [Rev 21:4] ...He will fill us with peace [Phil 4:7].....He will be there for us in our weakest moments and give us the strength we need [2 Cor 12:9]. I could go on all day. They don’t all come true immediately, and perhaps not as we originally imagined, but as Paul says elsewhere in Romans, “hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” [Rom 5:5] When we have faith, we get the joy of seeing God’s promises become reality, even when they seem impossible. Because faith also gives us the opportunity to see...
THE IMPOSSIBLE BECOME POSSIBLE. “Without weakening in his faith, [Abraham] faced the fact that his body was as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old and that Sarah's womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God...” [Rom 5:19 20] Physically, it seemed impossible for Abraham and Sarah to have children. Yet God made the impossible happen. This happens repeatedly throughout Scripture. Mark tells the story of some friends of a paralyzed man who had faith that Jesus could heal their friend. They carried him on his pallet to see Jesus, only to find that he was teaching in a house so crowded that no one could get inside. The men climbed onto the roof and began tearing it apart. (In those days, roofs were made of earth and were easier to replace.) They then lowered the man to where Jesus was standing. The Bible says when Jesus saw their faith, He healed the man. Because “nothing is impossible with God.” [Mat 19:26]
It was impossible for the Iron Curtain to fall. It was impossible for Christianity to survive in China under Mao Tse Dong. It was impossi¬ble for a little Albanian nun to get the Nobel peace prize. But God specializes in the impossible, in bringing life out of death. And one of the most spectacular ways he does that is when
BAD PEOPLE BECOME GOOD. As Christians, we know that we’re all sinners [Rom 3:23], we all need to be changed. [Rom 7:24 25] Even “good people” need to be changed, because the goal, the ideal, is for us to become like Jesus. [Rom 8:29] So God is always at work in our lives to help make that happen. But sometimes it isn’t really terrifically visible to the world at large. My family, especially my mother and my sister, who resist the idea of a personal relationship with a transforming God, think I’m a good pastor because I’m a nice person with a handful of rather useful talents. They haven’t got a clue how much work God has done on my insides, how deep the peace and profound the cleansing God has done, no matter how I try to explain. But sometimes God gets really dramatic.
The murderer known as the Son of Sam, David Berkowitz, became a Christian. Berkowitz murdered six people and wounded seven others in New York City 21 years ago, and said satanic worship made him a murderer. But now, two videos have been about his life and conversion to Christ, and are being used by prison chaplains and youth counselors to show that God can reach even the most evil person.
Another example: Niki Cruz, a former Brooklyn gang leader, was born in Puerto Rico to parents known among the villagers as witches, who told him he was Satan’s child. Cruz learned to hate them and everyone else. He moved to New York at age 15 to live with his brother and took up with the Mau Maus gang, becoming “an animal, without conscience, morals, reason, or any sense of right and wrong.” He came to Christ through David Wilkerson, the author of The Cross and the Switchblade. Cruz has recently returned from leading international evangelistic crusades, back to the streets, reaching out to the hopeless cases, as Wilkerson had done for him. A 19 year old, sentenced to 17 years in prison for his role in a fatal drive by shooting, wrote to him. “I’m angry at the world, at everyone and everything. I see all these Christians with peace, and I too long for that peace that they have, but I can’t seem to find it...It seems like no one can relate to what I’m going through... I think I can’t be saved. I’m too evil.” This young man has now become a Christian.
. When a person trusts in Jesus Christ, he or she gets more than a list of “do’s” and “don’t’s.” You enter into a relationship that changes completely the direction you are going. And the power you’re operating under. You go from being a wind-driven vessel to being a nuclear powered one, so to speak. The strongest thing around you is no longer society, or daily pressures, or your past, or your own limitations. The strongest thing around you is now part of you, inside you, helping you and forming you into the image of Christ.
If we put our faith in him, God helps us change us from being dead to being alive, from being stuck in a hole to being on a road to freedom. Paul says that the promise is “guaranteed to all [Abraham’s] descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham ... in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” [Rom 4:16-17]
Living without God is a dead-end job, no matter how hard you work at it. But putting your faith in Christ is life, real life, eternal life. Working hard and playing by the rules is all very well, but if you want the wage you labor for to stretch beyond your daily bread to the stars, you have to lift your eyes above the rules. The rules are good. But God didn’t make us for the rules. He made us for himself. And only in him do we truly live.
