The Master, the Steward, and the servants

My sister’s house burned and my brother-in-law asked me to help rebuild the burned areas. It’s a 140 year old house, built at the end of the Civil War, and fixing it up would be painstaking. 

My brother-in-law, Francis found a Hispanic carpenter crew to fix the damaged roof and parts of the house structure. The lead carpenters were bilingual, but the workers speak only Spanish. Part of the reason my brother-in-law asked me to be his middleman, is that I spoke Spanish minimally. But, most of all, I spoke carpenter language, having framed houses before joining the Navy.

But the practices of the carpenters did not always meet my brother-in-law’s expectations. Their measurements weren’t always accurate, so, often lengths of boards came up short and left gaps, boards didn’t line up flush like they needed to in order to prevent the drywall from bowing out or in, there were gaps between floor joists and the studs that needed to be shimmed or a lot of settling would happen over time, and leave cracks in plastered ceilings and walls. In short, the work was shabby in the eyes of my brother-in-law, and also to me in comparison to the standards that I was trained in when I was a carpenter building custom homes.

My brother-in-law was very particular about how work should be done, because he owned the house and bore all the responsibility for it lasting another 140 years, as well as being sellable if he were to put it on the market in the future. Regardless of my disposition toward the house, it belonged to Francis, and he, as a perfectionist, had the disposition to require a high standard in its restoration. That right did not rest with the workers; neither did it rest with me.

I was just a go-between. I represented my brother-in-law to the carpenters. To them what I said goes. It must, because my brother-in-law had vested me with that authority. He came in occasionally to look around, and was often pained at the workmanship, and he interrogated me for allowing the shabby work to happen. Periodically, he spoke directly to the carpenter foreman, but usually he talked to me and expected me to communicate his desire to them, and to see that they did what he wanted. It was painful for me to see my brother-in-law less than overjoyed at all the work that had been done. When he pointed out the gaps and misalignments and shoddiness, I felt his grief to my core. My brother-in-law was like my own brother, and I cared about how he felt. I didn’t want him burdened down with worry and disappointment all the time. I wanted to see delight and thrill on his face and on my sister’s face.

The carpenters didn’t have the same interest in Francis’s feelings as I did. They would do their job and move on to some other home owner. I wouldn’t move on. I was Francis’s brother-in-law forever. I would see him for decades to come, and speak to him and know his concerns or happiness concerning the house and other life issues. I was compelled to please him in everything with this project. I wanted to serve him, and to make him happy, to relieve him of all doubts and fears, not convincing him that his concerns weren’t valid, but accepting that his concerns were real, and fixing them or preventing them.

Here lies a beautiful object lesson. It shows the role of Christ as our Mediator with His Father. God has infinitely high standards for the building up of His kingdom. Lucifer has brought much damage against God, and the Law that upholds His eternal kingdom. By His wise orchestration, His kingdom of unfallen worlds and the angelic hosts have been fully salvaged by the cross, but He must yet save humanity. We have the high privilege of vindicating God and His Law, which have been under attack by Lucifer. Adam, in the garden, for a time had but lost that high privilege. Yet, in His exceeding grace and faith toward us, God has faithfully made Earth the place to vindicate His character. Utterly surprising and amazing to us and to the universe is God’s determination to allow defective humanity, through His powerful forbearance and magnanimity, to demonstrate His righteousness through His mercy and condescension toward us. Apart from the holy influence of His Son, our lives could never merit even His least kindness. Yet, merciful kindness and patient endurance with our shabby fits and spurts of righteousness have been His burden while His Son rebuilds our characters. Utterly amazing grace of God beyond degree.

Our work in obeying His commandment of self-sacrificing love falls infinitely short of His expectations. All of our work is shabby, shoddy, half-hearted, and reckless, by His standards and even by our own. Even we detest our treatment of others, and so do they. We badly need a go-between. We need a Savior. Christ made Himself a Mediator between our loveless efforts to be good, and our infinite One who, from everlasting, was brought up in the bosom of the Maker of love-based goodness. The service of love filled the Son of God to the brim until He could wait no longer to share that loving service with His destroyed children. “Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God … made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of a servant.” (Phil. 2:5-7).

As His Father’s representative and Mediator, He alone understood His Father’s standards, and He alone could teach and portray those standards, by His work in our habitation of God through His Spirit, and in our work as mediators for building others to be a habitation of God. For it is written, “We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” (Eph. 2:10).

“Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus; who was faithful to Him that appointed Him, as also Moses was faithful in all His house. For this Man was counted worthy of more glory than Moses, inasmuch as he who hath builded the house hath more honour than the house. For every house is builded by some man; but He that built all things is God. And Moses verily was faithful in all His house, as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken after; but Christ as a Son over His own house; whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end.” (Heb. 3:1-6).

Jesus alone comprehends the depth of pain that has grieved His Father. Sin has been allowed to persist during all this great controversy between God and Satan, and our Father has not been so distant that He cannot feel the effects upon us of every murder, every lie, every broken trust, every broken heart. And all this evil perpetrated under the guise of a better government by Lucifer, his experiment which he claims could create much more happiness, but is only limping along because God keeps interfering with its development and also because of our lack of interest. We can’t fathom the issues at stake and the warfare that has gone on over our heads for the past 6,000 years. His human children, created in God’s image more than any other creation, are ruined by sin, a condition He can never accept. Yet His torment is such that He can’t live without us, and it slays His big heart that He can’t protect us from the fiendish master we have chosen.

But Christ, who alone knows His Father perfectly, has determined to ease His Father’s pain, and ours. He was made in our form that we could more easily identify with Him. He represents His Father to us, and us to His Father. Our body God prepared for Him, forever clothing His divinity with humanity, the unrestricted Spirit Son of God now forever entombed into a Son of man. His human frame alone speaks volumes in our behalf. His humanity is not to appease a resentful King of the universe or to turn His love toward us, but to allow for His aid in the process of our remediation and remission of His Father’s irreconcilable pain toward our sins. His tremendous animosity toward Satan’s unforgivable introduction of self-pleasure, which has so much wasted the children of Adam, will never be comprehended by His finite creatures. We do not bow before His sense of justice toward us, or before His mercy that overlooks our failings, and understands our lack of comprehending His love. We do not understand God’s high standard; or naturally seek to know it. But, the Son of God comprehends everything.

And through His work of intercession, He will have a people redeemed and ready to present before His Father, with exceeding joy amid great fanfare and praise for God’s love. Sin finally past, all of its sorrows and pains will be resolved and healed, not by force of arms, but by the force of self-sacrificing love. God’s house will finally be finished and all around glorious. His universe, again free from danger and permanently barring rebellion and guile from its borders, God will again be surrounded by all of His family that is finally safe and sound.

“And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God.” (Rev. 21:3). “And there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of His Christ; and He shall reign for ever and ever.” (Rev. 11:15). Heaven can hardly wait to welcome us back. Can we hear them already?