Bible Note #69: A Grace-based Society after God’s Heart

Deuteronomy 24:10-15 & 17-22 (NIV)

When you make a loan of any kind to your neighbor, do not go into their house to get what is offered to you as a pledge. Stay outside and let the neighbor to whom you are making the loan bring the pledge out to you. If the neighbor is poor, do not go to sleep with their pledge in your possession. Return their cloak by sunset so that your neighbor may sleep in it. Then they will thank you, and it will be regarded as a righteous act in the sight of the Lord your God.

Do not take advantage of a hired worker who is poor and needy, whether that worker is a fellow Israelite or a foreigner residing in one of your towns. Pay them their wages each day before sunset, because they are poor and are counting on it. Otherwise they may cry to the Lord against you, and you will be guilty of sin. . . .

Do not deprive the foreigner or the fatherless of justice, or take the cloak of the widow as a pledge. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you from there. That is why I command you to do this.

When you are harvesting in your field and you overlook a sheaf, do not go back to get it. Leave it for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. When you beat the olives from your trees, do not go over the branches a second time. Leave what remains for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow. When you harvest the grapes in your vineyard, do not go over the vines again. Leave what remains for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt. That is why I command you to do this.

There is, I think, a tendency to stereotype the Old Testament law, the Torah, as being overly concerned with retribution and punishment. As part of the baggage of that stereotype comes a picture of God as harsh and more concerned with striking down than with lifting up. To be sure, there are certainly parts of the law that do feel harsh and punitive to our modern sensibilities.

But it cannot be denied that the God of the Torah is also implacably concerned with protecting the weak and vulnerable members of society. In fact, some of the most serious penal threats in the Torah are aimed at those who use their power against the vulnerable. In that sense, many of the penal commands in the Torah have grace and generosity as their driving force. These commands from God are aimed at creating a society that is founded on the generous provision for and protection of the vulnerable members of that society—the poor, the foreign residents, the widows, and the orphans.

In the Torah, we see that God’s great concern is for those who have no natural power of their own. Over and over, as in the passage cited above, God expresses his concern for these vulnerable ones. These laws grow out of God’s deep compassion and care for the needs of the vulnerable and powerless, and through these commands God asserts himself as the protector of and provider for these members of society.

But it’s important to recognize that these commands are not addressed to the vulnerable and powerless. God addresses his commands to the rich and powerful members of society, and by these commands, he makes those rich and powerful ones responsible for protecting and providing for the vulnerable and powerless. In other words, God tasks the rich and powerful to be his agents in protecting and providing for their powerless and vulnerable neighbors. And he holds them accountable for this work. These commands make it the job of the rich and powerful members of society to provide for and protect the poor, the foreign residents, the widows, and the orphans. And further, commands like these from Deuteronomy 24 threaten judgment on the rich and powerful if they fail to fulfill their responsibilities to provide for and protect these vulnerable and powerless ones.

Fundamentally, what these commands tell us is that God is envisioning in them the creation of a society that is grace-based, a society that has grace and free generosity as its foundation. Provision is to be made not on the basis of deserving but on the basis of need. Provision for those in need is not determined on the basis of their worthiness but on the basis of their need. The notion of the “deserving poor” is foreign to the Bible.

That concept should sound familiar to Christians whose gospel faith is just exactly that—provision (salvation) based not on deserving but purely on need. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9 NIV). We are saved not because we deserve to be saved but because we need to be saved.

This graciousness and free generosity that we see expressed both in the gospel of salvation and in God’s vision for society are both rooted in the character of God—our gracious, generous, compassionate God (“The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness” Exodus 34:6 NIV).

Any effort to sever a grace-based gospel from a grace-based society is an effort to cut God in half. Christians cannot preach a gospel of salvation based on grace and at the same time tolerate harsh, brutal, and compassionless treatment of the powerless and vulnerable members of their society. They cannot luxuriate in the grace of salvation and at the same time turn a deaf ear to the cries of the powerless and those in need. In doing so, according to Jesus, they become hypocrites, those whose words and behavior are out of sync. It is a denial of the gospel. “If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth” (1 John 3:17-18 NIV). James is quite blunt. He sees the failure to generously care for those in need as reason to doubt that such a person has saving faith at all (James 2:14-17).

My aim in writing this is not to propose some sort of social welfare program, though it is certainly true that the welfare of our society does indeed depend on this. My aim is to point you to the path into intimacy with God. If we want to be intimate with God, we need to nurture in ourselves a heart after God’s own heart. We need to seek to want what God wants and love what God loves. God cares deeply for the powerless and vulnerable ones, and if we want to be close to God, then we need to care for them deeply also.

Jesus himself is clear about this. He says that if we want to get close to him, one of the most important ways to do that is by providing for the “least of these” his brothers and sisters (Matthew 25:31-46). Such care and provision is the path into the presence of Jesus.

Photos by GAC

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