Love Awakens and Grows More Love

So, the family returned to Egypt after a long journey to Canaan, where the brothers buried their father, Jacob. When they got back, Joseph’s ten older brothers suddenly realize their father is dead. That’s the way it reads, and it would be funny if it weren’t so sad! Because this triggers in their minds that only one possibility awaits them: they will be punished, maybe even put to death, for their sin against Joseph 39 years earlier. In their muddled thinking, stoked by fear, Joseph has been patiently biding his time for years, while his hatred boiled just beneath the surface, waiting until the day that dear old dad is out of the picture so he could execute his wrath on these wicked men. Oh, and at the same time, he has been generously providing for his brothers in Egypt for 17 years. What do they do? They send a messenger to Joseph with a made-up story about their father Jacob giving a command before he died that Joseph should forgive his brothers for their sin. And, the messenger says to Joseph, your brothers ask that you forgive their transgressions as they are the servants of the God of your father.

It reminds me of the parable of the unforgiving servant that Jesus told in Matthew. A servant owed, let’s say, 5 billion dollars, to the king. No way he could ever repay it, so the king ordered that he and his family and everything they had be sold. The man went to the king and begged for mercy. And the king forgave his debt! Completely forgave him, no strings attached. The servant went out and happened upon a man who owed him $5. He seized the man and began to choke him while demanding payment. The servant begged for patience and promised to pay, but the man who had just been forgiven 5 billion dollars took the man who owed him $5 and put him in prison until he could pay what he owed, to the last penny. The only way to understand that parable is to see that the man who had been forgiven 5 billion by the king did not receive the grace he had been given. He still saw himself as someone with an unpayable debt and therefore had no patience with anyone who happened to be in his debt. Simply put, he rejected grace and held even more tightly to the law.

Tim Keller wrote, “When something happens that reveals your sins more clearly than you have ever wanted to see or admit, does it move you away from God or closer to him? If it makes you want to stay away from God and prayer and church—that shows you don’t understand what Jesus did for you. If you grasped it, your inner dialogue with God would sound more like this: ‘Lord, I knew before that you died for me and accepted me, but I didn’t know I was this foolish or this sinful—so now I realize your love is greater than I thought. Your mercy is more free and undeserved than I thought!” (Forgive: Why Should I and How Can I?)

The brothers were afraid of Joseph because their understanding of a gracious and forgiving God was stunted. Again, Keller writes, “If you have a God who is nothing but wrath, and if you have little understanding of what happened on the cross, you’ll be a driven person. You’ll try hard to be moral. You’ll try hard to be good, but you will always feel unworthy. It will be hard to grow into a loving person, because fear cannot awaken love. Only love can awaken and grow more love.”

So how do we approach and accept the amazing grace of God’s forgiveness? Stuart Townend’s last refrain in “How Deep the Father’s Love” says it so beautifully:

I will not boast in anything, No gifts, no power, no wisdom;
But I will boast in Jesus Christ, His death and resurrection.
Why should I gain from His reward? I cannot give an answer;
But this I know with all my heart –His wounds have paid my ransom.