Eternal grace and God's rejection

One of the first objections that comes to mind when looking at the idea that God is eternal love and that His attitude toward us never changes, is the fact of separation in Jesus' future judgment of the nations. Wheat and tares, sheep and goats, celebrating wedding guests and locked out ones, people inside the gates of the heavenly city come down to earth and people outside - how could we possibly NOT believe that grace is available only for a limited time and that God DOES reject some in the end?

Now the fact of a separation alone does not necessarily imply personal rejection by God. As someone (was it C.S.Lewis?) once described, this twofold outcome may simply be God's confirmation of what people wanted, and that ultimately there could be only 2 possible options because of the non-coerciveness of love: either to personally embrace God's will by saying, "Your will be done!" or to refuse and have God say to us "Your will be done!" by letting us continue in OUR rejection of Him.

But it's not quite that simple. Jesus told at least two parables where people apparently WANTED to be with God and still weren't allowed to take part: the parable of the wedding banquet (Matthew 22:1-14) and the parable of the ten virgins (Matthew 25:1-13).

If Jonathan 's proposal in "Discovering the God Imagination" is correct, we should be able to recognize where our own lense of reading a change in God's attitude into the text comes into play, and also how an alternative reading is not only possible but also more compelling in our attempt to understand the original meaning and intent.

Let's look at the wedding banquet parable first. As always, context plays a huge role in determining Jesus' intent and who is being addressed in the parable. Chapter 22 starts out saying, "Jesus spoke to them again in parables ...". The "them" who are "again" addressed by him are undoubtedly chief priest and elders who began challenging Jesus' authority in 21:23 while he was teaching in the temple courts. The parable of the two sons and of the tenants at the end of that chapter are unveiling the pharisees' attitude of unrepentance and their rejection of the Son of God to the point of seeking to kill him. And they get right away that he is talking about them (21:45) but refuse to embrace the message itself, in fact it only reinforces their hatred towards Jesus (21:46).

But Jesus continues in the same line, to speak to them and about them from a slightly different angle - this time it is not about hypocritical displays of godliness vs. initial refusal and final obedience (2 sons) or unfaithfulness of servants towards their master (tenants) but it's about the refusal to come to a fantastic banquet that they are invited to. And even after the first refusal, the invitation is given again - but no attention is paid and other things are more important to them (22:5). They even kill the messengers who keep bringing the inviation. In the end, the only ones that get to participate in the wedding feast are the unlikely ones - those no one expected to be there - the strangers from the street corners, both good and bad. They too are receiving an invitation and they do choose to come.

This is the main thrust of this parable. The religious leadership of pharisees and teachers of the law is not despised by God. They are invited just like the rest. In many ways they are actually first in line when God gives the invitation, not because they are more special to God but because of the closeness and exposure to truth their background provides. And a single instant of rejection does not deter God. But when hearts are hardened to a point where God is completely ignored for the sake of other pursuits, and evil shows its ugly face in horrible brutality and murderous violence towards innocent messengers of love and fellowship, God eventually puts an end to the ability to hurt others.

Up to this point, rejection of God is not a change of His desire to have these people at His feast but the only possible consequence of a continued refusal and violent opposition towards that desire. The shocking conclusion is yet another attempt of Jesus to create self-awareness, help them see their actual rejection of God, and choose a different way and outcome than the one described in the parable.

But what about the uninvited guest who is found out as being not properly dressed and consequently thrown outside into the darkness into the hellish conditions of weeping and gnashing of teeth? Isn't here finally proof that God's acceptance not only has a time limit but is also predicated on a worthiness and purification which describe the condition one must fulfill before being able to be "in" instead of "out"? Didn't he unlike the rest really want to be there but wasn't allowed because he didn't receive purification from his moral depravity first which makes Him unacceptable before God and His holiness?

I think it all depends on who this "wedding crasher" is. If Jesus is still talking to and about the same people, he is still part of those who rejected the invitation and were bent on killing the messengers. How does he end up at the wedding then? Because this is where the religious elite SAW themselves ending up in their own view of how the story ends. In their understanding, the immoral and impious ones are rejected by God and only they themselves get to join the party. Jesus turns that on its head, not only by saying that people from the streetcorners and explicitly "bad" people get to join, but also by excluding those who thought they'd be there on the merit of their own religious performance.

So I would argue that Jesus is not switching all of a sudden to talk to people generally about standards of holiness without which God cannot be in their presence but about the kind of belonging God provides for all who want to come on His terms, both the morally good and bad.

The only ones left out didn't want to embrace this universal acceptance in the first place and their hellish condition is not due to a change in God's character or terms of His offer but due to what their own terms entail - rejection of life, rejection of grace, condemning others and wanting to eliminate God's representative and bringer of the good news. The white robe then is not a standard which must be reached before God can allow us to be with Him, it is a sign of true transformation that happens when we step into the light that invites all of us in.

The parable of the Ten Virgins is actually quite similar. All ten are invited to meet and join the groom in the festive procession and the wedding. Five are truly prepared to meet him and five are not. No matter what we think the "lamp oil" signifies exactly, it is clearly both a sign of preparedness and of Jesus knowing His own, as the reason for the locked door and the reason for the refusal of the groom to let them in indicates (25:10-12). The only difference to the former parable is the audience: Jesus is speaking to the disciples now (24:1). That's why there are no elements of initial refusal at all. But apparently just being associated with Christ outwardly is not equivalent to an inner connection with Him. "To be known" makes only sense in terms of close relationship, not a limit to Jesus' extent of cognitive knowledge.

So I would argue that the preparedness Jesus is calling for at the end of his teaching in Matthew's Gospel is equivalent to Jesus' final teachings in the Gospel of John where the focus is on dependence on Him with the help of the provision of the Holy Spirit's continuing work (John 14-16). One of the things Jesus is pointing out there, is this: "Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine ... This is to my Father's glory , that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples." (John 15:4,8). Immediately afterwards he identifies what the process of being fruitful entails: remaining in His love and obeying His love command (15:9-17).

Taking all these factors into account, there must a possibility of NOT remaining and in that sense of "running out of oil". What fuels God's life in us is His love. If we cut ourselves off from that source, we'll be running dry very quickly and love towards ourselves, others and God will also dry up very fast. Relationship is something dynamic. It cannot be described in the static terms of "Christian", "born again" (the cultural misunderstanding of it anyway), and especially not in a profound misunderstanding of the phrase "once saved, always saved". If the essence of salvation is a restored relationship with God, it makes no sense whatsoever to put a singular conversion experience in its place and assure people that this in itself safeguards from the place we find ourselves in when we abandon that relationship.

To the degree that we shut God out, we are still very much lost and not saved at all, no matter what we understood or believed in the past. Jesus' parable of the Ten Virgins speaks to followers to understand their dependence on what fuels their spiritual life and to hold on to it. If we don't heed the warning and don't take seriously what our source of life is and stop depending on it, we may end up like the five who were unprepared to meet God. Again, the difference beetween acceptance and rejection is not a change in God or the limited temporal nature of what He offers, but the natural consequence of how WE change when we let go of that inner connection. Grace is not there to lull us into sleep and indifference but to wake us up and alert us to the possibility of ultimate loss if we don't take seriously now what grace invites us into.

No matter how accurate or inaccurate my own interpretation of the mentioned texts turn out to be, I'd still like to point out that Jesus' words of possible exclusion seem to be entirely focussed on those considered close to God in one way or another: the self-perception of the religious Jewish leadership and that of his own disciples. His warnings do not negate God's free grace or limit it but they challenge those who think God's acceptance is either limited to themselves or pervert it into a license to revert back to a Christless lifestyle with no consequences because of their own nominal association.