The Currency of God—April 28, 2023

The Currency of God—April 28, 2023

“…and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.” (Ephesians 4:32)

In the United States, we use “dollars.” In Mexico, it is “pesos.” In most of western Europe, it’s the “euro,” and in the UK, it is still the old British “pound.” And of course these days there are more confusing and slippery things called "cryptocurrency" like Bitcoin, which you might find anywhere on Earth. But what is the currency of the Kingdom of God?

Maybe that seems to be a materialistic-sounding question. After all, surely the right “religious” answer is to say that they don’t have money in heaven, because there will be everything that we need or want right at our immediate disposal, provided by an almighty God. Right? Or maybe it sounds too worldly to think in terms of needing to buy and sell things in heaven in the first place.

And, yeah, that’s probably true. But I don’t quite mean “currency” like that. And I don’t just mean to be talking about “heaven”. I don’t mean to say that we will all get heavenly ATM cards upon our deaths and will have to conduct business transactions in some new kind of paper money or digital wealth. I don’t believe that we will arrive on the scene there in glory and have some kind of angelic account manager tell us our balance in “heaven points” and then tell us what prizes we can get with those points, like the teenager behind the prize counter at Chuck-E-Cheese telling you what you get for all your skee-ball tickets.

Let me refocus our terms here: when I say “currency,” I mean the common way, or mode, of conducting relations with each other. We have a common currency in this country, the dollar, so that I can use the same green piece of paper when I buy a coffee from you that you can then use to buy flour for bread with, or whatever. In a single country, we all use the same kind of money as our currency, so that we don’t have switch things up and exchange our money every time you cross a state line, or so that we don’t have to fall into the barter system, either. Having a common currency means that I can interact with you (buying/selling/whatever) on the same terms (dollars, for example) as you then can use with somebody else. You’re not trading sheep’s wool for wheat to me, and then having to trade the wheat for eggs and milk to someone else, all in an elaborate chain of transactions when all you really wanted to end up with was some bacon. A common currency means that the way I relate to you is the same way, or means, I relate to everybody else.

So…what about in God’s Reign? What’s the means, the common “currency,” if we can talk about it that way, for the way God’s people relate with each other? And what’s the common currency for how God relates to us?

In a word, grace.

This verse from Ephesians today makes the connection for us—that we are to relate to each other on the same terms, and with the same basis, as God has chosen to relate to us. The NRSV translates it, “forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.” And that’s the basic gist of the Greek, but Paul’s original word-choice is interesting, and a little bit more nuanced. A woodenly literal translation of the Greek here would say, “…gracing each other just as God in Christ graced you.” Obviously “forgiveness” and “grace” are closely related—you could say that forgiveness is about putting away the wrongs of the past when you don’t deserve it, and grace is about any kind of gift given to you beyond your earning. But just hear the phrasing again when the literal “grace” language is there: we are supposed to grace each other, in the same way that God relates to us on the basis of grace. That’s currency talk. That’s about a common means of relating to each other. And notice how Paul believes (as Jesus taught, too, by the way) that our forgiveness of each other is meant to be part of a seamless whole with God’s forgiveness of us. I don’t get forgiven by God and then have the right to be a merciless bean-counter with you. Grace is our common currency among the people of God.

One of my all-time favorite songs by the band Switchfoot has this refrain:

“In the economy of mercy, I am a poor and begging man;

 In the currency of grace is where my song begins.

 In the colors of your goodness, in the scars that mark your skin

 In the currency of grace is where my song begins.”

That’s what Paul is talking about here, too. It’s the answer to the question, “How does God manage the divine economy?” Is it a barter system? Do you have to trade in certain good deeds to earn a trip to heaven? Is it in sacrifices offered up at an altar or an offering plate? Does God’s economy run on having enough prayers said on a given subject to get God’s invisible hand to move? Is it all just based on something like karma, where every good deed nets you a prize and every bad deed has a punishment waiting for you in the wings? And are we supposed to relate to each other the same way, too, only doing good things for others to pay them back for something good they have done to us? Are we supposed to live in a barter-economy with our love, too, where we only show kindness to the people we think “deserve” it, or only the people we think will one day do something kind to us?

No, no, no! A thousand times, no!

God’s way of relating to us, which then becomes our way of relating to each other, isn’t based on winning prizes with good deeds, or trading favors. It’s not about what is earned, deserved, merited, or bought. It’s about what is freely given, from me to you, from you to me, from each of us to everybody around us—because it is first freely given from God to us all.

In a word, it’s about grace.

Lord God, as we receive all good things from you by your grace and kindness, let us deal in the same currency of grace for the people around us.