Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. – Galatians 6:7

Today’s Scripture Reading (November 22, 2014): Galatians 6

Apparently growing an apple tree from seed will not result in the kind of Apple that the seed emerged from. If you want to grow Red Delicious Apples, don’t bother taking a seed from a Red Delicious Apple and placing into the ground, because even though Apple trees are relatively easy to grow, you are just as likely to get a Crab Apple as you are to get a Red Delicious – in fact, according to some the Crab Apple is much more likely to emerge. Instead of planting from seed, Apple trees are usually grown by a grafting an above ground plant into a more generic rootstock. The resulting tree has the size and hardiness that is appropriate to the rootstock, and a fruit that is characteristic of the above ground grafted part of the plant.

Because of this unique property with apples (and a few other fruit trees) it makes them the only examples that violate the principle of what a man reaps, he sows. Oh, you will still get an apple tree from seed, but it just won’t be like the apple that gave you the seed.

But for the rest of the world, the seed that is planted governs the product that comes out of the ground. It is a principle that has allowed farmers to govern what it is that is harvested at the end of the growing season ever since we learned that we could farm the land rather than just being hunters and gatherers of what naturally comes out of the ground. I have never met a farmer that just wanted to plant a mystery seed and be surprised at harvest time. Each seed is carefully chosen, and the things that are done to care for the resultant plant depends on the identity of the seed that is chosen. And this isn’t a recent phenomenon. We have known it for a long time.

So it is a wonder that we haven’t figured out that the same principle applies to our own lives. Often it seems that we set goals, but we are totally unwilling to plant the seeds and care for the resultant trees that will carry us toward those goals. We want to be rich, but we are unwilling to sacrifice and delay gratification (two things that are essential to growing wealth.) We want to be educated, but don’t want to study. We want to be successful, but we refuse to be disciplined. At every step of the way we seem to want to sabotage our progress toward our very own goals.

And Paul wants to remind us that this principal holds for our spiritual lives as well. But taken with the rest of Galatians, this comment that God will not be mocked reveals something unexpected. Considering that this letter is written to a group of people who had rejected the grace of Jesus in favor of a works righteousness, this comment might lead us beyond the obvious interpretation that if we sow bad we will get bad and if we sow good we will get good, to the idea that if we sow grace we will receive grace, but if we insist on judging others on the basis of works righteousness, then we will also be judged according to the works that we do. And in the end if we are judged by our works, we lose.

It is time that we learned to give grace, and chase after grace – it is time for grace to be the fabric on which we build our lives, because in the end, it is grace that all of us will one day need to receive.   

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Acts 17