Matthew 22:1-14 (a variation of The Great Banquet in Luke 14:15-24) — a parable of grace v. full-fledged parable of judgment.

Imagery of a wedding, a banquet, a festive meal — A gracious invitation to “sit together in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:6).

“The Kingdom of Heaven may be compared to a king who gave a marriage feast for his son.” But the world is full of folks who will not believe a good thing when they hear it. Free grace, dying love, and unqualified acceptance might as well be a fifteen-foot crocodile, the way we respond to it: all our protestations to the contrary, we will sooner accept a God we will be fed to than one we will be fed by.

"The king was angry and he sent his soldiers and destroyed those murderers and burned their city." Who in fact were all these corpses lying around like so much cordwood? They were the people who had a right to be at a royal wedding. They were the nobility, the jet set, the stars of stage, screen, and TV. They were, in short, the beautiful and the good.

Salvation is not by works, and the heavenly banquet is not an option. We are saved only by our acceptance of a party already in progress, and God has paid for that party at the price of his own death. And since he counts only those two things — only faith and grace — nothing else counts. Outside of the party, there is no life at all.

“And those servants went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both bad and good.” Evil, in short, is not a problem for the kingdom: it has already been aced out by the power of Jesus’ death and resurrection. The only thing that can possibly be a problem for the kingdom is a faithless nonacceptance of God’s having solved the problem of evil all by himself, and without ever once having mentioned the subject of reform. He does not invite the good and snub the bad. He invites us all, while we are yet sinners; and he simply asks us to trust that invitation.

A postulation — the king, in order to give the royal wedding a properly royal ambience, supplied his last-minute guests with suitable clothes.

Nobody is kicked out who wasn’t already in. Hell may be an option; but if it is, it is one that is given us only after we have already received the entirely non-optional gift of sitting together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

The man without the wedding garment is speechless. But some bad reasons, and if he had said anything, anything at all — if he had, even for the worst and most stupid of reasons, put himself in relationship with the king — he would have been alright:

  • “If he thinks I’m going to put on an unfitted tuxedo and hobnob with all those deadbeats….” — “Oh, just shut up, will you, and have a drink on the house.”

  • “Hey! I want to be recognized for myself, not just accepted because somebody put a monkey suit on me.” — “Dummy! The monkey suits are just for fun; it’s the people in them I went to the bother of dragging here. Try the caviar; it’s real Beluga.”

  • “Maybe if I say nothing and just look dumb, he won’t notice how poorly I’m dressed.” — “Turkey! You actually think I invited all these losers because they passed some kind of test? Relax; this whole party is free.”

For hell, ultimately, is not the place of punishment for sinners; sinners are not punished at all; they go straight to heaven just for saying yes to grace. Hell is simply the nowhere that is the only thing left for those who will not accept their acceptance by grace — who will not believe that at three o’clock on a Friday afternoon, free for nothing, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world actually declared he never intended to count sins in the first place.

What then do I make of, “Many are called but few are chosen”? Just this. The sad truth of our fallen condition is that we don’t want anything to do with a system of salvation that works by grace through faith. We want our merits, sleazy though they may be, rewarded — and we want everybody else’s obviously raunchy behavior punished. We are like pitiful little bargain-hunters going to a used-car lot with $265 worth of hard-earned cash in our pockets and looking for the ultimate transport of delight. But just as we are about to give up and go away, the salesman comes up to us with a smile on his face. “You really want a car?” he whispers in our ear. “Come around to the back of the lot. Have I got a deal for you!” And back there, gleaming in the sun, is a brand-new Porsche. “It’s yours for free,” he says. “The boss just likes you; here are the keys.” Many are called: there is no one in the whole world, good, bad, or indifferent, who isn’t walked around to the back of the lot by the divine Salesman and offered heaven for nothing. But few are chosen: because you know what most of us do? First thing — before we so much as let ourselves sink into the leather upholstery or listen to the engine purr — we get suspicious. We walk around the car and kick the tires. We slam the doors. We jump up and down on the bumpers to test the shocks. And then, even if we do decide to take it, we start right in worrying about the warranty, fussing about the cost of insuring a sports car, and even — God help us — fuming about whether, if our no-good neighbor came in here, he might be offered a Rolls Royce Silver Cloud. But God doesn’t help us — at least not with all that tough-customer routine. He just sits up there in the front office and remains Mr. Giveaway, the Mad Dog Tyson of Parousia Motors, the Crazy Eddy of Eternity whose prices are insane. He gives heaven to absolutely everybody: nothing down, no interest, no payments. And he makes hell absolutely unnecessary for anybody. The only catch is, you have to be as crazy as God to take the deal, because your every instinct will be to distrust such a cockamamy arrangement. You have to be willing to believe in an operation that would put any respectable God out of the deity business. Which, nicely enough, lands us right back at the parable: a king who throws parties any other king would be ashamed of, representing a God who refuses to act like one; and a hell only for idiots who insist on being serious.