Nobody Wants Nathan

Companion piece: You Have Judged Rightly.

A young man who cannot stop

A friend of mine is sitting with a young man who cannot stop sinning.

That is how the young man puts it. He does something he believes is wrong. He is sorry, and he says so, and he is forgiven. Then, sooner than he would like, he does it again. And again. It has run long enough now that he has stopped worrying about the sin and started worrying about himself.

His question is not whether God forgives him. He believes that. His question is whether his repentance is real. If it were real, he reasons, it would work. Something would change. That nothing has changed suggests to him that whatever he is doing at the end of each round is not repentance at all, but a form of words he has learned to say.

And underneath that, a second worry, which is the heavier one. If he keeps coming back with the same thing, is he taking advantage? Is there a point at which returning becomes presumption — where a man who keeps drawing on forgiveness has stopped receiving grace and started spending it?

He is not being precious. It is a real question, and it is the right one to be worried about.

The question nobody asks

Paul saw the objection coming. Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? He answers it in three words — by no means — and everyone who has ever worried about cheap grace has stood on that answer since.

But look at what is being asked. Are we to. It is a question about permission, and the answer to it is no. Nobody disputes that.

The question nobody puts is the other one. Do we? Not may we, not should we. Do we. And the answer to that one is yes, continuously, most of it unremarked, nearly all of it never reaching the level where we would give it a name. The young man is not unusual in continuing. He is unusual in having noticed.

Paul, who wrote by no means, wrote something else years later: that he was the foremost of sinners. Not had been. Is. The man furthest along that road describes himself in the present tense, after decades of the sort of life that ought, on the young man’s arithmetic, to have moved him well down the list.

So whatever maturity does, it does not appear to shorten the account. It seems mostly to improve the eyesight.

Three ways of not seeing it

Simon keeps a ledger and it is not dishonest. He could tell you what he did and did not do that evening, and he would be accurate. He did not wash his guest’s feet. He did not give the kiss. He did not bring the oil. He knows all three. He simply does not think they amount to anything.

That is what discounting is. Not a lie about the facts. A scale applied to them — and the scale is the thing nobody examines. On Simon’s, a woman with a history runs to five hundred denarii and a host who skipped the courtesies is not worth counting. Everyone has a scale. Most of us have never stopped to ask where ours came from.

The parable hands him a scale that works differently. Two debtors, one large and one small, and a lender for whom the difference changes nothing: both cancelled, both equally unable to pay. Simon answers correctly, which is the trouble. You can get the answer right and still not realise the story is about you.

David does something else. He keeps the figures accurate and puts the ledger away.

He knows exactly what he has done. There is no scale problem here, no confusion about categories. A man in his army has a wife; David takes her; she conceives; and when the husband will not provide the cover David needs, David has him killed and the death written off as the ordinary cost of a siege. Every step deliberate. He does not talk himself into thinking it small.

He talks himself into thinking it is finished. He marries the widow, the household absorbs it, the child is born, and the thing closes over. From outside there is nothing to see. A king has taken a soldier’s widow into his house, which is the sort of thing kings do.

And he would have left it there. Nothing in the account suggests David was working towards a confession, or that pressure was building to a point where he would have spoken. Somebody had to come and stand in front of him. Until Nathan walked in, the ledger stayed shut, and David was, by every appearance, fine.

The young man does neither of these. His figures are accurate and his ledger is open. He can tell you what he did, he does not think it small, and he has not put it away. By the standard of the two men above him he is doing everything right.

And he is the one in distress, because he has added a step the story does not contain.

Go back to the parable. Two debtors, neither able to pay. Between when they could not pay and he cancelled the debt of both there is nothing at all. No plea. No plan. No first instalment offered in good faith. The lender does not ask what they intend to do about it, and the story does not record them offering. Their inability is the premise, not the crisis.

That empty space is where the young man has put himself. Each round he brings something — sorrow, resolve, an undertaking that this time will be different — and offers it against the balance. He is not failing to repent. He is repenting, and then trying to pay for it. And when the payment is not taken, he decides the fault is in him.

Notice how Nathan does it.

He does not accuse. He comes to the king with a story about a rich man who owned many sheep, and a poor man who owned one lamb — a lamb that ate at his table and slept in his arms. A traveller arrives. The rich man will not take from his own flock, so he takes the poor man’s lamb.

David is furious. He passes sentence on the spot. The man who did this deserves to die.

Then Nathan says four words. You are the man.

That is exactly what happens in Simon’s dining room. Jesus does not accuse him either. He tells a story about two debtors, Simon judges it correctly, and the verdict turns out to be his own.

Why a story, and not a straight accusation? Because an accusation gets argued with. Tell a man he is proud and he will explain why he is not. Tell him about somebody else who is proud and he will agree with you — and for a moment he sees the thing clearly, because he does not yet know he is looking at himself.

David did not work it out in the night. Simon did not ask to be shown. And the young man did not get here on his own. He is sitting in a room with a friend. That is the same thing happening again, only slower.

But nobody wants Nathan.

It is worth being honest about that. The day Nathan walks in is not a good day. David loses something real — the arrangement he had built, the quiet, the man he had persuaded himself he was. Somebody shows you, and you lose the thing you were keeping hidden.

So we arrange our lives, mostly without ever deciding to, so that nobody gets close enough to do what Nathan did. We keep plenty of people who know us. We keep very few who could look at us and say you are the man and be listened to. Those are different people, and the second kind take years to make and one afternoon to avoid.

And when somebody does say it, we have our answers ready. He does not understand the situation. She is being judgmental. That was uncalled for.

Those answers might all be fair. They still miss the point. The question is not whether the person said it kindly, or picked the right moment. The question is whether they were right.

The young man has done the rare thing. He is sitting in a room with somebody who is allowed to tell him. Whatever else is going wrong for him, that part is not.

The question left open

Nathan finishes the job. You are the man. And David answers him — I have sinned against the LORD — and that is the whole confession. Six words. No explanation offered.

Jesus does not finish it. He asks Simon a question, do you see this woman, and leaves the question hanging. He talks to her instead. He speaks to the room. The meal ends. And Luke, who could easily have told us, does not tell us whether Simon ever answered.

The sentence is left open. Somebody still has to answer it. The only person left is you.

Which brings it back to the young man, and the question he started with. Is he taking advantage? Is there a point where coming back again becomes presumption?

Look at who was worried about that at Simon’s table. Not Simon. Simon was comfortable all evening — he ate his meal, thought his thought, answered his question, and as far as we know went to bed untroubled. The woman on the floor was not asking whether she had used up her allowance either. The only man at that table untroubled by his debt was the one carrying the largest.

And the young man, who has done a fraction of what either of them had done, cannot sleep for it.

The man lying awake worrying that he is abusing grace is not the man abusing it. That worry is not evidence against him. It is very nearly the only evidence there is.

And his friend is still sitting in the room with him. That is where this began, and it is more than most people have.