You represent Christ in everything you do. It doesn’t matter where you are or what you are doing, you represent Christ. Like an employee wears a logo of their company name, you bear the name of Christ. People identify us with Christ by the logo, (from the Greek “logos”, meaning name), that we wear. We are Christ’s emissaries, employees of a sort. What we do reflects upon Him for we represent Him in everything.
There are many allegories in scripture that God uses to describe those that follow him, those that wear His name. There is the master:servant allegory, the allegory of friends, the father:children allegory, and many others. The one that exemplifies this point of mine best is probably the master:servant allegory, what we might call today the employer:employee allegory.
We are representations of Christ, just as an employee is held responsible for what he does while wearing the team colors, (or the company uniform), we will be held accountable and punishable for what we do while wearing the emblem of Christ: His logo, or name.
Now this employer:employee relationship is not an insignificant allusion. God uses this particular allegory in Matthew 20:1-16 when he gives the same wage to those who worked the entire day as he does to those who worked the end of the day only.
For the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which went out early in the morning to hire labourers into his vineyard. And when he had agreed with the labourers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And he went out about the third hour, and saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and said unto them; Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right I will give you. And they went their way.
Again he went out about the sixth and ninth hour, and did likewise. And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle, and saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle? They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard; and whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive. So when even was come, the lord of the vineyard saith unto his steward, Call the labourers, and give them their hire, beginning from the last unto the first. And when they came that were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every man a penny. But when the first came, they supposed that they should have received more; and they likewise received every man a penny.
And when they had received it, they murmured against the good man of the house, saying, These last have wrought but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day. But he answered one of them, and said, Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny? Take that thine is, and go thy way: I will give unto this last, even as unto thee. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good? So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.
-Matthew 20:1-16
Every workman gets the same reward if we are all employees of God. Heaven is our reward. But, what do we do? We try to pull the fairness card: “That’s not fair! How come they work an hour and get the same wage as those of us who have worked all day?”. The moral here is that life isn’t fair, and thank God for that. If life was fair, we’d all be in Hell right now. Jesus is comparing the householder to Himself, the workmen to Christians, and the wages to Heaven: our eternal reward.
We are His employees. When we accepted the free gift of salvation and it transformed our lives from reprobate to righteous, we entered into an agreement with God. Everyone who accepts the call to work in the vineyards earns the reward of Heaven, but those that work their whole lives do not get more Heaven than those who were saved later in life. God is just, not fair. He is merciful, not fair. He is righteous, not fair. We try to put Him in a box and define Him, but that’s not our Job.
You don’t know everything about your employer, that’s not your job. Your job is to represent them and the company as best you can. As Christians, we wear the name of Christ, it is our logo and our lives should be lived like we do not exist. When people look at a Chick-fil-a employee, they see the company, not the person. If that employee is rude or screws up the order, or takes a really long time, or all three, you will probably avoid going to that particular location again. If this type of treatment occurs at several different locations you may avoid the entire chain altogether. The actions of a single employee can turn people away from the business, the company of God.
As always, thanks for reading.
—the anonymous novelist
