By Russ Johnson
We have chickens.
Well, hens.
One of them is named Chippy.
And Chippy gets broody.
Which is a polite way of saying
she commits her entire being
to a terrible idea
with absolutely no self-awareness
and complete sincerity.
She sits in the nesting box all day.
Fluffed up.
Sweating in the Florida heat.
Refusing food and water.
Attacking anyone who gets too close,
which feels like commitment
until you realize
what she's committed to.
She's sitting on unfertilized eggs.
Nothing in them.
Nothing coming.
No matter how faithful
she is to the process.
She's not lazy.
She's not rebellious.
She's just trying to do
what she thinks she was made to do.
With everything she has.
And unless someone
physically picks her up
and carries her out of the coop,
she will sit there
until it kills her.
In good faith.
On empty eggs.
In a world governed
by conditional belonging,
most of us have been Chippy.
Here's how the message usually sounds.
Jesus did his part.
Now it's on you to do yours.
Grace provides the power to change.
Your practices provide the pathway.
It sounds humble.
Like you're taking your part seriously.
But here's what it actually does.
It places the burden of transformation
squarely on you.
Which feels like faithfulness.
Which is what makes it so hard
to put down.
In describing grace in kingdom of God,
Jesus told a story about a landowner
who went out early in the morning
to hire workers for his vineyard.
Fair wage.
Clear terms.
Everyone understood the deal.
He went back at nine.
Hired more.
Noon.
More.
Three in the afternoon.
More.
And then at five —
one hour before quitting time —
he found a group kicking cans
and hired them too.
At the end of the day
he lined them up last to first
and paid every single one
the same wage.
The all-day workers lost their minds.
"These men worked one hour and you've made them equal to us who bore the burden of the work and the heat of the day."
(Matt 20:12)
Which is completely reasonable
by any human standard.
More effort.
More time.
More heat.
Should mean more.
That's how the world works.
And so we often assume
that's how God works.
The owner doesn't apologize.
"Didn't you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?"
(vs 13-15)
He's not explaining himself.
He's exposing something
the all-day workers couldn't see.
They weren’t angry
because they were cheated.
They received exactly
what they agreed to.
They were angry
because someone else got
what they felt only effort
should produce.
The tragedy isn't that they worked hard.
The tragedy is they failed to realize
the wage was never something
they were building toward.
It was something
the owner decided
before they picked up a single tool.
Paul said it plainly:
His grace was “given to us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time." (2 Tim 1:9)
Which raises a popular question:
So what's the point of any of it?
Why show up at all?
Why not just stay in the parking lot until five?
Those questions only make sense
if we still believe
the point of showing up
was to earn the wage.
Paul knew that way of life well.
Held coats while people
stoned a man to death
for believing what Jesus said.
Then met Jesus on a road
and everything he'd been working toward
turned out to be working against it.
Which is why he could write
without embarrassment
about his struggle.
He never names it.
Probably the kind of thing
you don't say out loud
in polite company.
He asked three times
for God to take it away.
The answer wasn't:
keep practicing the disciplines
until you become someone
who doesn't have this problem.
The answer was:
"My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." (2 Cor 12:9)
Stop chasing strength.
Start trusting sufficiency.
Which is an invitation
that is often lost
to a misunderstanding
of Paul’s words in Philippians 2:12-13:
"Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose."
The word behind "work out"
is the Greek katergazesthe.
It doesn't mean validate
what you claim to believe.
It means let your salvation,
your life in Jesus,
that came from Jesus,
have its full expression.
So the “fear and trembling” isn't:
oh no, I might blow this.
The phrase phobos kai tromos —
is the language of being in awe
of what God is doing.
The shock comes from knowing
what you’re already standing in.
Jesus has become for us "wisdom from God — that is, our righteousness, holiness, and redemption." (1 Corinthians 1:30)
Not the destination of your effort.
The ground you're already standing on.
Which explains why Paul,
in all the tension
surrounding spiritual growth,
could simply say:
“As you received Christ Jesus, so walk in him.” (Col 2:6)
How did you receive
the news of him?
By faith.
So how do you walk?
The same way.
The same trust that opened the door
is the same trust
that moves you through the house.
And here's the thing about that walk:
it's harder than religion.
Religion gives you something to point to.
A checklist completed.
A discipline maintained.
Living from union with Christ
gives you none of that.
It gives you someone.
Invisible.
Inside.
Whose life you're learning to trust
in the middle of real suffering,
real temptation,
real relationships
that don't resolve cleanly.
That's not indifference.
That's the life of trust
Jesus unveiled in a vineyard.
"I am the vine, you are the branches… apart from me you can do nothing. Every branch that does not bear fruit he takes away… ." (John 15:1-11)
On the surface,
it almost sounds reasonable
when people argue that faith
is about more than just trusting Jesus—
at least until you notice
three crucial things:
Jesus says he spoke these words for our "joy," not our dread. (vs 11)
We are "branches," not the "vine." (vs 5)
The Father—not us—is the "gardener" overseeing the outcome. (vs 1)
That’s why Jesus says:
“remain in me, as I also remain in you." (vs 4)
The word translated remain is menō —
to stay, abide, be at home.
Jesus isn’t inviting us
to achieve union,
but to live from the union
we already have
as a branch in the vine.
Which makes what Jesus says
about the Father even more beautiful.
The phrase translated “takes away”
in verse 2 is airō in Greek —
a word that also means
to lift or raise.
In the time of this story
vinedressers tended low branches,
lifting and positioning them
so they could receive
what they needed
to bear fruit.
That’s the picture Jesus gives us
of the Father.
We can naturally deny
our life in the vine —
only to find ourselves
thrown into the "consuming fire"
of God's correcting love (Deut. 4:24) —
the One who refines and purifies.
(Malachi 3:3)
But either way,
the invitation is to see
thattransformation is his work —
not ours.
To receive
our life from the vine
and trust the gardener with the fruit
is spiritual growth.
Not a nesting box
you refuse to leave
no matter how hot it gets.
Fruit of the God
who already
made his home in you.
"He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." (Phil 1:6)
He started it.
He'll complete it.
The eggs were never going to hatch.
And you were never
supposed to be in that box.