It was quite scary. We rushed our infant son, less than 2 at the time, to the hospital. He needed a blood draw to determine if his condition was life-threatening.
Because my son was very upset, the nurse asked my wife and I to hold him down as she stuck him with a needle. He was too young to speak, but the look in his eyes said it all: “Why are you doing this, Daddy? It hurts!”
There was nothing I could say at that moment that would make him understand why I was doing what I was doing, but I was only acting for his best good. What more could I do? I was doing everything I could to help him, only out of love.
God and His Vineyard
The prophet Isaiah wrote a song about his “Beloved regarding His vineyard” (Isa. 5:1). Isaiah’s “Beloved” is God, and the vineyard refers primarily to God’s people.
The vineyard was “on a very fruitful hill,” and the owner “dug it up and cleared out its stones, and planted it with the choicest vine. He built a tower in its midst, and also made a winepress in it” (verses 1, 2). In other words, He did everything that He could for this vineyard to flourish.
Given this, the owner waited for “it to bring forth good grapes, but it brought forth wild grapes” or, translated literally, “stink-fruit” (verse 2). Literally, the term translated “wild grapes” can be rendered stink-fruit.
Have you ever bitten into a cluster of fresh grapes only to find they are rotten in your mouth? That is a bit like God’s experience of His vineyard producing rotten fruit.
Then God Himself declares: “And now, O inhabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, Judge, please, between Me and My vineyard. What more could have been done to My vineyard that I have not done in it? Why then, when I expected it to bring forth good grapes, did it bring forth [rotten] grapes?” (verses 3, 4).
First of all, no tyrant, no king who wants absolute power, says, “Go ahead and judge me.” But the God of the Bible opens up His records for the inspection of the universe. Of course, such review is possible only if God allows it. He possesses the power to simply crush anyone who questions Him. But He does just the opposite, with Christ taking on humanity and willingly being crushed for us.
Notice especially the question God asks, “What more could have been done to My vineyard that I have not done in it?” There was nothing more He could do.
What More Could He Do?
But that is not the end of the story. The story continues in Jesus’ parable about a vineyard in Matthew 21. “Hear another parable,” Jesus said. “There was a certain landowner who planted a vineyard and set a hedge around it, dug a winepress in it and built a tower” (verse 33).
Where is He quoting from? The song of the vineyard of Isaiah 5. And He expects the audience to be familiar with that song. What question should they, then, have in mind? This question: What more could He do?
Jesus goes on: “And he leased it to vinedressers and went into a far country. Now when vintage-time drew near, he sent his servants to the vinedressers, that they might receive its fruit. And the vinedressers took his servants, beat one, killed one, and stoned another. Again he sent other servants, more than the first, and they did likewise to them” (verses 33-36). What is this about? This refers to God sending prophet after prophet to His people, whom they persecuted and often killed.
“Then last of all he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the vinedressers saw the son, they said among themselves, ‘This is the heir. Come, let us kill him and seize his inheritance.’ So they took him and cast him out of the vineyard and killed him. Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those vinedressers?” (verses 37-40).
What more could He do? God sent His Son, Jesus, who gave His life for us. What more could He do?
If there had been any other way, would He not have chosen it, even if only to spare Himself the cross? If one is tempted to think that God might be selfish or might not have our best interests at heart, why would He go through all this?
Who suffers most in the cosmic conflict? God suffers whenever anyone suffers. Not only did Christ undergo the suffering of the cross for us. The God of the Bible takes all our suffering on His shoulders, similar to how I suffer when my son suffers. Exponentially more so, however, God suffers whenever we suffer.
God willingly took all of this on Himself—for us. He willingly created this world, even though He knew the unfathomable cost to Himself. This God of the cross revealed in Christ. What more could He do that He has not done? If there had been any preferable way (given the bad decisions of creatures and all the other factors), wouldn’t He have chosen it?
If one is tempted to think that God might be selfish or might not have our best interests at heart, why would He go through all this?
Two Parallel Metaphors
The song about God and His vineyard in Isaiah 5 actually employs two parallel metaphors. Alongside the metaphor of the vineyard owner and His vineyard there is a second metaphor in the background, that of God as the groom and His people as His bride. In this context Isaiah refers to God as His “Beloved,” and Isaiah himself functions as the “friend of the groom” (see John 3:29), something like the “best man” today, but with very different responsibilities in an ancient Near Eastern context—functioning as a kind of intermediary between the bridegroom and bride leading up to the wedding. In this role Isaiah speaks on behalf of the bridegroom to defend His character.
When things go wrong in our world, who is typically blamed? God. But God is not culpable for the evil in our world. God hates evil even more than we do, and one day soon God will put an end to all evil—to all sin, pain, suffering, and death—forevermore. As Revelation 21:4 puts it: “And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”
In the meantime, those of us who know the true God and His character—the character of perfect righteousness and love displayed supremely by Christ via the cross and otherwise (see Rom. 3:25, 26; 5:8)—are called to also serve as kinds of “friends of the bridegroom.” That is, we are called to help people in this world come to know the truth about God and His love, to see the truth about His character—to share the good news of God’s love with everyone we can.
The Sword of Denis Anwyck
I fondly remember a story I read as a child in a book named The Sword of Denis Anwyck, by Maylan Schurch. It is about a young boy named Denis, set in medieval times.
Denis is an orphan. And he absolutely hates the king of his land.
Why? Because when Denis was very young, his parents were very sick, on the verge of death.
But then the king’s knights came and dragged him away from his parents, and he never saw his parents again.
For that, he absolutely hated the king.
But through a series of events, Denis found answers and came to realize that there was more to the story. Among other things, he found the king’s book, “The Chronicles of Pestilence, Being an Account of the Dread Black Death and Times Following.” And the king’s own words in that book change Denis’ entire view of the king. “It fills me with great bitterness,” the king wrote, “and my people hate me for it, but the dreadful truth about this plague is that it can be transferred from the dead to the living. By separating the living from the dead, I save the living.”1 As he read, it dawned on Denis that what the king had done was only for his people’s good.
We also have good reason to believe that our King, the Creator of the universe, has done and is doing everything that can be done, even if we are not in a position now to understand precisely why God acts or refrains from acting as He does. “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known” (1 Cor. 13:12).
Conclusion
The blood draw revealed that our son’s condition was not life-threatening. He was fine. We were grateful. But I’ll never forget the look in my son’s eyes. Nothing I could say to him at that time would have made him understand that what I was doing was only and always what was best for him.
Similarly, we are typically not in a position to know why God acts or refrains from acting as He does. There is a much larger story in the background—the cosmic conflict—and many factors that God is dealing with in this conflict are invisible to us. As such, we do not have all the answers now.
In the end, though, we will see the truth that Paul proclaimed, that “the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us” (Rom. 8:18).
For now, we can look to the cross and have confidence that the God of the cross suffers with us and that He can be trusted unreservedly. What more could He do? There was nothing more He could do that He has not done.2
But perhaps we should ask another question. What more can I do? What more can you do? If you know the living God, I encourage you to accept God’s call to be “friends of the bridegroom,” to proclaim—in word and in deed—the character and love of God and do all you can to help others come to know the God of the cross—the God of perfect, unselfish love.
1 Maylan Schurch, The Sword of Denis Anwyck (Hagerstown, Md.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 2009), pp. 125, 126.
2 For much more on how the Bible addresses the problem of evil, see John C. Peckham, Theodicy of Love: Cosmic Conflict and the Problem of Evil (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018).
