You don’t have to be a golfer or even a golf fan to appreciate the story I’ll recount here: Scottie Scheffler, the No. 1 golfer in the world, was competing Sunday at the Presidents Cup, a tournament pitting teams of American and international golfers against each other. His opponent, Nico Echavarria, was teeing off on the 14th hole when someone in the gallery yelled “Go Scottie!” as Echavarria began his backswing. He proceeded to slice his drive and drop his club.
As he stared in the direction of the offending voice, Scheffler joined him, saying to the gallery, “There’s no place for that.” Then he put action to his words: with Echavarria eventually facing a thirty-two-foot putt, Scheffler conceded it (giving him credit for making the putt). The stroke he gave to his opponent nearly cost him the match, though Scheffler came back eventually to win.
“To be honest with you, I don’t even really want to talk about it,” he told an interviewer after the match. “I think there’s no real place for that in our game. I think we just leave it at that.”
Such integrity should not surprise us, since Scheffler has often made public his sincere commitment to Jesus and acted in accordance with his faith on Sunday. But there is another dimension to such a decision, one we do well to recognize before it becomes relevant for us personally.
How David treated the enemies of his enemies
In 2 Samuel 4, we find David, king of the southern tribes, while Saul’s son Ish-bosheth ruled the northern tribes after his father’s death. Then two men who were “captains of raiding bands” assassinated Ish-bosheth in his house, cut off his head, and brought it to David (vv. 2, 7–8).
I’m sure they expected David to reward them for removing his competitor to the throne of the entire nation, but he did just the opposite, commanding that they be executed because they “killed a righteous man in his own house on his bed” (vv. 11–12). David did the same earlier with a man who falsely claimed to have executed Saul (2 Samuel 1:15).
David was right to reject the immorality related to the death of Saul and his son, even though they were his competitors and even his enemies with regard to the throne. But there’s more to the story. In his day, the kingship was a new office in Israel, created by Samuel for Saul after the nation cried out to God for such a ruler. Everything David now did as Saul’s successor would help to define the office for the people.
As a result, by defending his predecessors and honoring their position as king, David was elevating the position he occupied as well. If he had rewarded the unsanctioned and immoral death of the kings who came before him, perhaps others would seek his death in the future.
Accordingly, his actions, while commendable in themselves, advanced a larger purpose that served the security of David’s rule and the stability of the nation.
A conundrum of the faith
When Scottie Scheffler plays overseas, he wants the galleries to be as respectful of him as he wanted them to be for his Colombian competitor on Sunday. A rising tide raises all boats, as they say.
Of course, I am not suggesting that Scottie behaved as altruistically as he did out of such selfish and transactional motives. In the moment, he did the right thing because it was the right thing. Nor would I suggest that David treated those who killed his royal competitors as he did purely or even consciously out of personal motives. But the outcome of their righteous actions did bear righteous consequences for him as well.
Here we find one of the conundrums of the Christian faith: What is the relationship between grace and works, service and rewards? John Calvin noted that while works do not save, the saved do work. He recognized that godly actions are a demonstration of God’s work in our lives, the manifestation of the “fruit of the Spirit” that gives evidence of the character of Christ in Christians (Galatians 5:22–23).
However, if we act in righteous ways for the purpose of personal rewards, our actions are tainted by our intentions. We cannot expect God to reward selfless behavior if it comes from selfish motives.
At the same time, we cannot pretend that we do not know that he will reward righteousness, as his word so often promises (cf. Colossians 3:23–24; James 1:12).
So, how are we to manage this balance?
What happens “if you seek righteousness first”
Plato likened humans to prisoners chained to a wall in a cave in such a way that they could not see the fire behind them but only the shadows it cast in front of them. The purpose of philosophy, he alleged, was to free such prisoners from their chains of ignorance so they could focus on the real rather than its shadows.
In his view, the world of ideas is the real, while the physical is the world of shadow. He wanted us to focus on unchanging principles rather than the changing material consequences they produce.
While I am not much of a Platonist, I do see the wisdom in his suggestion if we reframe it in a biblical context. Paul taught us to “set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth” (Colossians 3:2). The more we focus our thoughts on our Lord, the more his Spirit molds us into the character of Christ and we become the change we wish to see in the world.
This means that, rather than troubling ourselves with the dilemma of rewards for righteousness that should not be motivated by the expectation of reward, we set this conundrum aside. We turn our minds and hearts to the living Lord Jesus and trust him to lead us and use us as he wishes.
The closer we are to him, the more we have his “mind” by which to understand our world and our place in it (1 Corinthians 2:16). And the more we will do the right thing because it is the right thing, whatever the results in this world and the next.
Tim Keller was right: “If you seek righteousness first, you get happiness. If you seek happiness first, you get neither.”
Choose wisely today.
