“David said to him, ‘Do not fear, for I will surely show kindness to you for the sake of your father Jonathan, and will restore to you all the land of your grandfather Saul; and you shall eat at my table regularly.’ Again he prostrated himself and said, ‘What is your servant, that you should regard a dead dog like me?’ … So Mephibosheth ate at David’s table as one of the king’s sons …. So Mephibosheth lived in Jerusalem, for he ate at the king’s table regularly. Now he was lame in both feet” (2 Sam 9:7-8, 11b, 13).
Mephibosheth clearly understood grace because he realized how much he didn’t deserve to sit at the king’s table. He was, after all, the grandson of a man who tried repeatedly to kill David. He was lame in both feet so he couldn’t earn his keep. However, because David loved his father (Jonathan), he treated this “dead dog” as his son.
A failure to understand God’s grace is at the heart of the prosperity gospel (i.e., name it claim it). God becomes our “servant” (perish the thought), and we act like kings, snapping our fingers and expecting to get everything we want as long as we have enough faith. And God must give us everything we ask, because we deserve it. And when he doesn’t give us what we want or something we don’t like, we get angry, disappointed, and disillusioned, and start doubting the goodness of God.
But grace is only grace when God gives us what we don’t deserve or doesn’t give us what we do deserve. The only thing God owes us is judgment. But like Mephibosheth, God seats us at the king’s table and treats us as one of his children. As once “dead dogs,” we didn’t even deserve crumbs from the king’s table. But by grace, we are now feasting on God’s goodness which continues to be wholly unmerited and undeserved. All of us are Mephibosheth!
“And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:1-6).
