Scripture: Romans 5:1-11
5:1 Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
5:2 through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God.
5:3 And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance,
5:4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,
5:5 and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
5:6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.
5:7 Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person--though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die.
5:8 But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.
5:9 Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through Him from the wrath of God.
5:10 For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by His life.
5:11 But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
Would someone dare?
Dare what?
Would someone dare to die for you? Give up their life for you?
Life is so precious, so much to enjoy, friends to spend time with, beautiful places to visit, foods to taste, touch, smell. Life is so much more than even this.
And yet they do it. As I prepare this sermon, men and women in the military uniform of this nation are putting the right to their life ... out there ... and they could lose their life. Many have, already.
After 30 years in the military, I am very aware of how quickly things can go badly. The man next to you, one moment just as alive as you are, the next moment, that life is gone, and you can't get it back into him.
Someone has said he who saves a life, saves a generation. That's the impact of a life gone, destroyed, changed from life to death.
But there are different types of death. We speak here of the physical death, the disappearance of life from flesh and blood. But there is also spiritual death, the separation of man from God. There is the death of hope, the death of dreams, even the death of sins.
For the Christian, the death of the old sin nature is what we need be concerned about. Once we follow Christ, we have participated in His death on the cross, and the Holy Spirit fills us with the life of Christ, we are covered before God with the righteousness of Jesus Christ, since we have none of our own. That is life that lasts forever, life that defies death, life that cannot be separated from Almighty God.
Our scripture speaks of peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, of access to grace, of building character through suffering and endurance, and the hope that lifts us up because we have the love of Christ in us. All of this came about because of a death. And not just any death, but the death, the God-permitted death, of the Son of God, born of mankind, and still God.
He was as flesh and blood as you and I, so He knew pain. In fact, as the second Adam it's possible, born without a sin nature, that Jesus Christ was everything the first Adam was intended to be, perfect in mind and body before God. But feeling heat and cold, the stab of a sharp rock on a bare foot, the slashing of flesh and blood on a bare back from a barbed whip, He went to the cross, anyway. He went for you and for me.
I want to share a story with you about someone else who made a similar sacrifice, the walking into death that we may find hard to really understand.
In the spring of 2004 I was stationed in Iraq as a federal civilian with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Our living quarters were in the area of Baghdad known as the Green Zone. This is where Saddam Hussein's favorite's lived, a walled-in green oasis of concrete streams, green grass, roses, cinder block homes and palaces.
The enemy would regularly shoot rockets into this area, and made various attempts to breach the walls. Sometimes they would attempt to infiltrate with the Iraqi civilians who worked inside the walls, as they lined up to come through one of two gates, guarded by U.S. and Iraqi soldiers.
For our part, anytime we travelled outside the walls to work, which was daily, we were accompanied by professional, armed civilian guards in armored SUVs. Most lived outside the walls; most were American, with some Aussies, and some Germans.
One morning, as the long line of Iraqi workers in their cars entering Gate 2 got even longer, one of our guard teams was in that line, not far from entering the gate. U.S. and Iraqi soldiers milled about the crowd, checking cars, I.D. cards, boxes and packages. Suddenly, from the back of the line, a car pulled out into the middle empty lane and sped toward the gate. The SUV carrying six professional guards saw it in his rear view mirror, and heard the car's engine whining into high gear as it raced toward the gate. They all turned and looked. They knew. They looked back at the driver as he looked at them. In an instant he swung out in front of the onrushing car, creating an explosion that was seen over most of widespread Baghdad. The onrushing car had been filled with massive explosives, meant for the gate, and the men who guarded it.
They had saved the men on the gate. All six of them died in the explosion.
Someone might say, well, that's what they got paid to do. But I take you back to those mini-seconds when they all knew. They knew why the car was rushing at the gate. They knew they were the only ones who had what it took to stop the butchery that was about to happen. They looked at the man driving them. He looked at them. Each man knew, and still the driver threw them all in front of that onrushing car of death.
I will tell you that they had families, wives, children that must have been on their minds in those few seconds. The certain loss of their own lives. The end of their generations. Death.
Change gears with me now to that hill called Golgotha that waited for the Christ. As He fed the multitude with loaves and fishes, as He saved the woman from stoning, healed the lepers, spoke with the woman at the well, He must have known what was coming. Death was coming, painful, agonizing death like that onrushing car.
But He did it anyway. And we take His death much too lightly. After all, wasn't He God? Couldn't He keep the pain away?
When I think of Jesus Christ undergoing the savage attack and scourging that ripped his skin open, the beatings, the spitting, forced to carry His own cross through the jeering crowds to His crucifixion ... and I think of those six men, knowing what they knew was coming, about to happen. The agony, the helplessness of those moments frozen in the mind before it happened. And then the pain. And they did it anyway.
Jesus, did it anyway.
One of my favorite Christian authors, Oswald Chambers, has written a passage concerning Galatians 2:20 that means a great deal to me. I shared it this past week with my Facebook friends. Because Christ, knowing, and doing it anyway, for me, for you, for us, deserves so much more than I can ever give Him of me, of anything.
Oswald Chambers wrote, in an excerpt from "My Utmost for His Highest":
"The inescapable spiritual need each of us has is the need to sign the death certificate of our sin nature. I must take my emotional opinions and intellectual beliefs and be willing to turn them into a moral verdict against the nature of sin; that is, against any claim I have to my right to myself. Paul said, "I have been crucified with Christ . . . ." He did not say, "I have made a determination to imitate Jesus Christ," or, "I will really make an effort to follow Him" -- but -- "I have been identified with Him in His death." Once I reach this moral decision and act on it, all that Christ accomplished for me on the Cross is accomplished in me. My unrestrained commitment of myself to God gives the Holy Spirit the opportunity grant to me the holiness of Jesus Christ.
". . . it is no longer I who live . . . . " My individuality remains, but my primary motivation for living and the nature that rules me are radically changed. I have the same human body, but the old satanic right to myself has been destroyed.
". . . and the life which I now live in the flesh," not the life which I long to live or even pray that I live, but the life I now live in my mortal flesh -- the life which others can see, "I live by faith in the Son of God. . ."
"This faith was not Paul's own faith in Jesus Christ, but the faith of the Son of God given to him (see Ephesians 2:8). It is no longer a faith in faith, but a faith that transcends all imaginable limits -- a faith that comes only from the Son of God."
Do I have a right to my emotional opinions and intellectual beliefs, a right to my rights? Of course I do.
Those six guards had a right to say, "Don't do it!", to turn away and let those young men on the gate and in the crowds die. They had that right. But they went anyway.
Jesus Christ had every right to turn away from the cross, to enjoy His time in the flesh, to give vent to His own desires, imaginations, opinions and beliefs. He had more right than you and I. But He went anyway.
I have every right to listen to false teachers who call Christ a liar by saying there is no Hell, there is no Heaven, God doesn't really mean what He said, and we are meant to satisfy ourselves (that echo from the serpent in Eden). I have that right. Can I do it? No, speaking just for me, no, I can't, not when such great loves comes so near in the embodiment of the Holy Spirit, drawing me to the greater love of Christ, who loved me first.
No, I can't do it. How can you?
1st Corinthians 2:9 reminds us there is so much more waiting for us if we will just keep faith with Christ: "No eye has not seen, no ear has not heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him." Amen.
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