Lasting Joy from Love--Part 2

Well, gentle reader, here we are again. Finally, I just know you're thinking, finally I will learn what the answer to that age-old question "Who in the world does Don King's hair?" I hate to disappoint, but this week we are not going to be discussing this most pressing of questions. Instead, we are going to finish the gripping conversation begun last week. At long last, I will reveal what it is my own love for my children has revealed to me about the magnitude of the truth contained in Romans 5:6-11. I suppose that I should once again provide you, gentle reader, with a final caveat: these brief paragraphs in no way claim (not even in the land of Make Believe) to be a comprehensive examination of these verses. Clearly, there is a wealth of information contained here. My goal is only to highlight certain aspects of that wealth.

This passage in Romans has long been particularly interesting to me, in large part because of several aspects of the grace of God that it reveals. In the first place, as explicitly stated in verse 10 and implied in verse 8, God came to us (not we to Him, as is so often stated) and effected our reconciliation to Himself "while we were enemies." (NASB) That is to say, God Himself, the almighty and most holy Creator of the entire cosmos, "demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." (Rom. 5:8 [NASB]) Simply astonishing, is it not? Think about that for just a moment, if you would. God did not effect our reconciliation only after we had worked to improve ourselves. God did not effect our reconciliation only after we came to HIm begging and pleading, having worked in ourselves a full measure of repentance and contrition. Rather, God effected our reconciliation to Himself when we were still actively hostile to Him. What is it that an enemy does? In the most basic sense of the word, an enemy is one who is actively trying to destroy either his nemesis or the work of his nemesis or both. While we were sinners, while we were actively and fundamentally opposed to the Creator of the universe in the very depths of our nature, at that time God saw fit to work for us reconciliation with Himself.

What, then, did this reconciliation do? That is, from what have we been saved? I don't know about you, but the most common answers I hear tend to be along the lines of the devil or hell or sin or death or other such thing. While victory over these is most certainly a part of the whole process, none of them is the fundamental thing from which we have been saved. At its core--indeed, the reason we have the victory over death, the devil, and so on--at its core, we have been saved from God. Let me repeat that: we have finally and ultimately been saved by God from God. (See, in particular, Rom. 5:9.) God in His pure holiness and justice cannot tolerate sin in His presence. It must be punished, and it must be removed from His presence. The beauty of the Gospel is that He has punished our sin, and so He has satisfied His holy wrath. When the righteousness of Christ is imparted to us, even as He has borne our sins and the punishment necessitated by those sins, when that righteousness is imparted to us, we are effectively removed from the shadow of the wrath of God against sin and are thus completely reconciled to God. The beauty of the grace of God given us in Christ is that God has effected this reconciliation without in any way compromising His holiness or undermining His justice. Amazing.

And now we get to the point of the stories I shared last week. Those moments when my own love for my children rises to the surface with such intensity that I find it difficult to breathe, those moments have been used by God to reveal to me one of the most amazing aspects of this whole process: God sacrificed His own Son in order to effect our reconciliation. What is more, God did this "while we were yet enemies." While we rejected, while we despised, while we forsook His Son, God nevertheless at that time sent His Son to bring about our reconciliation. (Rom. 5:10) I'll tell you right now that there are many people for whom I like to think I would be willing to die in order to save their lives. Barring my wife, there is no one, not one single person, for whom I would be willing to sacrifice my children. I'm sorry, but you'd be on your own if it came down to a choice between rescuing you from a burning building or rescuing my children. You'd be on your own if the only way to save your life was to sacrifice the life of one of my children. Tough luck for you, I'd think. But my love for my children is such that they take precedence. That's my approach. Furthermore, I would kill to defend their honor. Nothing enrages me to quite the extent that people taking advantage of my children does. Now think about what God has done. While we were actively hostile to Him, while we were such that we would (and did) despise and reject His Son, at that point, God sent His Son to His death in order that we might avoid our own deserved deaths. What is more, God did it knowing that Christ would be brought to the point where God Himself would turn His back on His own Son. God did it, knowing that it would require that He forsake Himself in order to effect our reconciliation. (Note the poignant words of Christ on the cross, as recorded in Matt. 27:46 (NASB) when He cried out in agony, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" [that is, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?"].) My words are weak and as such are incapable of expressing the sheer magnitude, the sheer wonder of this truth. God gave up His Son, He gave up Himself, in order to effect my salvation, your salvation. Absolutely amazing. Awesome (in the profound sense of the word, not in the sense of the flippant expression thrown around by so many in today's society). This work of God, this profound demonstration of His love for me, is why I can have joy--indeed, is why I do have joy. How beautiful indeed the hands that bled.