For the Ungodly

So, Christ did not die for the godly.  Yet here we are.  Christ did not die for the godly.  There were no godly, only sinners in various depths of sin.  The law had corralled some sinners apart from other sinners, but all the corral could do (for those thinking about the corral honestly)—all the corral could do was point out to sinners their sins and their propensity to roam after them.  You don’t need a fence if you never leave the pasture.

Sometimes, we may even feel as if it would be good to try to be godly, a bit more godly, though we maybe wouldn’t want that to be the very first adjective people think about when they think about us: godly.  It’s bracing to tell ourselves that an exercise of greater willpower can get us where we want to be, where we want to see ourselves: eat better, exercise more, don’t waste so much time, stop being lazy—I guess that’s mostly me talking to myself, but maybe you hear a familiar refrain there, too?  As I’ve looked into the matter over the years, the same answer keeps coming: sheer willpower won’t get us anywhere.  Change is possible, but telling ourselves that willpower is the way isn’t the road to the change we need.  Which may sound crazy but think about your own experience and tell me whether it’s true or not.  If willpower is the way, why are we the way we are—because we’re weak?  Well, exert more willpower!  But life has a way of dragging us back.

Change comes by trading out what you want to leave behind for what you want to add; change comes by becoming the sort of person who does these things.  That conceptual reset does not remove the struggle, but it does have an impact on our long, sad record of failure, as we continued, all frustratedly, to rely upon willpower alone.  Failure can end in self-loathing; faith leads to self-discovery and knowing our true value.

When it comes to the change God wants, we don’t talk about willpower; we have no power, because, so far as the kind of life God wants from us, we are dead: no ability, powerless.  Nobody likes that; why would we?  It isn’t very flattering.  Most everyone bumps along, living a mostly decent sort of life—we’ve got it good here in America, as we know—but God wants a life of righteousness, a holy life.  I’ve been using this word righteousness a lot over the last several weeks.  I’m hopeful that, by now, you’re remembering that, as I’ve been using the term (which is how I take Paul to be using the term), righteousness is not mostly or mainly one’s own moral uprightness, one’s personal decency.  Righteousness is having a vital relationship with God.  We don’t get ourselves to righteousness: God gets us there and then continues to carry us along further into the relationship.

Scripture, start to finish, is telling us about the sort of relationship God wants for us, wants to have with us.  The prophets consistently point to the lapses, the distance our living has put us from God.  The psalms often meditate upon the struggles we face in maintaining that relationship.  We need regular, sustained encouragement—as we know!  If we know God, we know He provides it; He isn’t stingy about it, either.  Paul reminds us, just here in what we heard in Romans today: “at just the right time, when we were still powerless [no ability], Christ died for the ungodly” (5:6).  Just to reiterate—this means us.  Well, the ungodly will still die.  All die.  We understand that, biologically—Circle of Life and whatnot—but Paul wants us to remember the matter theologically, biblically: death comes because of transgression, disobedience, disregarding what God wants from us.  Disobedience is death.  God gives life and sees no reason to extend it indefinitely for those who have no regard for God, who spare no thought for God.

In my noblest moments, I tell myself that I would gladly lay down my life for my children, my wife . . . probably even my congregation.  Probably not for a total stranger or someone I couldn’t respect.  I wouldn’t die for a felon or a junkie.  Anyway, Lord willing, my noble words won’t need to be put to the test.  Not that I’d shrink from the test, of course . . . but, I mean, is it really necessary?  “Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die” (5:7).  Now, just remember for a moment how Paul has been talking about every man, woman, and child, up to this point: none are good, none are righteous.  So, it’s all hypothetical!  You may have read or watched Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities: “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”  Beautiful!  Moving!  Perfect!  But what if, just at that point, or maybe just before, you, there in the crowd, watching, listening, start jumping up and down, crying out to get the attention of the authorities, the executioner, and everyone: “No, don’t kill him!  He doesn’t deserve it!  Take me, instead!”  Well, that would ruin the novel, of course, but wouldn’t you be doing a fine thing, maybe?

“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (5:8).  How to drive this home . . . we’ve just got to, not merely comprehend the words or something of the thought—we’ve got somehow to begin to feel what we’re being told here.  That cross has just got to have some blood on it!  God’s love for us.  Christ died for us.  It makes no sense.  It is contrary to anything we know of life in this world.  It’s very flattering, of course.

Paul writes that God “demonstrates His love for us.”  As we begin to enter into what we’re reading, enter into this faith, the truth that God loves us becomes increasingly clear, wrenching, wonderful, comforting, and encouraging—strengthening, really.  I’d also just like to suggest here that Paul might be telling us that God is demonstrating His love for people who need a demonstration: people who do not, will not, and cannot believe, without a demonstration.  Show me!  It was Thomas, remember, who told his fellow apostles that Easter day that he would not believe Jesus was alive in the body, as they were all excitedly telling him—he would not believe until he had seen it for himself.  And that’s how it is, for each of us.  A personal encounter, a personal relationship.  It’s lovely that God opens hearts, minds, souls, lives, and all, but none of it becomes crucial, decisive, until God opens your mind, your heart, your soul, and saves your life.

In God’s sight, we are condemned criminals.  Jesus died a condemned criminal.  Who loves a condemned criminal?  Not many!  We know what happens to condemned criminals in Texas.  We are reminded of what each one did.  We may even feel glad that justice finally has its day, glad that the condemned criminal has his life terminated, justly terminated: rid the earth of wickedness.  Justice is done.  Even one sinful act condemns: ask Adam.  Jesus cautions us that even one sin-filled, sin-prompted, sin-directed thought makes one liable to judgment.  Not even acting on it, just having the thought—and where did it come from?!  Did I summon it?  Jesus isn’t saying this to paralyze us in fear or dread, but to know, again, the real, deep ongoing severity and seriousness of sin, and the glorious deliverance we have in Jesus and only him.  The love of God becomes potent for us when we experience a clear-eyed horror of sin—beginning with our own.

To be a sinner—that is to be at the farthest distance from God.  The medieval Italian poet Dante pictured the seven depths of hell, but it’s all still hell—forever debarred from God, by God’s own righteous, just decree.  Did the crime, do the time, which in this case is eternity: forever shut out, forever forbidden.

“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”  Not our love for God, because sinners don’t love God; only redeemed sinners can love God.  God’s love for us.  Christ suffered and sacrificed his life for enemies of God.  That’s hard for us to understand, because many of us have just always believed, and we know we love God.  That is good, but sometimes we are so convinced of our love for God, and so glad for Jesus, that we don’t take much time to do any candid self-inventory—why would we need to?  We do not see ourselves as enemies of God—how could we?—and we do not think of whatever sins we may have committed—just a few, negligible mistakes far back in our past—we do not think on these as reminders of a deep truth.  Sure, there may be, in theory, some out there today who are enemies of God—you know, Muslims and Democrats.  Some enemies of God spit, strike, and mock.  Most are just entirely indifferent, like seeing a terrible, sad story on the news and thinking, “Oh, that’s too bad” as you get up to get a Coke and rummage around in the fridge, wondering what to do about dinner.  Christ died for you.  And we look up, briefly, just long enough to say, “that’s nice,” before resuming our doomscrolling.

Beloved, so far as I know, I’ve been a believer as long as I can remember, but I wasn’t always a committed believer, a conscious believer.  No, I wasn’t going to go and break all the Ten Commandments—but God wasn’t on my mind, either.  I was sort of an autopilot believer: I knew some words, though I didn’t always quite know what they were telling me.  I believed, so why would I need to know?

I had what might be called a religious experience, a sort of fuller dive into conversion, around age twelve or so, one morning in my room.  I asked for a Bible for my thirteenth birthday and read it all the way through—well, I skimmed Leviticus.  Even so, it wasn’t until I was in my thirties that what God was telling me really began to get in deep, get to me, take hold of me.  I knew the rules, and I approved.  Then I got introduced personally to God, just when I needed Him, desperately.  Having a God was great; having a Savior was brilliant.  We all need God; we know that, in principle.  We don’t always know we need God, desperately.

The God whom we desperately need is a God who demonstrates His love.  Not always in the way or at the place or time where maybe you or I would have been especially looking or even praying.  God, take this away!  God, change this!  Jesus fix it!  Most of the time, for me, anyway, God’s answer seems to be not yet.  God should demonstrate His love for us by . . . you know . . . making life easier on us; He should demonstrate His love for us by . . . you know . . . giving us more of what we need—money, mostly: there’s the answer to our problems.  Who here would turn down $10,000 right now, or even just $1,000?  We want to be happy.  God wants us to be holy.  But we prefer happy.  We like what we want better than what God wants.  He knows.  It’s an old story.

So, he dies for us so that He won’t need to destroy us.  No, there aren’t really that many for whom I’d be ready to die.  “Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!” (5:9).  God did not rescue us just to condemn us.  The blood of Jesus, by whose voluntary self-offering our sin is atoned for, is for our perfect rescue, our full salvation—not conditional, partial.  His blood paid the price in full and, in God’s sight, cleansed the sin, entirely, perfectly.  Now we’ve got to journey on, alone, and figure the rest out for ourselves.  No.  God has chosen to forgive the sins of those who come to faith in Him, through faith in Jesus—the trust that Jesus truly accomplishes for us and offers to us what he claims.  God’s judgment wrath against us has been set aside, in Christ.  God gives Himself the justice due to Him so that He can give Himself us.   God wants you, me, that much.  Think on that.

“For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!” (5:10).  While still enemies.  It wasn’t us, suing for peace, sending special envoys, asking for negotiations or terms.  We weren’t the ones seeking reconciliation; that remains the case for millions, all around us.  God reconciled Himself, through Jesus, there at the cross, on the cross.  Now, forgiven, we are being “saved through his life.”  Paul doesn’t so much have in view here the teaching and earthly ministry of Jesus—you know, be nice, be kind—as he has in view Christ’s resurrection and what He is presently doing.  The living Christ is the salvation power we need.  We can be forgiven and dead.  That’s alright for the ledger, I suppose, but it doesn’t do anyone much good, otherwise.  We are alive, and forgiven—yet we shall die, so we’ll end up forgiven and dead—still not much good.  The glory, the joy, the peace, is to be forgiven and alive, forever.  Life makes alive.  Justice demands the penalty, love longs for life.

In our thinking, we blend Christ’s death and resurrection all together: Good Friday and Easter aren’t that far apart, after all.  (And who thinks about Good Friday, anyway?)  The two are separate events, achieving each its own purpose.  The cross is atoning forgiveness; the resurrection is life for the forgiven.  The forgiven are those who receive Jesus Christ as their personal Savior, and Lord.

Christ, risen, alive, is over us and with us to guide us along the way, guide us to him, guide us home.  As he guides us, he changes us.  Christ is the power of life; he is the power of change.  He renews and restores us, reshapes us more and more—though never perfectly in this life—into people God wants.  To have our debt cleared is joyful beyond measure—some of us are well acquainted with the depths of debt!  God does not intend only to clear our debt, though; He means to have us with Him.  Justice isn’t really about a ledger balance; it’s not about left and right, equally balanced.  Justice is about relationship.  Even now, God is working upon each of us, working in each of us, preparing us for a life that is on its way, a life that will come.  Let us watch for the Lord, work for the Lord, and pray to the Lord who loves us enough to give His all, to have all of us.