We live under the illusion that everything between God and us is fine. This explains the sometimes casual posture we take at the mention of God. There is no trembling. No humility. No submission. There is no fear of God. We practically yawn as we worship. We barely raise an eyebrow at the thought of his holiness, his power, his justice, or his absolute authority.
We approach God as if he were just another person, a subordinate perhaps. We pray thinking that God exists for me. He exists to further my interests, to advance my purposes, and to make me happy. It is all about me. We think that God should be honored by our presence, by our faith, by our devotion, by our offerings, by our prayers, by our feeble attempts to please him, because we read our Bibles, and because we are here this morning.
Some call this phenomenon arrogance. Others call it pride. But make no mistake about it. This is sin. Sin is ungodliness. It is departure from God. It is willful disobedience. It is presumption. It is self-centeredness. It is our arrogantly flaunting our individuality before God. It's our declaring independence. Sin is saying, "I don’t need God. I don’t have time for him. I have other priorities. I can go it all alone. God is unnecessary."
Sin makes us minimize God in our lives.
As we saw over the last few weeks, sin is the primary reason that we dismiss God’s existence. Our love for darkness suppresses the truth so that we cannot see God’s invisible qualities— his eternal power, his divine nature, or his goodness.
Sin is the reason that we can’t see God right now, nor feel his presence. This is what exactly what John 14:21 (NIV) implies. Jesus says, "Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me. He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love him and show myself to him." To love God is to obey God. To obey God is to be loved by God and to see God. To sin against God is to disobey God. To disobey God is to never see God. Disobedience means to question and doubt God's existence, and it's to be unsure of his love.
Sin is the root of all our insecurity and discontentment. Sin is the reason that we have such grand illusions about our own goodness. Sin is the reason that there is so much suffering and disease. It is why there are graveyards and hospitals. It is the reason our bodies waste away and ultimately expire. Sin is the root cause of all the pain in our lives. It is why there is despair and hopelessness. Sin tears God to pieces. It grieves his heart. It stirs his jealous wrath. It quenches his work in our lives. It alienates us from his love and affection. Sin spiritually disconnects us from God.
But most of the time we aren’t in tune with these spiritual realities. We think that because all is well in our lives, all must also be well between God and us. The book of Romans is Paul’s attempt to wake us up, to stir our collective consciences. He is painting a crisp picture of ultimate reality. He is defining reality. He is reminding us that all of us have sinned and have fallen short of God’s glory. There is not one of us who is righteous, not even one! There is no one who seeks God. There is no one who understands God fully.
There is no basis within ourselves for hope. There is no basis within ourselves for confidence. God’s righteous wrath is upon us. We are under a curse. His justice is swift and complete. His judgment is impartial. There is no escape. We are accountable. We are guilty. Human innocence is hogwash. We can deny such truths. We can suppress such truths. We can try and feel good about ourselves by pointing out people with sin worse than our own. We can try to hide behind a guise of spirituality and religiosity. We can keep on living under the delusion of our own goodness, believing the lie, and surrounding ourselves with people who will say what we want to hear.
Apart from Christ we are in a precarious situation.
But the ugly truth is that apart from Christ, we are in a precarious situation. I read a story about a handicapped man from Glen Ellyn named Roy Larson. With a loaner electric wheelchair, Larson ventured into downtown Glen Ellyn for a haircut. He was having trouble using a stick control to steer his wheelchair. But his day was about to become much more trying. As he was crossing the railroad tracks on Main Street one of the chair's wheels became lodged in the track. As Larson struggled to free the wheel something went wrong with the chair's electrical system and the chair refused to move. Suddenly the lights began to flash and the signal bells started to ring. The gates in front of Larson and behind him began to lower. Frantically he began flailing his arms and frantically shouting for help.
The first person Larson saw as he frantically looked for help was Mark Bade. Bade had been running an errand when he saw that Larson was in trouble. He sprinted to Larson's side and began to struggle with the chair. At almost the same moment Don Burgeson had stopped his car at the gates and saw what was happening. He leaped out of the car and helped Bade wrench the chair free from the track and drag it out of harm's way. The three men looked up just in time to see that the train was less than twenty yards away.
"After the train went by, I just said thanks," Larson said. "The only reason I am here today is because these two guys saved my life."
The politically incorrect testimony of scripture is that we are caught dead in the tracks. We thought our sin was no big deal, but the wages of sin is death. Death is steaming toward us. God’s judgment and his wrath is closing the gap. The gates are down. Lights are flashing. Horns are blasting. The earth is beginning to shake beneath us. Here it is one more time. We aren’t okay. The myth of human goodness is shattered. The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all forms of godlessness. Whether is it blatant ungodliness, subtle ungodliness, or religiously-style ungodliness is immaterial. All of us are impacted. All of us sin. All of us are guilty.
So there our bubble of goodness has been popped. Reality is setting in. And what this means is that all of us must contend with the crisis of our own salvation. Of great concern to us is who will save us? Who will deliver us from God’s fierce wrath? Who will pull us from the slippery slope of ungodliness? Who will pull us from the tracks? The stage has been set for the dramatic intervention of God into our lives.
The gospel is the difference between life and death.
This is where the gospel of Jesus Christ weighs in. For us, the gospel becomes the difference between life and death. The gospel becomes God’s power to save us. The gospel is our hope and our salvation. In Romans 1:16 (NIV) Paul says, "I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile." But consider another verse Romans 5:6 (NIV)which reads, "You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly."
The story of Roy Larson is a metaphor of some very real spiritual realities. Let's return once again to his moment of crisis. There Roy Larson was caught in the tracks. Frozen in fear. In bondage to death. Unable to save himself. But then at just the right time, salvation appeared and two men rescued him seconds before that train would have smashed through his wheelchair. Likewise, we were dead on the tracks. But at just the right time Romans 5:6 says that when we were powerless, Christ died for us. God intervened on our behalf. Salvation was made available. A destiny was changed. Life was given.
Oddly, God’s salvation, his intervention on our behalf, was by the death of his Son Jesus Christ. God’s intervention took the form of a cross. Christ laid down his life for us.
On Saturday June 8, 2002, a year after New Tribes missionaries Martin and Gracia Burnham were kidnapped in the Philippines by the Abu Sayyaf, government commandos ambushed the terrorists attempting to free captives. Tragically, in a two-hour exchange of gunfire Martin Burnham was killed. Gracia, who suffered a gunshot wound in her leg, survived only because her husband's lifeless body rolled over on top of her. In that moment of violence her captors could not tell if she was dead or alive because both were covered in his blood.
Returning home to her children in Kansas, Gracia was filled with bittersweet emotions. She was indescribably grateful for being set free, but she was somberly aware that her release had not been without a gut-wrenching cost which was the death of her husband. Nonetheless, she saw her husband’s death as part of God's plan. "That is God's liking," Gracia humbly observed. "That probably was Martin's destiny." What a paradox. Freedom and life for Gracia was purchased by the death of her husband.
Christ's death was part of God's plan.
Ironically, Christ’s death was also part of God’s plan. It was God’s desire that Christ would die and that his spilt blood would literally save us and cover us. Romans 5:9 (NIV) says, "Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him."
Do you understand that Christ’s death, his shed blood, saves us from God’s wrath? Do you realize that without Christ’s death we’d all be dead in sin? We’d be objects of God’s wrath. His curse would still be on us. His condemnation would still be felt. His judgment would still be looming over us. But thanks be to God. While we were still active sinners, Christ died for the ungodly. He died for us. He died for you. He died for me. He loved us and gave himself for us. He delivered us from ungodliness.
Let me briefly share several ways that the cross is God’s intervention on our behalf.
The cross forever satisfies God’s justice.
Some time ago a man called me on the phone and wanted to talk immediately. I invited him to come to my office where we sat down and chatted. He was a religious skeptic. One of the questions for which he demanded an explanation was the cross of Jesus Christ. Why the cross? Why the shed blood? Why death? Why did a loving God need such gory violence to transpire in order to once again accept mankind? It didn’t make sense to him. It was irrational. It seemed like foolishness. I was challenged by his question and asked to speak with him again. His question deserved the best answer possible.
Finally we met again and we spoke at length about God’s justice. The God we worship is equally a God of love and a God of justice. On the one hand, God is full of unconditional love. His love prompts him to reach out to us, to extend grace, forgiveness, mercy, and compassion. But on the other hand, God is just. He is holy. He is morally perfect. He is righteous. He is the lawgiver and judge. It would seem that both qualities of God would be in conflict with each other.
So how is a loving and just God to relate to sinful human beings like you and me? How does a loving God satisfy his own justice without betraying his own character? The answer is the cross of Jesus Christ. The cross forever satisfies God’s justice. Again notice what Romans 5:9 (NIV) says about God’s justice. "Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him."
Did you notice the phrase, "we have been justified by his blood"? This is legal lingo. Through Christ’s blood, through his death, we have been justified. Christ paid the price for our sin. Galatians tells us that Christ became a curse for us. Christ became the object, the focus of God’s wrath, instead of us and he took our place. Through the cross God was reaching out to us in love.
John 3:16-17 (NIV) says, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him." But through the cross God was also satisfying his justice.
Romans 3:23-26 (NIV) tells us, "...for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus."
Notice the language in Romans 3:23-26.Through the cross God is demonstrating his justice. Sin is serious. The price for sin is death. Punishment is rendered. But through the cross God is also justifying those who have faith. He is accepting us. He is reaching out to us in love. He is saving us from our sin.
The cross forever proves God’s love.
One of the ways I always explain God’s love to new believers is with a simple illustration. We may be sitting around a kitchen table and I take something. Sometimes I will take a person’s watch, an ink pen, a piece of plastic fruit, or whatever. When you take things like that it has a way of getting a person’s attention! But then I ask, "How much is this thing worth to you? Fifty cents? A dollar? Two dollars? Five dollars? Ten dollars?" I’ve never made more than a few bucks doing this.Just kidding, really!
But here is a simple principle of life that everyone understands. An object is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. An ink pen is only worth one dollar if you are willing to pay one dollar. A watch is only worth ten dollars if you are willing to pay ten dollars for it. How much does God love us? How can we measure his love? How can we begin to comprehend our value to a holy and loving God? We measure God’s love by the cross. We are worth the price that God was willing to pay for us. No more and no less. It is that simple.
Romans 5:8 (NIV) says, "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. "The cross is a love letter from God, signed with the blood of his one and only Son. He paid the ultimate price. He freely gave up everything for his most treasured possession. And his most treasured possession was you!
The cross forever inspires life-change.
We’ve spent the last several weeks talking about the crippling impact of sin. I hope you paid really good attention, because I got depressed preaching about sin. Sin is degenerative. It is like a cancer that grows and grows until it consumes us. Sin is a slippery slope that we gradually slide down until we hit rock bottom and all is lost.
One of the challenges our culture contends with is reversing the degenerative effects of sin. How do we reform people? How do we reverse moral decay? The track record of secular society in the area of moral reformation is zero percent. We pass laws. We incarcerate evil. We spend billions on education and prevention. We advertise. We use political correctness. We protect children’s self-esteem. We rely on counseling and psychotherapy to talk it out! We promote tolerance. We redistribute wealth to the poor. Every politician promises a remedy and a solution.
We do all these things, but nothing is working! Instead, evil increases. Our children progress further and further down the slippery slope of ungodliness. The greedy grow more and more desperate. The perverse slip into deeper and deeper forms of depravity. Crime rates soar. Television gets more disgusting. Immorality gradually gains acceptance. Divorce rates climb. Language grows more filthy. The unimaginable becomes commonplace. You got the picture.
But what about regenerating people? What about moral transformation? The cross of Jesus Christ reverses the flow of moral decay. It gets people stepping off of the slippery slope. It saves. It sanctifies. It renews. It restores. Romans 6:19 (NIV) offers us an interesting moral contrast. Paul says, "Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness."
The cross inspires us to step in such a direction. Instead of offering ourselves to something that is degenerative, sin,we offer ourselves to something that is regenerative, Christ. 1 Peter 2:21 (NIV) says, "To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps."
In Christ, through the cross, God intervened into our lives. Christ forever rescued us from God’s wrath. He satisfied God’s justice. Christ forever proved our worth to God by demonstrating God’s love. Christ has inspired us to venture down a new path of regeneration.
This is really just the beginning, a mere foretaste of the new life we can have in Christ. We are just beginning to discuss the turning point at which a person transitions from ungodliness into godliness. The best is yet to come.
This morning I would leave you with one thought. Things are only right between you and God when you have Jesus Christ. You have no basis for confidence before a holy and just God unless through faith, Christ’s blood is covering your sin. You need Jesus Christ to have fellowship with God. And not only do you need Jesus Christ, but so does every single person around you. So you already have Jesus Christ in your life. Praise God for that. Now the focus is on every single person who you come into contact with. Christ died for them too. And they will perish if you do not intervene and share the life-saving gospel of Jesus Christ with them. We have a tremendous responsibility to the kingdom of God. But membership has its privileges, and the privileges outweigh any cost paid.