| I had to write a sermon for a theology class, and since I don't
actually get to give the sermon, I thought I would post it. This is the
last thing I wrote in college. Kind of sad...
Romans 5:6-11
You
see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died
for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person,
though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God
demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners,
Christ died for us.
Since
we have been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved
from God’s wrath through him! 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! Not only is
this so, but we boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through
whom we have now received reconciliation.
I.
In
the horrendous days following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, our nation
suffered a sustained period of deep confusion. With the sudden,
unexpected deaths of thousands of civilian Americans at the hands of
foreign terrorists, many of America’s
deepest categories were shaken. No longer were we impenetrable,
untouchable or safe. Terror was possible and actual in our very midst.
One of the severest blows that 9/11 inflicted upon our American
identity was the fact that the terrorists used our own instruments
against us. They did not invade with an army, they did not send bombs
from thousands of miles away. Rather, they quietly lived in our country
for several years, made use of our educational systems, and at the
right time, without much effort, redirected the course of a few of our
airplanes and in doing so radically redirected the course of our
country.
In the middle of such deep confusion, however, America
managed to find a unified, coherent voice. There were no political
debates or drawn out policy making processes to determine what this
voice would be. It was simply self-evident to the American
consciousness, manifest in the fact that we all began speaking this
voice in one way or another long before it became the official rhetoric
of our government. What was this voice? It had and still has multiple
manifestations, but at bottom it is the voice of offended honor or
dignity. Emerging from the unexpected horror of 9/11, the American
rhetoric of response was not primarily about justice, human rights,
world peace or even terrorism. It was about America
and the wrong we had suffered. The American glory had been deeply
offended, and through finding and punishing our enemies it had to be
vindicated and restored.
Now before anyone gets worried, this sermon is not about the evils of the American response to 9/11. America
had to respond, and we were right to do so. I simply want to draw our
attention to an obvious manifestation of a deeply seated pattern of
thinking in the American people that we as the American church are not
immune from, and in fact suffer from. At the very heart of American
identity lies the belief that we have a collective right or dignity or
glory that, if offended, must be restored. The danger of this kind of
political rhetoric is that it has the potential to very quickly divorce
itself from the God-ordained controlling center of all governmental
authority: the maintenance of peace and justice for all. Governments do
not stand on the weight of their own dignity. They stand on the very
concrete call of God to defend the dignity of others.
My
goal this morning is two-fold. I want to identify a theological and
pastoral concern that stems from this deeply seated American pattern of
thinking, as well as turn our attention to a text which offers a rich
resource for developing a Christian response to this problem and a way
of thinking about God, reality, and our mission in this world.
II.
Our
text for today identifies us, among other things, as God’s enemies. We
are not currently God’s enemies, though at one point we were. “…while
we were God’s enemies…” How is this possible? How can creatures be
enemies of their Creator? Earlier in his letter to the Romans, Paul
makes it clear that we were God’s enemies because we willingly turned
our backs on our Creator. He says that we knew God but did not honor
him as God or give thanks to him for the life he has given us (Rom. 1:21-23).
We made ourselves enemies of God by refusing to recognize ourselves as
his creatures. The message of the Bible over and over is that the
enmity that exists between God and world is the fault of those in the
world. “…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). God does not will us to be his enemies, he wills the exact opposite. It is us who have chosen to be enemies of God.
Yet
the wonderful thing about our text for today is that it tells us that
our enemy status with God is something that has been done away with.
God has done something so that we are no longer his enemies. Before we
get to what Paul says God has done to make this possible, however, I
want to pause a moment and identify what I consider to be a harmful
theological error that is easy to slip into when we think about this
subject of God and his enemies.
As noted above, we as Americans are surrounded by a certain pattern of thinking when it comes to our
enemies. Our enemies pose a threat to us in that they seek to undermine
American superiority and stability. Americans feel genuinely threatened
by their enemies and therefore our response, while cloaked in language
of pride and glory, is really driven by fear. Our enemies reveal some
kind of weakness in us, and therefore we must subdue them so that this
weakness does not destroy us.
My
worry this morning is that I suspect we often project this kind of
response to one’s enemies onto God. Many of us, I am sure, have
wrestled deeply with the thought that we are sinners before God, that
we have made ourselves enemies of God, and that God is not pleased with
us. There are usually two responses that human beings make to these
troubling facts. Some people suppress this truth and turn even further
away from God, thinking that God does not want anything to do with them
as human beings, while other people anxiously work to mend their broken
relationship with God, usually turning to spirituality or religion.
Both responses, while different, come from the same distorted
understanding of God. In both cases, God is thought to be out to
vindicate himself by demanding something from his enemies. Those who
think they can supply this something turn to religion, while those who
know they cannot supply this something turn away from God altogether.
They see no reason to turn to God if God will demand something they
cannot or will not give. While there are probably those here who have
experienced or are experiencing this latter response of turning away
from God, I am confident that the majority of us struggle with the
former response of anxiously trying to mend or maintain our
relationship with God. We are religious people here, and this is the
temptation for us. I know I find myself struggling with this frequently.
I am afraid that we too often let our response to our own enemies shape the way we think God deals with his
enemies. We demand payment from our enemies, and so with think God
demands payment from us. We pursue our enemies to punish them before
giving sustained attention to how we will restore peace, and so we
think that God is out mainly to punish us. We treat our enemies simply
as a group of people to be subdued, and so we doubt that God loves us
as individuals.
Our
problem is that we have failed to let our understanding of God be
shaped by what God has actually done. Sure we like to talk about the
cross and resurrection as revealing the love of God, but we have a hard
time thinking that these things truly reveal who God is. We suspect
that God has some hidden agenda, that God is ultimately out for
himself, just like we are.
The
solution to our problem—and here is where out text for today comes
in—is to return again and again to the only sure basis we have for
knowing anything reliable about God—the gospel of Jesus Christ. God is
known here and nowhere else. Here is the center, here is where we can
truly know our Creator and cast off our fearful speculation about a
fictitious God who arbitrarily demands what we cannot give. And what is
it that we learn about God when focus our eyes and hearts on where he
has concretely and definitively revealed himself? We learn that God
deals with his enemies—all of us—in a completely astonishing,
unprecedented way. God does not act like us, but acts as only he can,
in sovereign, suffering love, not punishing or demanding payment from
his enemies, but giving himself for them. Let us turn to our text and
look at this wonderful truth in more detail.
“You
see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died
for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person,
though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die.” Here we
have the foolishness of the Gospel. Christ dies for the ungodly, for
God-haters, for God-despisers; he does not intervene on behalf of those
who are somehow worthy, but for those who are powerless—powerless
precisely because they are ungodly. Notice how Paul is emphasizing the
extraordinary, unexpected nature of Christ’s action for us. It is a
rare thing for another person to die for someone, even if that person
is a good person. What it implied here is that it is downright absurd
to die for an ungodly person. Why would anyone do that? Where is the
honor in that?
“But
God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still
sinners, Christ died for us.” The first part of this verse is perhaps
one of the most precious phrases in all of Scripture. In the death of
Christ there is manifested not the hatred or vengeance of God, but his
love. This truth is immensely important as means that God does not
begrudgingly forgive us our sins. God does not begin to love us only
after Christ dies for us. Christ died for us precisely because God
loves us; Christ’s death is the expression of divine love. And when we
combine this with the previous verse, we begin to see what Paul calls
elsewhere the width and length and height and depth of Christ’s love
for us. God’s love is such that, in the person of Christ, he succumbs
to the very death that we have brought upon ourselves by our
ungodliness. God tastes death on behalf of the very ones who have
turned their backs on him and scorned his glory. God does not punish
and hate his enemies, he takes upon himself the death they deserve in
order rescue them from it. This is our God, he is a God of overflowing,
suffering love.
For
Paul, this has radical implications for how we view God and our
relation to him. We now have the freedom to hope in God, not hide from
him. “Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more
shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! 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!” Paul here is rejoicing in the triumph of God’s love over God’s
wrath, and therefore in the firm hope that believers now have in God.
To be sure, we must not overlook God’s wrath but must recognize that it
is indeed real. God does not take sin lightly. It is a horrendous evil
and an affront to all that God is. God does not overlook sin; He
attacks it and kills it. This is the meaning of Christ’s death. We see
in the death of Christ that the consequence of our sin is eternal
death. Yet we must never think of God’s wrath as somehow a divine
attribute, as if God is holy, loving, just, merciful and wrathful.
No. God’s wrath is the form that God’s love takes in the face of sin,
and once sin is overthrown, God’s wrath ceases as it has accomplished
its purpose. Only his love remains constant and eternal. This is
precisely Paul’s logic in this verse. Because we have been justified,
i.e. because our sin has been overthrown and no longer has any power,
we are no longer subject to God’s wrath. God’s wrath has been
victorious in overthrowing sin and opening wide the gates of heaven.
Likewise, the fact that we were reconciled to God in the midst of being
God’s enemies proves that God is fundamentally a God of love, and that
we have no reason to fear because he has reconciled us to himself. It was his own
doing, and not ours. It happened apart from any effort of our own. Of
course we shall be saved! See what kind of God we have! The God who
reconciles his enemies to himself!
Yet
Paul doesn’t stop there: “Not only is this so, but we also boast in God
through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received
reconciliation.” Why boasting? Because God’s love is so marvelous and
over the top that we cannot help but flow over in praise and testimony.
God has not merely righted the scales. He has not merely restored
equilibrium. God has bestowed grace upon grace and brought an abundance
of new life! God has reconciled his enemies to himself and made them
his sons and daughters! He has taken the very creatures that despised
their Creator and remade them in the image of his beloved Son. This
calls for exuberant boasting in our God. Who else is like this? What
other God can raise the dead and turn a wretch into a treasure? Only
our God.
So how does God
deal with his enemies? He reconciles us to himself. He loves us by
taking our place as sinners and doing away with that place. God is not
threatened by us, he does not have to repair his offended dignity or
pride. He has a forceful reaction to sin, to be sure, but it is driven
and propelled by his deep love for his creation. God has no hidden
agenda apart from the reconciliation he has achieved for us in Christ.
In Christ, we truly meet God in his fullness, the God who is for us;
and because God is for us, no one can be against us.
III.
How
might this message of the reconciling love of God affect our lives?
First, let us return to the two different responses people often make
to their broken relationship with God. To those who turn away from God
because they fear that he does not want anything to do with them as
human beings, we must speak the promise and hope of the Gospel. Yes, we
were once God’s enemies, but this did not keep God away from us. God
did not isolate himself in heaven and wait for us to repair the wrong
we had done. God took the initiative in restoring the relationship we
had broken, in fact, he loved us so much that he sent his only and
eternal Son, his very being, to come to earth and bear the weight of
our lost condition. Jesus Christ assumed our sinful flesh, stepped into
our place as God’s enemies and bore this vocation to the very end, and
in doing so did away with it. God himself did this! The Judge was
judged in our place. Therefore, God’s first word to us is not one of
demand but of provision. God deeply desires relationship with his
creation, so much so that he took it upon himself to bear the ruin we
had brought upon ourselves. We need not turn away from God because has
never and will never turn away from us. We can turn to God in hope and
trust because he has provided all that we need for an eternal life of
freedom and joy.
To
those who turn to spirituality and religion hoping that they can mend
their broken relationship with God, we must speak (to ourselves!) the
promise and hope of the Gospel. Just as tragic as turning away from God
in hate or hopelessness is turning to God in anxious fear that we must
do something to secure our identities as those whom God loves and
accepts. We need to hear that “while we were God’s enemies, we were
reconciled to him through the death of his Son.” Even before we came to
know or confess the name of Christ, we were reconciled to God. Even
before we knew ourselves to be sinners, God had turned to us in love.
To work anxiously trying to establish ourselves through whatever means
is to fail to recognize what has already been done on our behalf. We
are too late to get in a word about who we are. We are God’s creatures
whom he loves and whom he has reconciled through the death and
resurrection of his Son. We simply must live in the freedom of this
reality.
Pushing
the horizon back to where we began, we must also say that the way God
deals with his enemies through Christ places radical demands on how we
deal with our enemies. As Christians, as those who boast in God through
Jesus Christ for the reconciliation we have received, we know the whole
world to be determined by the love of God. When we turn to either
neighbor or enemy, we are turning to those for whom God’s
reconciliation is also valid; we are turning to those whom God loves.
Therefore what is most true about our enemies, political or personal,
is that God is for them. Our actions, both political and personal, must
reflect this truth. This does not mean that we turn a blind eye to
injustice or hatred, it does mean, however, that any response to our
enemies must be driven and propelled by the love that God (and
therefore we) have for them, not by a sense of damaged dignity or
self-worth. Yes, this means that there are no easy paths to take with
our enemies. The road of reconciliation is long and arduous. But we
walk it because our Lord and Savior has pioneered the way for us.
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