By HUNTER GREENE
What if I told you that God was genuinely pleased with you and who you are? I don’t know about you, but for much of my life, this has been a hard fact for me to accept. I haven’t been able to wrap my mind around the concept that this holy and righteous God in Heaven would want something as dirty and broken as me. It doesn’t make sense that one so perfect could love another that is so flawed. Yet, this is the story of the Gospel.
Romans 5:6-11 reads, “For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement.”
The message of God’s grace is that even when we had nothing to offer Him, He willingly offered Himself up for us. Even when we were at our absolute worst, God still wanted us. In order to understand God’s love the best we can, we first have to acknowledge that God wanted us when we were helpless and hopeless. He saw us in the depths of our despair and in the pit of our sin, yet said, “I love them.”
God’s love is manifested in the work of Christ. Christ embodies the radical, reckless, and transformational love of God the Father. In Christ, we find that the Father has declared us worthy. Christ has enabled us to see that God can redeem even the worst of humanity, and that He has come to make all things new, including you. The life and death of Christ proclaims that God wants us no matter what we do, where we go, or who we become. He is crazy about us.
He is so crazy about us that He decided to die for us. However, the death of Christ is more than just an act of atonement. It is an act of crazy and extravagant love in that He died with us. Christ could have chosen to die in 2018 with the comfort of morphine and modern medicine. He could have chosen a hospital bed surrounded by all His friends and family. He could have chosen a much quicker death with limited pain and suffering.
Rather, Christ chose one of the slowest, most excruciating deaths in history. But why? Why make Himself suffer and agonize for hours on an old, rugged cross? I believe it was for us. Christ chose the life and death that He did so that He could feel what we feel. He had to become what we are so that we could become what He is. He wanted to experience the same pain, cry the same tears, and bleed the same blood.
Jesus wanted your loneliness as the Pharisees mocked Him. He wanted your rejection as the soldiers spit upon Him and ripped out His beard. He wanted your headaches as He took the crown of thorns. He wanted your weakness as His flesh was torn and tattered from the thirty-nine lashes of the “cat-of-nine-tails.” He wanted your burdens as He took hold of His cross. He wanted your exhaustion as He fell to the ground on His way to Calvary. He wanted your vulnerability as He was nailed naked to the cross. He wanted your guilt and shame as He hung in front of His enemies, neighbors, and followers. He wanted your sin as He died the death of a criminal between two thieves. Jesus wanted you.
Jesus came to be your salvation and redemption. God’s love for you is not based on your performance and how good you are. God loves you just the way you are. Refuse to let Satan use the past against you or against others who need God’s love. You’ve been set free. It is finished.
(The Solution Column is provided by Pastor Brandon Young of Harmony Free Will Baptist Church, Hampton, and his associate, Hunter Greene.)