Day 3386 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 5:8 NIV

To prove a demonstrable love able to accomplish all He’s said He intended demanded He do what none other would in the surpassing of His own definition of a greater love than any might have.

For His very Word defines in John 15:13 that “greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” And yet alongside such truth God chose to come along and prove Himself entirely and thus eternally better and higher than our best might ever become. For greater love has no man than to lay down his life for his friends. And so that Christ laid down His life for we who still at times tend toward enmity in our words and actions taken far too lightly, in that He proved who He is by showing us who we’d become.

Because He knew, knows still that without such a graphic display of undeserved love, none of us would ever be able to imagine anything but our deserving it.

For sadly our sense of entitlement has bred such an audacious imagination as this we’ve all but come to embody in which we seek out incessantly that which only gratifies the flesh, leaving us still then the very ones for whom His love is proven. Indeed, it is our fall that has proven His faithfulness. It’s our weakness which testifies to His strength. It’s our mistakes that maintain the magnificence of His mercifulness. Alas, it’s often our confusion though that contends we needn’t change despite His love dying to say not only that we should, but that we’ll not know life if we don’t.

Because the gravity of grace is that what we are is who we’ll remain should we ignore the gift that grace is in the first place. You see, grace is given not a given, and yet we tend to live this idea of life in which we can rightly and unashamedly take His grace for granted as if the tomb He chose was so light a choice as to allow us to continue making ours so incautiously as to literally not show Him any semblance of sorrow should we do as we’ve done and err once more toward the wrong side of right.

No, we seem to have this unique understanding that we can misunderstand everything and still somehow manage to scrape out a salvation merely on the merits of pretending we don’t make as many mistakes anymore.

As if any are in any way acceptable?

Nah, that’s just what we want to believe for that missed consideration allows us to retain our current contention that we can continue doing as we please and simply assume His mercy will overlook our madness. No friends, His mercy overcame our madness, our mischief, our misunderstandings and every misgiving given unto showing Him thus far nothing but again the enmity in which we’ve learned to love living against Him.

And since we do love this status quo for the simple sake of the endless simplicity it affords us, it’s within these wasted ruts that we’ll remain. Unless something so impossible happens that it leaves us only unable to ignore it anymore.

For that is indeed what we’ve done as who we’ve become. We ignore. We deny. We shrug and shirk and smirk as if God is too up there smiling inside a similarly sickened sense of selfish satisfaction as we’ve stumbled into without the courage to admit to the mistake that such a wrong turn was to take. Indeed, we live amongst a world so filled with a particularly peculiar people who’ve taught us well to so violently disregard God’s grace as to deny the grave He chose to prove Himself all we’re not.

And alas, since we’ve long been surrounded by such a brazen breed, turns out that so too have we bred the same unabashed belittlement as those back then sought to bestow upon Him.

Sinners, a people perfectly pacified and perpetually at peace in their predicament as perfected by a pride which thrives inside these eyes that see only a life meant to lose in love with all we’ll lose, all that might leave us forever lost, all that did become that cost that Christ gave upon our place upon that cross that we still at times deny is worth the weight of risk as rewarded in our now toting of our own into a solemn share of that tomb that He turned into a triumph.

Yes, that which has been will be again, nothing new under the sun, sons of sin still seeing only self within every outcome we’re willing to fight for that we assume will leave us needing never to actually fight for more but rather simply insist that someone else does more, gives more, loves more than we ever could, ever would, ever will. No, we will do nothing, love no one should such ask of us any semblance of self-denial as we’ve simply come too far into self-delusion to see now any reason to turn back to what we no longer see as anything better.

But friends, that’s what’s particularly problematic about all this. See, we live with this obvious and evident insistence that someone else cater to us, come to us, come with us. We ask everyone else around us to please us, to serve us, to applaud us, appreciate us, affirm us. He did. Not as done in the manner in which we might demand, but He did. He did come to us. He did come for us. He did seek to please us, to serve us, to affirm us as again who we’d forgotten we were made to be.

Sons and daughter of the Most High God, a creation crafted in His image, saved by His Son from all we’ve done to that gift of that grace. And yet as sinners we’ve clearly had to forget that we were made for more, because if we were to admit that we’d settled for so much less, well, there’s simply not much that’s less conducive to this pride’s confusion in which we’ve collapsed into contentment for the mere sake of comfort.

Indeed, we’re a people entirely comfortable living at odds against God. But friends, those odds are not as wager-able as we tend to live. For we’re not merely playing a game in which nobody really loses anything other than bragging rights. No, this is life and death, and since our sins had made us lose sight of that, well, Christ came to show us something so monumentally different that none of us can now deny it. For all have heard of the Name that is above all other names, leaving us now only to decide for ourselves when we finally agree that our name isn’t able to prove His merely an option among many.

There is no other Name given to mankind by which we must be saved. And thus, if we’re to be saved, and saved is exactly what’s needed in light of what we’ve become, well, it’s His Way or nothing.

Why? Why so strict, so stern, so severe as to speak of things such as condemnation, unending fire, weeping and gnashing of teeth? Why such misery? Consider again the cross. For you see, while that cross what indeed His choice, it demands now a choice of ours. His choice begat our choice. His choice began our need to choose. His choice as He chose chose to come for us who now have to consider if we’ll come apart from what’s long kept us apart from Him.

We can’t flank Him. Can’t fool Him for He is not merely one or two moves ahead friends. He’s an eternity ahead as He’s already overcome this world that we’re still in. He’s already atoned for the sins we’ve not yet selfishly chosen. He’s already died the death we still fear. He’s already forgiven what we’ve not yet failed. We cannot beat Him at His own game, and thus we cannot ever create some other way in which we could theoretically be saved should we be proven as wrong as we can’t admit we already are and thus need salvation.

So why do we try? If He did indeed die, which He did, then why are we still so willing to take sin so lightly as to assume that a mere apology is enough to make up for it? Indeed, why do we do what we think we might need to make up for at some point? What can we do to make up for doing something wrong? For last I checked, time travel does not exist, thus there are no second chances, thus whatever we decide to do is just that, a decision we decided whilst knowing that we cannot undo any of them.

Should we not then perhaps be a little more careful in regard to whatever we say, whatever we think, whatever the two inspire us to do?

For you see, that’s our cost of salvation. Yes, it’s His free gift given unto all who humble themselves and call on His Name and ask Him into their hearts and allow Him to become their Lord and Savior. It’s a gift He chose to give, a gift He died to give. But there’s a word in this verse, one of those little words that seem entirely easy to skim over while reading. It’s a word small enough that it could in fact have been said differently, a different word used altogether.

But He said ‘were’.

While we ‘were’ still sinners. Were. Were invokes this idea of change. See, were is the plural form of was, a communal expression of alteration. Something was one way, now it’s something so different that the first is what was. And thus what was is now no more. It’s over, it’s gone, it’s a matter of the past proven all but powerless since the change was undertaken that shifted is to was. And since was sounds sort of silly in regard to a group, a matter of linguistic semantics, were was chosen to encompass the entirety of all such individuals as those few who undergo going from what they were to what He says we all can be now.

From sinners to sons and daughters. From enemies to friends. From lost to found. Slave to set free. Hollow to hopeful. Ashamed to excited.

Was, were, past. Is, are, now. Is there a difference seen anywhere in our lives, our hearts, our minds that shows we understand the sheer audacity He’s proven in beating even what He told us was the best we could be? Greater love has no one than to lay down his life for his friends. His love is thus greater than the greatest love we can offer anyone else. He is better than us, bigger than us. But do our lives show that we understand that?

I shared yesterday’s post and thought about it the majority of the day thereafter. And I realized the possible confusion it may have inspired for anyone who read it. It was one of those things that hit me like a concrete water balloon as I was reading through Ezekiel a week or so ago. That God didn’t do this for us as we tend to try and perceive it. His gift of salvation is indeed a gift, but it’s not about the gift, friends, but about the Giver. It’s God showing us His love for us so that we don’t stay us.

It’s meant to move us, change us, heal us, bring us hope the only way any of us can have any hope. And that’s to fight for the were. To be able to confess that yes, we were sinners, but no, we are not anymore. And yes, this is about as possible as that whole camel squeezing through that needle’s eye, but the possibility isn’t the point. The point is that His sacrifice is supposed to inspire in us a dire willingness to try. To fight. To lose this life so that what we’ve made of it doesn’t define us anymore.

Because it has. We were sinners. We were His enemies. Most days we still live like we don’t mind that distinction. And that’s what has to change, because friends, if love doesn’t change us, nothing will. And if nothing changes us, then we will stay sinners who still deserve the wage those sins earn. And if we still owe the wage we’ve earned, then yes, death is something we should indeed fear. But we don’t have to anymore. For that way of life lived as sinners can in Christ be left behind and fought against.

And in His gift of overcoming our grave in a love we cannot even begin to understand, in that we should know that He can help us overcome our inability to be anything other than what we’ve been. For nothing is impossible with God, and He proved that forever in His bringing a better love than anyone can give. He laid down His life for His enemies.

All that’s left is for us to now decide whether or not such a love is worth dying for. Because God has proven Himself the utter definition of merciful and kind. Do we need Him to prove then that He’s also the definition of jealous and just? No, we shouldn’t want that, for if He is the purest embodiment of goodness, then so too is He the perfection of justice. And friends, we got no case!

No, perhaps we should just embrace the fact that He is all we could never be, because maybe in that is found the kind of humility that seeks not to contend anymore against Him but rather allows us to simply be thankful, the kind of thankful that seeks only to know more of the One who’s proven a better love than we know of.

For the truth is that we’ll always find a way to stay His enemies. Do we need more than the image of the cross to help us see that we can’t survive that? And so too, do we need anything more than that most perfect love He’s shown for us to become enough reason to fight now against that death He died, the death we deserve for the sinners we were?

#LeaveNoSoulUntold