TUESDAY April 15th
One of the words that I would use to describe all that God has done for us through Jesus is the word ‘amazing’.
We use the word to describe God’s grace, we sing ‘Amazing grace how sweet the sound’. We also sing ‘Your love is amazing, steady and unchanging’, in fact everything about God’s incredible plan of salvation is amazing, for from out of it we get so much that we really do not deserve, we deserved death, we deserved Hell, we deserved to be eternally cut off from God, and yet he was willing to reach out to us through the Lord Jesus Christ, to save us. It truly is amazing, incredible and praiseworthy.
Our text today is from Romans 5:6-9
‘For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.’
These verses shout out ‘amazing’! It is very rare that anyone would die for a good person, yet Jesus was willing to die, not for good people, but for sinners, we who were unworthy, we who were rebels, we who were deserving of eternal punishment. Let’s read it again, and let it sink in, ‘While we were STILL SINNERS, Christ died for us.’
Imagine if God had decided that if we could attain to a certain level of goodness or righteousness, then he would send Jesus to die for us, or what if Jesus had said to his Father, ‘Look how sinful they are, wait to see if there is any improvement in them and then I might die for them’. If that had been the case, we would have had no hope!
What we see is that God is also amazing in his mercy, he was willing despite our hopelessness and helplessness, knowing we could never attain a certain level of goodness and righteousness to send Jesus, and Jesus knew we would never improve, not even in the slightest way, and yet he was willing to come. Such is the amazing mercy of God. ‘Mercy there was great, and grace was free, pardon there was multiplied to me’.