9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. 11 More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. -Romans 5:9-11
“Enemy” is a strong word. There might be people we don’t like or get along with, but very few of us would use the word “enemy.” When we think of “enemy” we think of terrorists or others who have committed great offenses against us. Yet, “enemy” is the word the Apostle Paul uses to describe what our relationship with God was prior to following Jesus.
It’s weird to think that we were once God’s enemy. We’re not THAT bad. It’s not like we killed people or committed genocide. That’s bad. Those people should be God’s enemy. But we’ve lived a pretty moral life. Why should God consider us his enemy?
If you think this way, it’s only because you don’t understand the horror and the gravity of sin. Anything that we do or think that is contrary to what God wants for us is a grave offense. The problem is that for many of us, we don’t see it as a big deal. We don’t think our sins or our shortcomings are that bad at all because we don’t have a proper view of sin. We’ve grown too comfortable with sin. We’ve learned to co-exist with it.
But God can NEVER co-exist with sin. And because He is perfect He must not tolerate any sin in His presence.
So God has a problem. He loves and wants to be close to us, but He can’t tolerate sin. So what does He do? He removes our sin from us through His son Jesus. Jesus took on our sin so that we can be close to God again. We were once God’s enemy because of our sin, but Jesus, in a sense, became God’s enemy when he took on all of our sins on the cross. We should have been treated as the enemy, but instead Jesus was treated as the enemy.
Only when we understand the horror and depravity of sin do we begin to understand the beauty and the love of the Cross.
No comments:
Post a Comment