While We Were

I wrote a blog post not long ago about being more than what I was before. About how I felt I knew God but didn’t actually really know Him.

A lot of us hear how Christ died for our sins, but I wonder how many actually think about it.

Christ dying for our sins.

Our sins…

What would have happened if I had actually sat and thought about that when I was younger? 

I think I was about 14 when I saw Passion of the Christ and remember crying during the scenes leading up to the crucifixion. I remember someone telling me, “He did it for you.” 

I wonder what I thought that meant at the time.

He did it for me…

A part of me feels like I agreed to those words because that’s all I ever heard, that Christ died for my sins.

But, why?

Why did he do it? Why did He have to die? Why was death the answer?

The responses are simple, yet complex. 

There was a problem, and that problem was called sin.

Without going too much into that now, I want to emphasize a text found in Romans:

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 5:8

I remember about a year or so after I saw the movie I was in church skimming through my youth Bible looking for some kind of excuse for a sin I was committing that I knew deep in my conscience was wrong. I kept trying to find that even while partaking in this sin, I was still “okay.”

I never found it.

See, sin is never okay.

It lead to Christ’s death. It has lead to our current heartache.

We have His written word giving us principles of right and wrong.

His word that Reformers stood up for.

That people have died for.

Some of us laugh at it.

Some of us mock it.

Some of us refuse to see our sins pointed out, refuse to let His word transform us.

But even though we were—or are— still sinners, he loves us. He died for all of us.

My friends, I want you to look at your life. Have you left God behind? Has God never even been a twinkling of a thought?

The journalist in me is always asking why.

Why did you turn from God?

Why wasn’t He ever a thought?

Why do we ignore sin, ignore His word?

Why?

He really does love us. He really does love you.

My hope is that we all learn to feel and accept that love, and that we in return can reflect that love to others.

Because it is by His death we have access to life, and it is by His grace we have the ability to do what seems impossible. 

May you see the real God today.

xx