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I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day. -Jesus Christ (John 12:46-48, ESV)
Jesus didn’t come to condemn the world—it’s already condemned.
We can remain right where we always have been—in darkness—or we can come to Jesus. It gets no plainer than that. I remember coming to Jesus the first time. And now it is a way of life.
I can’t count the times he came to me.
That Jesus didn’t come to point fingers at all of us sinners may not sound like news, but it is. It’s news that needs repeating over and over and over again. We can be sure that to present Jesus as the one who will forgive us no matter what—even if we fail to trust him—is not to present Jesus at all. But presenting Jesus as the grand condemner as the soap-box preachers do—as some sort of hell-bent nut intent on sending as many people to hell as possible—isn’t the Jesus of the Bible either. But the good news will never change no matter who attempts to re-write it—Jesus came to save sinners and to somehow make saints out of them—not to throw stones at them. John 3:16 could easily be the most recited verse in the Bible—but the verse that follows is as good as any in the Holy Scriptures.
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. (John 3:17, ESV)
He came to save those who would simply trust him enough to come to him.
Period.
For those of us who wish to put Jesus into a box and somehow fit him into the small ideas we have about him—we need to think again.
God is willing to go to the length of suffering and dying to enter into fellowship with man. There is a misunderstanding of the Christian doctrine of atonement that goes something like this: God is an angry God, angry at men because men have sinned, and he decides to condemn mankind; but Christ intercedes for man, and God’s vengeance is sated by punishing Christ instead. Although this is a travesty of the Christian position it has unfortunately been too often suggested by interpreters of the atonement as well as by their critics.
-Robert McAfee Brown, P. T. Forsyth: Prophet For Today
There is a common misconception I find that many young people—and some of us aged folks—hold on to. It is the notion that God is up in heaven storming mad and just itching to do something about it (as if he couldn’t if he wanted to). It’s the assertion that somehow Jesus’ visit to earth was an afterthought (a sort of plan b), or that it was God’s attempt to somehow mop up his mess—mankind that is.
Brown continues:
But Forsyth, who said, “The doctrine of grace and the doctrine of the atonement are identical,” the true interpretation is that the atonement flows from grace, it does not “procure” grace. This extremely important insight means that our reading of the atonement is more like this: Because God loves men, he suffers on their behalf, bears himself the weight of their wrongdoing, and this restores fellowship, or reconciles. Grace is not something Christ earned for us from God; grace is rather something God gave us in Christ. “Do not say: ‘God is love. Why atone?’ Say: ‘God has atoned. What love!’
I don’t often repeat the same exact words in a blog entry mind you (on purpose anyways)—but these bear repeating… “Because God loves men, he suffers on their behalf, bears himself the weight of their wrongdoing, and this restores fellowship, or reconciles. Grace is not something Christ earned for us from God; grace is rather something God gave us in Christ.”
What we must not do is think that God the Father and Jesus his Son are at odds with one another—they weren’t—they aren’t—and they won’t be. They are one in the same and God the Father was the one who sent his Son Jesus here in the first place and all because he—just like his Son—loved us.
16 Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, 17 comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word. (2 Thessalonians 2:16-17, ESV)
Just as I am, poor, wretched, blind;
Sight, riches, healing of the mind,
Yea, all I need in Thee to find,
O Lamb of God, I come, I come.
-Lyrics from hymn—Just as I Am (Charlotte Elliott)
We never come to Jesus with our shirt pressed and our shoes shined. We are more like an unkept and destitute beggar when we finally call out to Jesus. Very few of us ever come before we have tasted the pleasures of sin for a season. It takes looking—and unsuccessfully—for salvation in things, power, money, and people we look up to before we are resigned to surrender.
And when we do—the relief is unspeakable.
15 The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners… (1 Timothy 1:15a, ESV)
If you ever attended a Billy Graham Crusade or have seen one on television—you have no doubt heard the hymn—Just as I Am. For every television tele-evangelist phony, Billy Graham has served as proof year after year that men of God do exist and that not every popular preacher has to sell snake oil, have goofy hair, make pitiful appeals for cash, have a corny smile, worhip a positive attitude, or have a Jesus-less message.
The former slave trader John Newton and mentor to William Wiberforce came to Jesus just as he was. Newton was a terrible sinner and a man with unclean hands—a life defined by abuse and filth (you don’t have to trust me—he tells on himself in his own writings). After a miraculous conversion, Newton went on to write the most widely sung hymn of all-time—Amazing Grace. Newton lived to be eighty-two years old and mantained an active ministry until he was laid up by failing health the last two years of his life.
Newton—unshaken in his faith before his death—told his friends:
My memory is nearly gone; but I remember two things; That I am a great sinner, and that Christ is a great Saviour.
If John Newton could come as he was—there’s no sin too great and no person too bad to simply come, and come just as we are.
Jesus hasn’t turned anyone away yet and he’s not looking to start.
The essence of sin is we human beings substituting ourselves for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for us. We—put ourselves where only God deserves to be; God—puts himself where we deserve to be.
-John Stott (The Cross of Christ)
Jesus took our place.
It’s called substitutionary atonement. Truth be told, we deserved to be in his shoes and the fact that he put himself in our shoes makes all the difference. If he had passed—we’d be in a hell of a different position.
Suststitutionary atonement is a doctrine in Christian theology which states that Jesus of Nazareth died—intentionally and willingly—on the cross as a substitute for sinners. This doctrine presents Jesus’ death as a supreme act of love for mankind, and a heroic act to save people from hell. It stresses the vicarious nature of the crucifixion as being ‘instead of us’. (Wikipedia)
The perfect giving himself for the unworthy. The clean taking the place of the filthy. The sinless standing in proxy for the wretched. The spotless serving the penalty for the guilty.
He suffered our death, our torment, and our defeat.
And we get to walk free.
4 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. (Isaiah 53:4-6, ESV)
It is an exchange of incalculable proportions.
…my faithful request and admonition is that you join our company and associate with us, who are real, great and hard-boiled sinners. You must not, by no means, make Christ to seem paltry and trifling to us, as though He could be our helper only when we want to be rid of imaginary, nominal and childish sins. No! No! That would not be good for us. He must rather be a Savior and Redeemer from real, great, grievous and damnable transgressions and iniquities, yea, and from the very greatest and most shocking sins; to be brief, from all sins added together in a grand total… Dr. Staupitz [Luther's mentor] comforted me on a certain occasion when I was in the same hospital and suffering the same affliction as you, by addressing me thus; Aha! you want to be a painted [meaning having a good external appearance] sinner, and accordingly, expect to have in Christ a painted savior. You will have to get used to the belief that Christ is a real Savior and you a real sinner. For God is neither jesting nor dealing in imaginary affairs, but He was greatly and most assuredly in earnest when He sent His own Son into the world and sacrificed Him for our sakes.
-Martin Luther, (in a letter to his dear contemporary George Spalatin after learning of counsel Spalatin had given someone which proved to be sinful advice—which Spalatin was then heart-broken over).
The above account reminds me of a story former Presidential (Nixon) aide Chuck Colson shares (who now heads Prison Fellowship—which reaches inmates and their families across the globe in 112 countries with the Gospel of Jesus Christ). Colson re-counts of a man approaching him after he had finished up a speech. The man was considerably offended by Colson’s portrait of each of us as sinners as Colson tells it and decided he’d take Colson to task. Colson heard the man out and responded, “I have more in common with Adolf Hitler than Jesus.”
We need pardon no less than Hitler needed it.
King David understood this—he prayed to the Lord after his adultery covered up by a carefully executed murder:
1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. 2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin!
3For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. (Psalm 51:1-3, ESV)
If God forgives any of our sins he forgives the worst of them. Jesus wasn’t given up as the peace child on account of our trivial or minor offenses—no—it was for our real offenses. Trivial sin is our idea—each and every sin is serious and grave business with God. If you took your smallest infraction it would have been quite enough to require the payment of God’s very own Son.
In other words—there are no misdemeanors with God—only felonies.
Is the prayer of your heart as David’s was?
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin!
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