By Such Stripes Are We Healed
by Jack Shaver
©The United Church of Canada, 1985
All Rights Reserved
ISBN 0-88622-196-X
7M/12/85/APL
Used with Permission
Wednesday
While yet sinners
Romans 5: 1-11
Here we have that word again, justification. Take the noun righteousness and make it into a verb: righteousnessified; made righteousness; put right.
Here we have the connection made again between suffering and God's glory. Since we have been put right by faith we have peace with God through Jesus Christ. We have been put right by God's grace as a gift. While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Here Paul reveals his understanding of the connection between Christ's suffering and God's gift.
He starts his paragraph like a Jesus parable. Who doesn't agree that hardly anyone would die for a righteous person? that someone might die for a good person? But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.
That's the remarkable news. It has been peeking out ever since Ezekiel's time. God loves the righteous, everyone agrees. God loves the penitent sinner, that might take a little convincing. But this says "God shows his love for us while we were yet sinners."
This passage helped me see how it would take suffering to show us that. Further on in the passage Paul says, "If while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of Jesus..." Try to imagine what it is like to love an enemy. I am a parent whose child has chosen to stand for the opposite of everything I stand for. My child is my enemy.
What's it like to love an enemy?
Loving an enemy is not the same thing as loving the child but opposing what the child does. My child's life is the opposite of everything I value.
It is not the same thing to say, "It doesn't matter what my child stands for." That's not taking my child's choices seriously, or my own values seriously. That is not loving an enemy.
It is not the same thing to say, "My love will win the child over, therefore I can wait." That's loving a potential ally.
What's the state of loving an enemy? Can you imagine any way in which it is not painful?
Imagine, then, what it is going to take to show us God's love for us while we are yet sinners. Paul says it is Christ's death that proclaims that good news.
- Earlier in the passage Paul suggests that we can have something to rejoice about in our own sufferings also.
- More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into
our hearts. - Our own suffering becomes something to rejoice in when it arises out of God's love pouring into our hearts.
Thy Kingdom Come
Almighty God,
Hear us as we pray for the coming of your kingdom.
We get the feeling that the principalities and powers that reign in the world are not yours. There are too many victims, too much violence, too many hungry and homeless. Human brutality and zealous righteousness overwhelm human charity.
Our cry, O God, for the hastening of your kingdom rises from our fear and terror.
Living God,
your kingdom has drawn near to us countless times. We have known what it is to be healed by another's stripes. We have been reconciled to enemies by your graces. We have seen the least raised up. We have been blessed by those we at first rejected.
Our cry, O God, for the hastening of your kingdom rises in us because our eyes have glimpsed your kingdom.
Gracious God,
others have opened for us entrance into your kingdom and we hold the keys of the kingdom for others. Our cry unto you, to hasten your kingdom, rises from our concern that we may be shutting people out.
Loving God,- reign in our hearts without a rival;
- reign in all the world, so that no one is left out.
Amen