Proof Positive

Scripture:  Romans 5:1-11

I know there are some people who manage to read a book or more a week, and while I do not think that I will ever get to that level I do read quite a bit.   This will come as a surprise to no one, but my favorite genre of books to read is science fiction.  Famed Christian author C.S. Lewis, who is known for writing the Chronicles of Narnia, also wrote a trilogy of science fiction books often referred to as his space trilogy.  These books are less known than his other works, and lately I have been reading them for the first time.  Unfortunately, I am also learning that there is a reason why these books are not as well known, but I have also found the experience of reading them fascinating because these are science fiction from another era.  In these books a human from England visits Mars and Venus to find planets with atmospheres, water, and alien life.  Today we know that in their current states, both planets are unable to sustain life as we know it.  However, C.S. Lewis wrote these books in the 1930s, and at that time this was not a known thing.  In the nineteenth century it was thought that there was a good possibility that both planets could support and house life.   By Lewis’ time, it was believed the odds of Mars having life was not very likely, but speculation of Venus having life, and even being a swampy rainforest like world, persisted into the 1960s.  

Based on the data available at the time the scientific minds of the late 19th and early 20th century theorized that alien life on our closest planetary neighbors was possible, and those theories fueled the speculative science fiction of the first half of the 20th century.   As more data became available the understanding and theories changed, and this is exactly how it should work.   Our beliefs should be informed by data, evidence, and proof.   While the scientific method has given us a reliable framework to do that, the reality is that seeking data, evidence, and proof to inform our belief has always been a feature of the human experience.   This morning’s scripture points to that.   In this morning’s scripture, Paul points to proof that we can assurance that forgiveness and reconciliation with God is real.  His proof is the death of Jesus.   This morning’s scripture can challenge us to consider how we might be able to add to the proof that God’s love can and has changed everything. 

This is the third week that we are focusing on a scripture from Romans, and three selections have come from the same section of Romans.   As a reminder, the book of Romans is a methodical book.  Paul does not make his points quickly in Romans.  He takes his time unpacking them, constructing an effective argument and then building upon that argument for the next point he seeks to make.  The primary point that Paul is making in this section is that sin separates us from God.   The Jewish law found in the first five books of the bible, can inform us what is sinful, but the law does not have the power to save.  It is not our actions that are credited as righteousness, it is our faith.  Specifically, it is our faith in Jesus Christ, because it is Jesus who was the gift that reconciles us to God.   It is Jesus who undoes the power of sin that entered the world.  As Paul wrote in the scripture we read two weeks ago, “For just as through the disobedience of one-man [Adam] people were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man [Jesus] many will be made righteous.”

 It is in this morning’s scripture that Paul offers his proof.   Reconciliation with God, the forgiveness of sins, it is not something that we earn.  It is a gift born out of God’s love, and God proves this love because while we were sinners Christ died for us.   Paul’s proof of God’s love is that God did not spare Jesus from suffering the ultimate punishment for sin.  We have to remember that Paul wrote this letter, only a couple of decades after the crucifixion.  The death of Jesus was not just a story at the time of Paul.  Witnesses to that event were still very much alive.  It was an event that could be verified by those who experienced it firsthand.   

 The death of Jesus of Nazareth was Paul’s proof positive for God’s love and for grace.   Today, the crucifixion of Jesus still offers compelling proof to the love of God.   First, that Jesus died at the hand of Roman officials, is not something that most historians dispute.   While the gospels and Paul’s epistles were written with an intent purpose of sharing the story of Jesus, they are still primary historical sources.  The bible is not the only ancient source to tell of Jesus.  A Jewish historian name Josephus wrote a work called Antiquities of the Jews at the end of the first century.  One section covered the decades before the writing of the work, and there Josephus wrote:  “About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man.  For he was one who performed surprising deed and was a teacher. . .He won over many Jews and many Greeks. . .And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross.”

While secular historians may not ascribe much theological importance to the death of Jesus, the historicity of the event is not in question.   The death of Jesus is not just a story, it is not a fairy tale or a legend.  It is an event that happened, and it was Paul’s proof because he believed that it was not an accident it was evidence of God’s great love.  

This points to the second way that the death of Jesus is proof of God’s love, and that is that generations of Christian tradition have found truth in Paul’s claim.    The belief that God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While were still sinners, Christ died for us, is a core and essential belief of Christianity.  The belief that through the death of God’s son people were reconciled to God and we have saved through the resurrected life of Jesus are the beliefs which make Christianity unique.   This is core to what we believe, and it has been consistently so.  For instance, our United Methodist Book of Discipline contains our essential beliefs in the articles of religion.  Article VII from the Evangelical United Brethen tradition states: “We believe God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.  The offering Christ freely made on the cross is the perfect and sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, redeeming man from all sin, so that no other satisfaction is required.”  

 There are a lot of different branches and understandings of how to best follow Jesus, but while the words we use and the aspects we emphasize might be different, nearly 2,000 years of belief, across different cultures upholds that Jesus’s death on the cross is the proof of God’s love, and it is through Jesus that people have been reconciled to God and redeemed from all sin.   Despite all that tradition, upholding Paul’s proof there are still a lot of people that have a hard time believing it.  The reason why many struggle with Jesus’ sacrifice proving God’s love makes me think of the movie Saving Private Ryan.   In this movie a group of soldiers risk their lives to save one other solider, whose brothers have all died.   One of the questions asked throughout the movie is what makes Private Ryan worth the risk and sacrifice of all the others.  At the end, Private Ryan is saved but at a great cost.  As the captain, played by Tom Hank is dying from a German bullet, he grabs Private Ryan and whispers in his ear, “earn this.”  

Do you know how much more comfortable it would be if Jesus said this to us?   We are really good at earning things.   We are really good at having a sense of responsibility and paying back our debts.    Earning something is very comfortable for us, we do a lot better with the idea of earning something than being given something.  The infuriating beauty of this morning’s scripture, of the gospel, is precisely that we cannot earn it.    Christ died while we were still powerless and he died for the ungodly.  
 
We cannot earn God’s love and salvation, but surely, we must respond to it.  Out of great love God sacrificed his son.  Through Jesus we are once again connected to God.  The wrongdoing, the sin, the evil that we are guilty of no longer separates us from our creator, because Jesus’ death satisfies the penalty we have earned, and Jesus’ resurrected life frees us from death, wins the victory, and provides reconciliation with God.  If we truly claim that kind of love in our life, then it must be life changing, we must respond and change in some way.   We cannot pay God back and earn it, so how do we respond?   Through Jesus we have been forgiven and God’s love has been proven, so perhaps the way that we can best respond is to forgive and in doing so we add proof to God’s redeeming love. 

An example of what it means to do this comes from Corrie ten Boom.  During World War II in Holland, out of Christian conviction, she and her family helped Jews escape the Holocaust.  They were caught and imprisoned for it.  After the war she became a great social worker, author, and a well-known preacher.   In a Guidepost magazine article entitles “I’m still Learning to Forgive” she told a story of living into grace.   The year was 1947 and West Germany was still under Allied occupation.   Corrie ten Boom had come from Holland to try and help the country heal by preaching a message of reconciliation.  In a church in Munich, she preached that God forgives, and when sins are confessed before God it is like they are cast into a deep ocean, gone forever.   After the service a balding, heavyset man in a gray coat approached her.  Fear began to rise in her, because she recognized this man. He had been a guard at Ravensbruck, the concentration camp she had been interred at, the place where her sister died.  The man told her it was a good message, and he added that she was right, he had been a guard at Ravensbruck.  However, he had since become a Christian.  He had asked God to forgive the evil that he had done, and to change his heart.   But then, as he offered his hand he asked her, “Will you forgive me?”

In the article she wrote:   “And I stood there-I whose sins had again and again to be forgiven-and could not forgive.-  Betsie, my sister had died in that place-could he erase her slow terrible death simply by asking?  It was the most difficult thing I ever had to do but I had to do it- I knew that.  And still I stood there with coldness clutching my heart.  “Jesus help me” I prayed silently “I can lift my hand.  I can do that much.  You supply the feeling.”

“And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me.  And as I did, an incredible thing took place.  The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, spring into our joined hands.  And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.  “I forgive you brother” I cried “with my whole heart.”  For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard and the former prisoner.  I had never known God’s love so intensely as I did then.”

When we were powerless, unable to save ourselves, while we were yet sinners, Jesus Christ died for us.  This proves God’s love, and in the name of Jesus Christ we are forgiven!   One of the ways that we can prove God’s love in this world is that we can forgive others as well.  This does not mean we have to forget, we can still maintain healthy boundaries, but it means we let go of the hate, the anger, and the wrath that has built in our hearts.   It means that, just like God did for us, we choose love for someone who has wronged us.  

One of the main points Paul makes in the book of Romans is that through Jesus Christ we are reconciled to God our creator, and that this is because of God’s great love.   The death of Jesus is the proof of this love; it is the evidence that we can be forgiven.   May you believe and know that God loves you so much that while you were powerless and still a sinner, Christ died for you.   As God did for us, may we be willing to take steps to offer forgiveness to others, not because they earned it but because our hearts are changed by grace and our lives can be proof positive that God’s love can transform everything.