“For while we were still helpless, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For rarely will someone die for a just person—though for a good person perhaps someone might even dare to die. But God proves his own love for us  in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

When someone gives you a gift, you often feel a certain amount of loyalty to them. A very small gift yields a very small amount of loyalty, but a very large gift garners much more. To not give any kind of loyalty is to either not actually receive the gift, or else to walk a path of ingratitude which is generally a pretty terrible look. Well, in Christ, God gave us the ultimate gift. Let’s talk about what He gave, and what we should give in return.

Back near the turn of the century, Diane, a college professor living in San Diego met a man named John in a deli. John happened to be a retired NFL running back for the Green Bay Packers. Diane happened to be a Cheese Head. The two hit it off immediately and became great friends. Not long afterwards, Diane learned that John was in kidney failure and that a transplant was the only thing that was going to have a chance at saving his life.

Wanting to help her friend, Diane volunteered to be a living donor. With John’s being a large, former NFL player, and Diane’s…well…not, doctors were shocked when she turned out to be a perfect match for him. The transplant procedure was successful, and John’s health did a complete 180. Diane gave a tremendous, utterly selfless gift for her friend and saved his life. Adding a cherry to their heartwarming story, the pair later married and now work together to encourage others to consider living organ donation.

Stories like that are powerful. We are drawn to tales of selfless sacrifice for others. There are whole websites dedicated to telling the stories of organ donors like Diane. Many are just encouraging like Diane and John’s story. Some are heartwarming and yet tragic at the same time as in the case of people who gave or received heart donations. The donors don’t survive that procedure. In fact, the only way something like heart donation ever happens is when the donor dies of natural causes. Nobody signs up to be a living heart donor. Ever. And for understandable reasons. When you give your heart, you are also giving up your life.

We occasionally hear stories of people sacrificing their life for another person, but only occasionally. These often involve a law enforcement officer or a soldier or a parent. That is, they involve people who have signed up to put their lives on the line for another person. Law enforcement officers and soldiers know that their lives are at risk every single day they show up for work. They do it anyway because of their love for community and country. They are so committed to justice and the rule of law, that they are willing to lay their lives down for it. When they wind up making the ultimate sacrifice, we honor and celebrate their courage. And parents would naturally put their lives on the line for their children because of their love for them.

The thought of someone actively and voluntarily putting their life on the line for another person outside of one of these circumstances, though, is a much harder one to imagine. The person receiving such a gift would have to be a pretty special individual. We can hardly conceive of it happening merely for someone who does the right thing all the time. The recipient is going to have to go well above and beyond that. They had better be a really, exceedingly good person to deserve such a gift.

Paul understands and agrees with all of this. “For rarely will someone die for a just person – though for a good person perhaps someone might even dare to die.” That’s how the world works. That’s how we think. That’s how we operate. Helping someone out in a way that isn’t costly in an ultimate sense we can imagine, although even those situations aren’t as common as perhaps they should be (at least from the standpoint of the Christian worldview; other worldviews don’t have the same kind of selfless sacrificiality built into them like the Christian worldview does, and so don’t naturally encourage this kind of behavior the way it does). But actively giving up your life for another person? No way.

This is what makes what Paul writes in vv. 6 and 8 so incredible. Jesus laid down His life for us when we not only weren’t really, exceedingly good people, but when we were helpless, ungodly sinners. He laid down His life for us when we were still His enemies. There has been no greater act of love ever performed by anyone in the whole course of human history. No one has made a similar sacrifice. Before He did it, the very idea of making this kind of a sacrifice wouldn’t have even registered in anyone’s mind. We are 2,000 years on the other side of His sacrifice and no one has repeated it. If you have any doubts about God’s love for you, you obviously don’t understand what Jesus did. It’s that simple.

When we were separated from God because of our sin, God moved to restore our relationship with Him. Because we were the ones who initiated the relational break by taking our lives from God, their creator and right and proper owner, the impetus for restoration should have rested on us. In order to make things right, we should have had to give our lives back to God. After all, if I were to take something from you that you highly valued, we’re not going to have a right relationship with one another unless and until I return it in the same condition it was in when I took it. When it comes to reconciling our relationship with God, though, the thing we took was our lives. Giving those back would mean we wouldn’t have them any longer. If you don’t have life, you have death. You can’t have a relationship with a dead person, though, and God’s having a relationship with us is the whole point of reconciliation here, so that option was never going to work.

So, God took matters into His own hands. He came to earth as a fully human man. And when the time was right, He voluntarily sacrificed His life to God on our behalf. That is, He gave His life back to God, satisfying God’s justice by returning to Him what was taken, so that we no longer had to do that in order to have our relationship with God reconciled and restored. And, as Paul writes here, He did that when we were not really even trying to restore our relationship with Him. We were helpless in our sins. We were ungodly in every way. We were sinners. We were His enemies. He did it anyway because of His love for us.

Now, when we are willing to put our faith in Christ, to go to Him and accept what He did as efficacious on our behalf, an acceptance demonstrated by our willingness to obey His commands and will instead of our own, we can enjoy a right relationship with God. This right relationship isn’t our first, though. It is Jesus’. We can enjoy His right relationship with God as our own. That’s grace. And grace is something you can receive if you want it. You only have to go to Jesus.