Verse: Romans 5:6-8
6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Devotion
What if sin is worse than we think it is? I think it’s easy to underestimate how damaging and deadly sin is. If someone hurts our feelings, we forgive them, no big deal. Sin isn’t that bad right? But what if any sin is immeasurably bad to a perfect God? I can’t really wrap my head around this, but think about the fact that God has never sinned and is utterly perfect. Any sin is anathema to who he is. It is literally the opposite of him.
Imagine this: someone has a multi million dollar painting. It is perfect. Everything about it is absolutely perfect. And then, on the way to the art venue, someone accidentally spills one drop of black ink right on the middle. Would it be worth the same amount of money? Or someone accidentally tears a hole in the middle. People could say, “it’s only a small hole” or “it’s just a little ink” but the truth is the painting is no longer perfect. I feel like we can’t fully understand how damaging sin is because we aren’t perfect. We are more like a painting with 100 holes and rips in it, and one more happens, would you notice? But God is utterly and completely perfect, and sin is so different from him. It is foreign, alien, and completely offensive to him. And on top of that, he is fully love and he knows that the people he loves are being ravaged by this evil that they can barely comprehend. He knows the consequences of sin better than we do as well.
OK, so back to the beginning, what if sin is worse than we think it is? I think it is. But then this is also true: what if God’s grace is better than we think it is? If sin is as bad as I’m saying it is, then grace is better than we could ever imagine. Because “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” God’s grace and love for us in unfathomable. We can never fully comprehend the depths that he went to in order to save us, because we can never fully comprehend the heights that he came from. He left total perfection, glory, goodness, love, and peace, and entered a world being destroyed by sin. And he did it all of love for you and me.
His grace—his undeserved favor and goodness for us—is way better than we can imagine. Let’s start our week meditating on that truth, and being grateful to our loving God.
Author: Christian Dunn
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