Love Saves Us

¹Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters,^£ of the good news^£ that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, ²through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you—unless you have come to believe in vain.

³For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, ⁴and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures,

¹²“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. ¹³No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

These are the lyrics to an old song. Written in the first part of the last century, it is also almost old-fashioned. Surely, in those days, individualism, personal freedom and independence were not unknown concepts. Yet in the intervening years, Western society and culture, particularly in the United States has moved farther and farther from community, inter-dependence or relying on those other than oneself.

Surely, individuality and independence have their positive points. The intelligence savvy and creativity of increasingly younger people, the freedom to be outspoken and to express any opinion, regardless of popularity or politics, the freedom to work as much as one wishes, or better oneself as much as one desires in order to further personal, professional and financial goals like never before in history, all come from an open society that respects and rewards initiative and independence.

My parents always told a story of my childhood. Actually I can never remember wether the person in the story is me or my brother. But for our purposes today, let us say that it was me…

When we were very young, my parents would always take us to the pool or to the beach. They have many pictures of my me and brother at very young ages, maybe three or four years old, with big puffy flotation devices fitted to our arms, lounging and floating in a swimming pool.

Apparently, one day, while at a lake or some other such spot, my mother, sitting on shore, notices that while in the water playing with my father I begin to struggle to stay afloat. My father who was apparently just a few strokes away from me, playing with my brother, was still too far away to reach out and hold me above water.

To my mother it looked as though I was drowning. My mother, never one to be bashful, especially in such a circumstance, apparently began to scream, "Krikor, Krikor, help Ara, he's going under."

In the moment that my father took to span the distance between us; both he and my mother on shore noticed something quite hilarious.

That I, realizing that I was beginning to drown, had apparently grabbed my own hair and had begun trying to pull myself out of the water!

I have marveled at this my entire life. A small child, beginning to drown begins pulling upon his own hair to keep himself afloat! I would not believe it, but it just seems too bizarre to be made up. Clearly, if my father had not come to my aid, all my pulling and all my tugging on my own hair may have resulted in some premature bald spots, but I would have been unlikely to save myself from drowning. This seems obvious.

It seems to me that most people would not believe that they themselves have any problem regarding sin, that they are not susceptible. Nor do most folks believe that anybody else is necessary to pull them from the quagmire of sin.

However, as we considerred a few weeks ago, sin is irresistible, and wired into our very composition and character as human beings. We are limited, flawed and imperfect in relation to God or any other perfect thing. Sin, further separation from God and greater problems come as this distance and this difference in quality from God goes unacknowledged and ignored. Pride, ingratitude, arrogance, and myriad other attitudes creep inevitably into human consciousness and make their inexorably awful impact on us all.

There is no way out on our own. The spiral away from God is unavoidable, until we actually realize that we are spinning away. Unless we take stock of ourselves and remember our place in the universe, before God and all Creation, as mere specks and dust blown by the cosmic winds, there is no escaping the corrupting power of sin finitude and imperfection.

The color in the children's wordless book is red this week because of the blood of Christ. Jesus gave his blood to save us. Jesus gave his life to reach us. Jesus gave his blood to teach us we've been told since were children, "God so loved the world that he gave his only son, so that everone who believes in him may not perish, but have everlasting life."[2]

There is a technical term for this act that many use to describe the way Jesus saves humanity. Atonement.

Atonement, many say, is what was required by God to reunite God and humanity. In the ancient pre-Christian traditions of the Israelite people of God, through practices guided by the Old Testament teachings, in order to atone for the sins and mistakes of the past, ordinary Hebrews were taught that they must annually bring a holy offering to the temple of God. Something perfect, an unblemished dove, or a young goat or some other perfect or sinless representative that could shed blood on behalf of that sinful believer. By sacrificing and killing that little animal, (or sometimes huge animal – a king or powerful individual would sometimes sacrifice oxen) the imperfections and sins of the owner of that animal were killed will the perfect sinless beast.

Atonement means another individual settles the score for an offender. Many say that Jesus was just such an atonement for the sins of all humanity. That Jesus death on the cross was the sacrifice of the perfect and sinless human soul in all the universe for all the rest that are broken and sinful and corrupt.

Jesus' sacrifice, Jesus' perfect sacrifice of his own blood on the cross is the atonement for all the sins of humanity we are told. And if one wishes to participate in the atonement, to have their sins counted as settled, like a debt, that we owed to God, then all you have to do is accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, accept his sacrifice as done on your behalf and your sins will no longer be counted against you. His blood is good and perfect enough to wipe away the transgressions of all who accept his sacrifice as on their behalf.

This view of substitutionary atonement is one that has endured for eons and taught by many great Christian theologians and teachers through the ages.

I wonder however if this is enough of an explanation. There is a cruelty to it and yes even an insufficiency that sometimes leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. Given the nature of the God that I've read about in scripture, and given the grace and love I've known in my life, I wonder if God is so punishing that he would require his own son to die, if he would require such perfection at the cost of any life.

I know that if it wasn't for Jesus dieing on the cross, I'd be dead in sin as well.

Jesus' death on the cross is not an act of cosmic atonement alone. It may be that God required this sinless sacrifice and Jesus was the only one who could provide it. I don't know God's mind completely, I can't speak for God with complete assurance, but this doesn't have the ring of truth, the ring of God's compassionate, gracious truth, for me.

¹²“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. ¹³No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends," Jesus says to his disciples.

Jesus' death on the cross is an act of love and humility. Jesus by replacing the ear of the high priest's slave, cut off by his friend Peter to try to save his own life, is teaching about love and humility, and how to turn the other cheek. God, by allowing the evil of the world to take his son, to steamroll and destroy Him by mob rule, demonstrates that he no longer wishes to destroy but to love.

Remember the rainbow? We teach the children of our Sunday School that after the great flood, God showed Noah a great rainbow, as a sign of the promise that he would no longer destroy all the world.

Well, as he faced the cross, in the face of the ignorance, the arrogance, the violence and the awful sinful hatred that God knew was coming for Jesus, that Jesus knew was in store for him, even as he preached and taught in the country-side and told his disciples "no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown."[3] God did not forget this ancient promise, Jesus did not forget, because of his love, he had no inkling to punish or give retribution.

This is what saves. This Way of Christ, of grace of care, of self-sacrifice is what overcomes anger, hatred, pride, fear…sin.

The love of Christ is perhaps something like the anger one might feel at a child, held back and reserved, looking for an opportunity to teach rather than to scold, or spank, or lash out.

The love of Christ is giving something up so that someone else may be safer, be more loved, ve lifted out of sin or be drawn colser to God to the way of love and grace.

The love of Christ is like giving up for someone else the care and resource that was reserved for oneself.

The love of Christ is forgiving and forgetting when it is our right to punish or even to lash out.

The love of Christ is exercised from a position of power, not weakness, a position of having something to freely give, rather than feeling something taken away from you against your will.

Next week we'll think more on how that sacrifice changes each person to make us more whole, less sinful, more pure somehow and open to grow in the way of Christ.

The love of Christ saves us from sin, saves us from ourselves, and opens up a new way of being that draws us closer to God's own nature. Christ loves us, gives his own love, and shows us his way of love. As he does this, he is destroyed by those whom he loves.

During the Second World War Dr. Ernest Gordon, later Chaplain of Princeton University, was a prisoner of war in Thailand. In his book, Through the Valley of the Kwai he reflects on the difference between two Christmas seasons he spent in prison. He says that in Christmas 1942 there were thousands of American soldiers in that prison who robbed the sick among them, mistreated one another, and did not care whether the other prisoners lived or died.

During the following year, a healthy American soldier began giving his food to a sick buddy to help him get well. In time the sick prisoner recovered, but the buddy who had given him food died of malnutrition. The story of the man who sacrificed his life to save a buddy made the rounds of the camp. Some of the prisoners remarked that he was a lot like Christ. Some of the soldiers began to recall passages from the Bible they had learned years earlier under far different circumstances. One of the passages stated, "This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." Some who were Christians took heart and began to witness to other men. The prisoners began to ask about Christ and to meet for Bible study. When they began to know Christ as Lord the entire atmosphere in the camp changed from despair and desperation to hope and compassion. When Christmas of 1943 arrived, Dr. Gordon said, 2000 prisoners assembled for worship. They sang carols and someone read the story of the birth of Jesus from a Gospel account. Much more was different. In spite of their hunger, prisoners who were well shared food with the sick to help them gain strength faster. They cared for one another. They agreed that the difference came about because of faith in Christ and people who lived his love in the midst of unloving circumstances. The choices they made were for righteousness and not evil.[4]

Jesus, like that soldier giving up his food for his buddy, who ends up giving his life and saving the lives of all thos prisoners, gives up his life because of compasion, because of love, in order to avoid war and revolt and perhaps the death of his own disciples and friends. He teaches us all how much God loves us and so changes the world and opens up the door for so much more.

[2] John 3:16

[3] Luke 4:20

[4] Dr. Wayne Peterson, Critical Choices, from “eSermons.com - illustrations@CLERGY.NET: Illustrations for June 30, 2002” e-mail to Ara Heghinian, June 26, 2002

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