Soldiers of the Cross – part 2
What will you do with your one and only life? I’m sure you’re thinking along the lines of, “This a Church question so I’ll say, ‘I’ll follow Jesus with my life. I’ll help others with my life. I’ll live a good life so God will be happy with me.’ ” The problem is, that’s not good enough. Nothing we do will ever be good enough. In the movie, Capt. Miller was urging Private Ryan to make his life worthy of the sacrifice. And those words probably haunted Private Ryan for the rest of his days. Why? Because if we’re honest, what can we ever do that makes us worthy enough for someone to lay down his life? Deep down, I think the older Private Ryan knew there was nothing he could have done to earn that gift of life. There was nothing in him that made him worthwhile.
By now you probably know where I’m going with this, right? Deep down, I think we all know there’s nothing we can do that makes us worthy enough for the God of the universe to leave heaven and allow Himself to be nailed to a tree so we can live. There is nothing we can do to earn the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross, no way we can repay that kind of gift.
Unlike, Private Ryan, we don’t have to earn anything, because God knows we can’t. Our Savior is not grabbing us by the hand and saying, “Earn this! Earn the life you’ve been given!” Instead, He tells us that He willingly made that sacrifice because He loves us. “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) Did you catch that? While we were still sinners, God loved us and laid down His life for us. We do not do good deeds in order to be saved, in order to earn eternal life. We do good deeds because we have been saved, because it is a way of showing gratitude to the One who died so we could live. Paul writes, “Thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Cor. 15:57)
Tim Stein
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