But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
This is one of the most illuminating statements for understanding the good news: the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It might be said to be a simple statement of the gospel message itself, one that many Christians have committed to memory as an anchor for their faith.
I would like us to say this verse together: But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
We sometimes take God’s love for us either for granted, or in a very superficial way. We can believe that God loves us, that is a given, but we use as evidence of that love the stability or comfort of our own lives.
And we might also consciously or sub-consciously think that, of course, God loves me. I am not really a bad person, no not perfect, but I have not broken any of the real big commandments. I go to church, I tithe, I participate in the life of the church, I love my family, I am ethical in my business dealings.
Of course God loves me, he would, wouldn’t he, since I really try to be good? What we are really saying is that if I am good, or at least attempting to be good, then God will love me.
But that is not love. That is affection earned – God giving us our due – and that is not God’s love at all.
The point of God’s love, the amazing and unsettling aspect of God’s love, is that he loved us when we were most undeserving of it.
When we are in the midst of sin, living life as we direct, when we are in a state of rebellion against him: in the state of drunkenness, in the midst of drug induced euphoria, in the midst of the adulterous or premarital or homosexual relationships, in the midst of our philandering, and larceny, duplicity, jealousy, and rumor-mongering. It is there God loves us.
Loves us, yearns for us, agonizes for us hoping that we would change, repent and turn to him that our lives would be redeemed and saved from eternal destruction – destruction we bring on ourselves. That is God’s heart, love for the sinner, the desire that all would forsake their sinful ways to come to him.
And though he loves the sinner, he hates the sin; the self-focused, self-serving and ultimately self-destructive attitudes, and behaviors that absolutely separate us from God.
But we sometimes ignore the grievous nature of sin. We look at it as a social faux pas or some minor offense that we are sure God will overlook – because he loves us – or more to the point, we think we are so lovable.
The trend today is just to deny that there is something called sin – it’s just the way we are, or are created, so God rejoices in who we are regardless of what he has revealed in his word. We look at sin like a parking ticket, a minor offense. Have you ever heard the justification for lying that it’s just a little white lie, or the justification for adultery, just a little fling?
In actuality all sin is serious. It is spitting on God, it is personal betrayal of his trust, it is as treason against his Lordship and Majesty, it is rebellion and a capital crime deserving death. And that is exactly what his justice demands: death. Sin sets us against God.
But God loves us so much that he sends his son to die for us, that we might not. He sends him who is most precious to himself to pay the price for our redemption, to serve the just sentence for those who have most offended him, that we might have peace; an intimate relationship with God as father.
God loves the sinner.
In last week’s Gospel Jesus encountered Nicodemus, the Pharisee of the ruling class who observed the laws and customs and thus was as holy as a Jew could be. Yet Jesus called him to a new birth through water and the spirit: a new life through belief in Jesus the Messiah.
The person in today’s encounter with Jesus is the exact moral opposite of Nicodemus.
A Samaritan, she is viewed by the Jews as unclean, a member of a heretical and counterfeit religion, and we discover she is an adulteress; a sin that deserves death according to the law. Jews had very few dealings with Samaritans, and men were not supposed to engage women in conversation in public – to say nothing of adulterers – yet Jesus engages her.
He shows God’s love for the sinner, he speaks to her of God’s gift, a free offering, something to be received by faith not earned – of living water, playing on the difference between the stagnant water of the well compared to living water, fresh running water. Jesus offers her a water that satisfies completely, water that wells up to eternal life, water that gives life and overcomes death: the consequence of sin.
She shows an interest in that water, though for her own purposes. How often do we respond to God’s graciousness taking his love for granted, seeing faith as a means of satisfying our own needs without a thought of our unworthiness, our sin, thinking in his love he will overlook sin.
But Jesus does not overlook sin, he reveals it, confronts her with her sin – you are right in saying you have no husband, you have had five, and the one you are with is not your husband – specifics that no one but her would know, but God knows.
There are no such things as secret sins. God knows the deepest, darkest, secrets of the soul. Still he yet he calls the sinner to believe, to receive his gift of living water, new life.
Her response is to acknowledge that Jesus is not a run of the mill Jew: Someone different is here. And she begins to talk of Godly things, about worship and the difference between the Samaritans and the Jews. She tries to deflect Jesus’ penetrating gaze into her life and to justify her religious life.
We all look for ways to avoid facing our sin. W.C. Fields, the famous comic actor, on his deathbed was found by one of his rowdy friends to be looking at a Bible one day. The friend asked him if had gotten religion. Heck no, Fields responded, I’m looking for loopholes.
If we can’t find loopholes, if we can’t avoid, or rationalize, or justify our sin we then must face our guilt, and its consequences before God. And that is an awful place to be. But God loves the sinner and he has provided a savior.
When Jesus corrects her view of religion, telling her that salvation, the Messiah, is from the Jews and that worship is not about place – Jerusalem or Mt. Gerizim – but about spirit and truth, Holy Spirit infused new life, she acknowledges her hopeful expectation of the messiah.
To which Jesus makes the astonishing claim: I that speak to thee, I am. Jesus reveals his identity using God’s very name, “I am”, in reference to himself to proclaim emphatically that he is the Messiah, God’s anointed son, God’s answer to sin, and savior for sinners.
As with Nicodemus, we have no declarative statement that she accepted Jesus, accepted his gift of living water and thus was saved. But just like Nicodemus, there are intimations that she indeed received what he offered.
She runs off to the city to tell others of this prophet with such haste and excitement that she leaves her water jar behind.
Something extraordinary must have happened in her to cause her to leave this valuable thing behind. Maybe symbolic, when you have the living water within you, you have no need of the old water; the old things that used to sustain you. Such it should be for all believers.
In the village, her message is: “Come and see…. this man told me all my sins…..this is the Messiah, I think”. This woman communicates with such conviction – and maybe evidencing some visible change – that her hearers come out to see. There is no more powerful testimony to Jesus’ power and love than the changed life of a forgiven sinner.
John says that many Samaritans believed in Jesus the Messiah because of her word, testifying that they eventually believed not only because of her, but because they had heard for themselves and they knew that this Jesus is indeed the Savior of the world. She became a missionary to her own city, leading other sinners to the living water of eternal life.
I think she got it, or maybe more accurately, Jesus got her. Every saint great or small was a sinner, redeemed by Jesus.
God loves the sinner. Whether a Nicodemus or a Samaritan woman, or somewhere in between, he offers us the gift of living water. His desire is that we take sin seriously, that we might take what he accomplished in his son seriously, and truly experience new life in him.
But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
Lent is a time to contemplate the awesome grace and love given to us in Christ. It is a time to ask ourselves if our lives reflect that living water that is in us.
It is also a time to examine our lives in light of what God has done and, where necessary, admit to our sin, not to hide it (as if we can) not to justify it, or rationalize it, but to acknowledge it, confess it, to acknowledge our powerlessness over it, to turn from it and receive the gift of salvation God has provided.
But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
How have we, each of us, personally responded to this truth?
Lent 3 A
Romans 5:1-11
John 4: 5-42
27 March 2011