Everyone Needs a SaviourSample

You know that feeling when you’re out with friends, or maybe dining with your spouse, and the dreaded bill arrives? To your surprise the server informs you that an anonymous customer had already paid the bill on your behalf.

Or alternatively, imagine this: You’re sitting second in the line-up on a crisp morning as occasional sets have been running down the point. The single-wave set of the morning builds on the horizon and everyone starts scratching. The person in priority looks around as if to call everyone’s hands off of the wave. Instead, the person looks you in the eye, gives you a bright smile and nods to indicate that this wave is yours to take. You swing around and make the drop. Time seems to stand still as you glide on the face. You kick out with an uncontrollable giggle in your belly. You start paddling back in doubt as the question surges up into your mind: “Why would that surfer have given away a perfect wave which was rightfully theirs?”

To an extent, these analogies help us grasp a far more significant fact presented in Romans 8. The Good News is in the fact that a totally holy God would give us access to His holiness through making us blameless and removing the punishment of eternal death, which we deserved because of our sin. It’s true, “God did [this] by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us…” and we would be free from condemnation (8:3–4 and 1 NIV).

Jesus tasted death so that we may taste true life. What does this life look like? It’s a life lived with the leading of His Spirit, contrary to living as the world does. “The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace” (8:6 NIV). This will inevitably lead to being rejected by the world but fear not, for we have been brought into a new family. A new tribe with a new culture.

In thankfulness and adoration we respond by adopting this new culture. “In the same way…” when we are unsure of exactly how to live in relationship with God, or what He expects of us, “the Spirit helps us in our weakness…” (8:26 NIV). One thing is certain and we’re assured by the author of this: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (8:38–39 NIV).