“For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!” — Romans 5:10 (NIV)
Paul makes a point early in this passage that is easy to gloss over. For someone to die on behalf of another is unusual and contrary to nature, really. Even for a genuinely good person, that would be a rare thing. But Jesus didn’t die for good people. He didn’t die for people who were already on his side or already working toward the right things. He died for people who were actively working against him. That’s not a small detail. That’s the whole point.
None of us came to God with anything to offer him that he needed. Whether you grew up in church or walked in the door last week, there was a stretch of your life where you were on the wrong side of this equation. If you are not actively working toward the Kingdom of God, you are working against it. There is no neutral ground. No coasting or lying flat. Which means every single one of us needed exactly what Jesus provided, not because we deserved it, but precisely because we didn’t.
That’s the heart of the gospel right there. He didn’t look down at humanity and see something worth saving in the usual sense. He looked down and decided to save us anyway. That kind of love doesn’t really have a human comparison. The closest Paul can get is to say it would be unusual even to die for a good person, let alone enemies. Try to wrap your head around that for a minute.
That should change everything about how I live. The way I approach work, relationships, the stuff that frustrates me on a random Tuesday. I’ll be honest, I don’t always live like that. It is easy to get pulled down by the small things in the course of a normal day and lose sight of what actually matters. That’s a constant battle.
But the remedy isn’t trying harder. It’s fixing my gaze back on what Jesus actually did. Not in a way that feels like a religious obligation, but in a way that genuinely recalibrates everything else. He did more than any of us could imagine or ever live up to. That changes everything…even on the days when its much easier said than done.