but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:8 ESV
Sin. The blood of Jesus. The wrath of God. Judgement. Aren’t these just negative, primitive, obscene and off-putting terms? Isn’t what we need in our modern world a much more palatable, positive type of religion which avoids these ideas and instead focuses on affirmation?
Imagine for a moment that you are standing on a busy street with a friend, and that friend says to you: “Let me show you how much I love you,” and then throws themselves in front of an oncoming bus, and dies.
You would probably think: “What in the world did he do that for?! What a tragic and pointless waste of a life!”
But now imagine that that bus was headed straight for you, but your friend acted to save you from certain death at the risk, no – at the cost of their own life. You would say: “Truly, that person loved me.”
Unless you understand the depth of the problem, you will never understand the extent of God’s love for you. That is why we can’t do away with terms and concepts like blood, judgment, wrath and sin.
Blood, for example, has both very negative and a very positive connotations – and both are important for understanding the central message of Christianity.
On the one hand, blood speaks of brokenness and guilt. If you have blood spurting out of your body, then something is broken, perhaps even mortally so. We use phrases like “blood on your hands” and “blood on your head” to refer to guilt.
And yet, blood also has positive connotations: “Life is in the blood” the Bible says. If you don’t have blood in you, you don’t have life. Every baby who is born comes into the world with the shedding of blood. Blood which is shed voluntarily for the sake of another is a heroic act of self-giving. It is through the shedding of Jesus’ blood that he causes us to be born again to new life.
I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain. (Galatians 2:21 NKJV)
What the verse above is saying is that if it were possible for a person to earn salvation by being good enough, then we could save ourselves, and if we can save ourselves, then Jesus Christ died in vain.
If we could save ourselves, Christ’s death was pointless, meaningless and tragic – like a person who throws themselves in front of a bus for no reason. But if we understand the depth of the problem from which Jesus saved us, then Christ’s death will mean everything to us, it will be an overwhelmingly positive act which affirms God’s love for us. It will change the way we think about God and ourselves, and it will change the way we live from that day forward and how we relate to others. Understanding what God saved us from fills us with 1) humility, so we don’t consider ourselves better than anyone or look down on anyone, and 2) confidence, that God truly loves me and is for me.
It is within these “negative” concepts that we find the overwhelmingly positive message of the gospel – a message which is infinitely more positive than any mere patronizing platitudes. If it is positivity and affirmation you desire, then it isn’t a circumvention of sin, wrath, judgement and blood that you need, but a b-line to the cross of Calvary, where these were in full force and God’s love was displayed in giving Himself to save all who would receive His gift by faith.
Theology for the People 