2nd Sunday in Lent “Christ Died for The Ungodly”
February 25, 2024 Romans 5:1-11
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Dear brothers & sisters in Christ,
Just as the season of Christmas can be summed up by saying: ‘The Savior is born,’ or The Word became flesh and dwelt among us,’ so the season of Lent can be summed up by the words of Romans 5 vs.6, “At the right time Christ died for the ungodly.” Each season of the church year has some statement for us to confess the person & work of our Lord Jesus for our salvation. And that verse from Romans 5 is very profound. It is at the very heart of the Christian faith; without it, there is no salvation = not for you, me, or anyone.
So, we need to be careful to hear that verse in the way that the Holy Spirit intends it for our faith. We do not want to allow the message of Christ’s suffering & dying in our place to be a mere ‘formula’, so that we forget how profound, or ‘weighty’, that atonement is. I think that’s why we notice a lot of repetition in the Bible; the same things are said in different ways for the purpose of keeping us from being absentminded Christians.
It’s our sinful nature =mostly= but with the help of the devil & the world, is the source of the sin of indifference; including indifference toward Christ’s Passion; His suffering, dying, & rising. But God’s Word is Spirit-filled, and is more powerful than those enemies. And those 5 words from vs.6 are a powerful truth that wake us up from our potential apathy. Let’s think about 4-things those words mean for our humble, & grateful faith in our Savior Jesus.
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FIRST, those words, ‘Christ died for the ungodly’ are profound because we can forget how much we needed Jesus to die for us. We forget because we tend to ignore how ungodly our sin is. Remember: when we confess that Jesus is our Savior, we are admitting that our sin puts us among the ‘ungodly’ who need a savior.
In today’s Gospel, (Mark 8), Jesus very clearly taught his disciples that He must suffer & be rejected by the Jewish leaders, be killed, and after three days rise again. Peter responds, & is opposed to that mission, & even dared to rebuke the Son-of-God. It didn’t matter what ‘good intentions’ Peter may have had. There are times in the OT that those who opposed Moses like this were immediately put to death! Jesus had just explained the cost of our sin, which had to be paid for in blood; and Peter is thinking: ‘sin can’t be that bad.’
That thought is very common & goes all the way back to the first sin: sin can’t be that bad, can it? Yet, for their simple disobedience, Adam & Eve are forever banished from the Garden. Sin is what makes us ungodly, condemned, & dead. We see the dismissal of sin in our culture. Just listen to the mainstream news. The celebrated group, Planned Parenthood, not only dismisses the idea that abortion is the murder of human babies, their ‘education’ material tells young people that the idea of ‘virginity’ & sexual morality is all made up = that it’s even harmful to your emotional well-being. ‘Sin can’t be that bad.’
What about the sins of rioting & violence? (5 &6 comm) That doesn’t count when people protest unfairness & ‘whiteness.’ And looting? We’re now told that’s just part of the ‘black culture.’ We’re told it’s not adultery if everyone is just consenting adults. Back in 1973, coming out of the ‘hippie’ culture (you know: free love, drugs, & rock & roll), a psychiatrist named Karl Menninger wrote a book called Whatever Became of Sin? Good question. What even counts as ‘sin’ nowadays = except for school shootings & voting for Trump! Certainly not abortion, assisted suicide, homosexuality, serial-marriages, or coercing children to change their gender = those aren’t ‘sins’ anymore, right? Last week, civil rights attorney, Ben Crump, said that we should cut down on crime by just redefining crime. The world has redefined ‘sin’, & worldly Christians are falling for it.
Yet these words of the Holy Spirit stand firm. “While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.” Ungodly means: without God; sinful & godless. Even worse, vrs.10 says we were ‘enemies’ of God; at war with God to get rid of Him. Is it any wonder that sinful man killed the Son of God?
And we won’t overlook the word ‘we’ ~ all of us, including Paul. We were the weak, ungodly enemies. We are on the right side of those social-moral issues. But these words remind us why we must still cling tightly to our Savior: sin still lurks in each of us. John writes that ‘if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves & the truth is not in us.’ (1Jn.1) Sin is that selfish action we do, that revenge we take, that hurtful word we use to ‘put someone in their place,’ that holding back of our time or offerings from God because we’ve got better things to do. Our old nature is ungodly & clings to us. The Spirit says: sin makes us ungodly. It also says: Christ died for the ungodly.
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SECOND, those words, ‘Christ died for the ungodly’ are profound because the death of the Christ for us surpasses our human understanding. Paul writes: “One will scarcely die for a righteous person — tho perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die — but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (vv 7–8).
Paul acknowledges that it does happen; a soldier saves his buddy at the cost of his own life,
a fireman or police officer faces death to save a poor victim, a mother shields her child with her body & dies. But Christ goes further. We aren’t the little baby or the friend; we’re the enemy. We can measure the hideous nature of our sin by the high price needed to deal with it.
Would you or I trade places with an unrepentant man facing the electric chair, who had sexually abused & murdered children? No way! Would we leave our spouse, family & friends behind, and die in his place so he could live? Facing danger for our family can happen;
on rare occasion, a person will trade their life for a victim; but no one will die in the place of the unapologetic criminal. But in order that there would be salvation for anyone, that’s what needed to be done. The initiative needed to be taken by God in dealing with His enemies. And it was done for all; whether or not they would see & appreciate what He has done.
That is the definition of God’s mercy for the world, and Christ’s substitutionary death for sinners. He carried all of your sin, and the sin of all mankind, in His body at the cross. He is your substitute = the innocent for the guilty. There was pain, but also the anguish of God’s wrath, abandonment & hell for unapologetic enemies. And in doing so, His death becomes the tool the Holy Spirit uses to convert your heart from ‘who cares?’ to ‘thank you Lord, I am redeemed, I am now yours.’ What Jesus did is beyond human reason, but not beyond the Spirit’s help to believe.
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THIRD, ‘Christ died for the ungodly’ is profound because it creates a new relationship for us to appreciate beyond earthly relationships. Jesus died to restore a broken relationship. Sin condemns, kills, & separates us from life, the Father calls us back, & the Spirit uses Jesus’ cross to enable us to repent, to return, & to trust God’s pardon & live again.
So Paul says, “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Thru him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. . . .
…..More than that, we also rejoice in God thru our Lord Jesus Christ, thru whom we have now received reconciliation.” (vs. 1–2, 11).
God’s grace in Christ is: justification and reconciliation. With the words, “…while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son,” this becomes personal. We are declared ‘innocent’ with the penalty of our crimes paid for; and God is reconciled to us, giving us a life of peace and hope. That’s a new relationship. Not only did Christ die for us, but He rose again to live with us. Just as He promises that the cross pays for our sin, so He also promises that His resurrection & ascension & His Pentecost Spirit puts us into a new & earthly relationship with God thru Him.
This is profound because it is the new life we have right now as his people in his kingdom even tho it is by faith & not by sight = not yet. He is working in our earthly lives in real & physical ways with His physical Word & physical Sacraments; those are real things for our faith to hang on to. We have been physically washed for both our spiritual & earthly good in this life-of-faith; we come to Him to eat and drink bread & wine because He has promised His real, sacramental, physical presence to be strengthened in forgiveness & hope in which we daily live. We have His promise that where His Word is, there is His Spirit of daily comfort, guidance, peace. This life of faith in our Savior is truly a new relationship & new life with God.
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FINALLY, ‘Christ died for the ungodly’ is profound because it enables us to rejoice in something we DO understand pretty well: sufferings. We do not have think long & hard to come up with examples of suffering. Even if your life is very protected & blessed, we all suffer the effects of being in a mortal body, and in an ungodly, dying, sinful world. The list of sufferings is nearly endless. Aging, viruses, cancers & injuries. We can suffer when our leaders make bad decisions that affect us. They can ruin our economy, which ruins our income. They can start wars that kill our sons & daughters. They can allow thousands of unknown people to stream across our southern boarder. Our Christian values are assaulted in the media, in politics, & in schools = that hurts the training of our children. Spouses desert, children rebel, our job stinks. We know sufferings.
Yet Paul dares to write, “We rejoice in our sufferings.” Really? Verses like these make the world ridicule us. Is this just hype? Often God’s Word does surpass us, but it isn’t hype; God doesn’t do ‘propaganda.’
It is written: “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, [that is: hope does not disappoint us] because God’s love has been poured into our hearts thru the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” (vv 3–5).
Why is there always hope for us? Because there is always the death of Christ for us; the cross of crucifixion might be ignored, but it can never be erased from human history.
It stands firm. And because Christ died for the ungodly, our hope is firm in God’s historic grace. This hope sustains us in difficult times because God cannot lose; Easter proves that. And God will not abandon those who look to Him. By His grace we have a new life in Christ, and nothing in all creation can take it away.
Rejoice in our sufferings? Yes, because those earthly things can not defeat those who belong to the Living God. Jesus suffered, died, rose, ascended, and is going to return; that is the hope for all who believe & are baptized into Him. His promise to us is: nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom.8)
The season of Lent can be summed up with just 5 words from Romans 5: ‘Christ died for the ungodly.’ When I say that those words are quite profound, I mean that they are quite deep & weighty in what they stand for. The Son of God, in great mercy & in terrible suffering, has taken your sin to the cross, forgiven you, and restored you to a living relationship with God; His grace, and your daily Christian faith, has become your new life.
Even tho you have suffering now, you rejoice in your Savior; for the day is coming when you will enter & enjoy His kingdom forevermore. That hope is not a platitude, it is profound.
Amen