Christ for Us Sinners

Many of us don’t want to be beholding to someone else, we want to earn our own way, live by our own merit and not ‘owe’ anyone else credit for what we have. Yet, when it comes to the most priceless of all, we cannot have it on our own efforts. There is a certain humbling that goes with accepting something undeserved and there is nothing less deserved that restoration of relationship with the LORD.

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though 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. ¹ 

‘For while we were still weak’ ‘the ungodly’ ‘still sinners’ Christ died for us! We had no merit, nothing to recommend us to God, nothing He needed from us, nothing worth giving to Him, nothing we could trade for favor—yet—while still in that state, Jesus paid the price of our redemption by dying for each of us sinners. We may try to minimize our sins as ‘not as bad as’ someone else but our sin was severe enough that it would cost Jesus His life to satisfy the debt we owed and could not resolve our self.
Divine intervention was the only possible resolution. Every one of us rebels against God enough to destroy the possibility of resolution. Even our own attempts at resolving through our own ways drives us further from God and deeper into sin until we accept what God has done on our behalf even though undeserved and without our merit. God gives.

But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. ²

A free gift cannot be earned, only accepted, believed, lived.