what God has done for us

In the book Calvinism in the Las Vegas Airport Richard Mouw outlines a scene from the film Hardcore in which a pious Calvinist, Jake VanDorn, tries to explain the Canons of Dort to a prostitute in the Las Vegas Airport. Jake has been trying to track down his teenage runaway daughter who has gotten involved in the pornography industry. He has managed to convince Niki, a young prostitute who knows his daughter, to help find her. They had recently followed her trail to Las Vegas, but she has moved on. As they are waiting in the airport for their flight to leave, Niki tells Jake he has a very negative outlook on life, and she thinks it is connected to his religious beliefs.

“What kind of church do you belong to?” she asks.

“It’s a Dutch Reformed denomination,” he responds, “–a group that believes in TULIP.”

“What the crap?”, Niki replies.

“Its an acronym,” says Jake. “It comes from the Canons of Dordt. Every letter stands for a different belief, like—Are you sure you want to hear this?”

“Yeah, yeah. Please go on. I’m a Venusian myself.”

“Well,” Jake continues, “T stands for total depravity: all men through original sin are totally evil and incapable of good. All my works are as filthy rags in the sight of the Lord.”

“That,” responds Niki, “is what Venusians call negative moral attitudes.”

“Be that as it may,” Jake says, “U stands for ‘unconditional election’: God has chosen a certain number of people to be saved, the elect, and he’s chosen them from the beginning of time. L is for ‘limited atonement’: only a limited number of people will be atoned and go to heaven. I is for ‘irresistible grace’: God’s grace cannot be resisted or denied. And P is for the ‘perseverance of the saints’: once you’re in grace, you cannot fall from the numbers of the elect. That’s it.”

“Before you can become saved, God already knows who you are?’

“Oh yes, he’d have to. That’s predestination. I mean, if God is omniscient, if he already knows everything—and he wouldn’t be God if he didn’t—then he must have known, even before the creation of the world, the names of those who would be saved.”

“Well, then,” says Niki, “it’s all worked out, huh? It’s fixed?”

“More or less,” replies Jake.

“I thought I was ****ed up,” says Niki.

This seems a bit unreal, does it not? Why would anyone talk to a thoroughly pagan person such as Niki about the Canons of Dort? These theological statements seem very out of place.

Today is Reformation Day, the day that we remember the beginning of the Reformation, the day Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses on the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg, Saxony (modern day Germany). A day in which Luther called the church to remember the incredible grace of God.

When it comes right down to it, you might say that the import of the Canons of Dordt, or our Reformed heritage for that matter is this: Our salvation depends on God.

“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.”

Now, the Bible uses time in a much different sense than we do, of course. Within the New Testament there are two words for time, καιρος and χρονος. Χρονος is the work used when discussing a specific point in time along a time line; a given day, hour, or minute. Καιρος, however, is used to discuss a time that has come to fruition, the time when the harvest is ready, the time when things being prepared has come to fruition. This is not necessarily about chronological time, but about a proper, fitting, or appropriate time.

The New Bible Commentary suggests that the import of the “at the right time” is “while we were still sinners”. Its not about the actual placing of the event in history, but about the fact that God chose to save us while we were still sinners. The right time for God to show his mercy to us was while we were still far from him. If he waited until we returned to him, it would no longer be mercy.

“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.”

When we were still powerless. The Greek word translated powerless here is from the word ἀσθενής. This word has a much richer meaning than simply to be powerless. In Mt 26:41 the word is translated as “weak”. When Jesus was praying in the garden of Gethsemane just before he is betrayed and he comes back to find Peter, and the sons of Zebedee sleeping, he says, Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.’” the body is ἀσθενής. In 1 Cor 1:27 Paul says “God chose the weak things (the ἀσθενής things) of the world to shame the strong.” This word is also translated as sick. In Lk 10 Jesus gives instructions to the seventy-two disciples as he sends them out into the countryside. Among other things he says, “Heal the sick (heal the ἀσθενής) who are there and tell them, ‘The kingdom of God is near you.’” In Acts 5 as more and more people are believing in the gospel message they “brought the sick (the ἀσθενής) into the streets and laid them on beds and mats so that at least Peter’s shadow might fall on some of them as he passed by.

This word has a heavier meaning as well, it is also used to mean crippled. In Acts 4, Peter is placed on trial before the Sanhedrin for healing a man who had been crippled from birth in the name of Jesus. As he is standing in front of the council he says,

“If we are being called to account today for an act of kindness shown to a cripple (to an ἀσθενής) and are asked how he was healed, then know this, you and all the people of Israel: It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead, that this man stands before you healed.”

So, at just the right time, we were powerless, when we were weak, we were sick, we were crippled, we were totally unable to do anything for ourselves, Jesus died for us. We, just like the cripple healed by Peter at the gate of the temple were confined to sitting on our duff and begging for something to sustain us through our pain. We were unable to return to God. We had broken off the relationship with him. We had burned the bridge and had no materials with which to build a new one. But, amazingly, God did not leave us powerless. He did not leave us weak, or sick, or crippled. He sent his anointed one into the world to rebuild the bridge between humanity and divinity. God came, in the person of Jesus Christ, and died for us.

“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.”

When I was younger I had hooked up an electric guitar amplifier to my stereo in my room. There were times that I would turn that thing up so loud the whole house would shake. Once when my grandmother was visiting, I was playing some music, perhaps a bit too loud, and she came down the hallway into my room. When I finally realised she was there and turned off the music, she said, “What is that ungodly racket?”

If something is ungodly, we generally think it is something that is worthless, it is no good, it is irredeemable, there is nothing in it with which God has any part; hence the term ungodly. It is something that is completely separated from God. This is getting close to what the term means for Paul. Throughout the scriptures people who are ungodly are those who live apart from God; those who turn their backs on him, or thumb their noses at him, or put one of their fingers on each hand up toward him and give him a couple of birds. These are people who are ungodly. They are people who have no care if there is a God or not. People who live their lives by their own rules and do not care who they hurt. Jude 4 defines ungodly people as those who oppose God and “change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.”

People who are ungodly have not only burned the bridge between themselves and God, they have also tried to set themselves up as gods of their own lives. The only ethic the ungodly live by is what feels good to them. They do not care who gets hurt in the process. They follow their sinful desires, and try to satisfy their ever increasing lust for more.

But here is the thing. If we believe that Christ came to die for us, we have to admit we were, and in many ways still are, ungodly people. We were, and maybe still are, people who were separated from God, who turned our backs on him, who spit in his face. We were people who deserved to die. People who deserved to remain separated from God, the source of all goodness, life, and love, for all eternity.

“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

But God does the unexpected. God does not treat us according to what we deserve, but lavishes his love upon us. God does not play fair, he demonstrates his love.

We are not worthy of God’s love. We are not worthy of God’s grace. We have done so much that has caused him pain. We have done so much that has caused him grief. Time and time again we spit in his face, and turn our backs on him. Time and time again we show our true colours; our dark, ugly, ungodly colours. Even though we have done so much to hurt God, he comes to us and shows us his love in the most amazing gift ever imaginable, he gives his life.

“Very rarely would someone die for a righteous man.”

Very rarely would someone give up their own life for someone who is innocent and sentenced to death. Even if a lawyer knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that someone was innocent of the crime that has resulted in their being sentenced to death, I do not think they would offer to bear the sentence for them. If an innocent person were condemned to die, we might be filled with pity. We might offer condolences and set up funds for defence. We might be outraged and write letters to our politicians and other leaders to intervene on their behalf, but we would probably not be willing to take their place.

“However,” says Paul, “for a good man someone might possibly dare to die.”

For a person who is kind, caring, compassionate. Someone who lives their lives for others. Someone who makes a mark on the world and makes it a better place. For someone like this a person might be willing to die, though even that is a very rare thing. But God goes way farther than this. God shows that his love toward his creatures is beyond anything we could have imagined. God does not treat us according to what our sins deserve. God shows that his love is incredible, spectacular, astounding. He takes his own punishment upon himself, so that we would not have to.

So, “[s]ince we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! For if, when 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! Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”

The gift of Jesus dying on the cross was an amazing gift in and of itself. But it does not end there. Jesus did not remain in the tomb. Death does not have the final victory. If we are justified in Christ’s death. If his death on the cross took away the curse of our sinfulness, then imagine how much more we will get from his life! How much more we will gain by being a part of his body. If we have been justified through Christ’s death, then we are reconciled to God through his life. We are no longer estranged from God. No longer are we separated from him. We no longer despair as his enemies, but rejoice as his children.

If we got what we deserved, none of us would have any hope. Yet we do have hope. We have the hope of victory over death. We have the hope of Christ’s real death and resurrection. We have the hope of the promise and love of God.

“God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”