You were dead before you recognized you needed a savior. Dead not in the sense of being empty on the inside wallowing around life completely and utterly diseased. In the process of being dead, you willingly rejected the love God sacrificed to give by how you lived your life. You didn’t just shake off his existence, you willingly went about your life, actively trying to kill him with the wickedness in your heart. See, we humans detest to ever acknowledge this. No one ever desires to hear those words, let alone accept them as pure and utter truth. In Ezekiel 16, God talks about the repulsive rebellion of his own people. Now, before we go write off that this was meant solely for the Israelites of old, we need to see how this applies to the gospel of the new testament.
It starts out talking about a baby who was left for dead and completely helpless. God sees this baby and is moved by compassion to take it in and raise it, so raise it he does. This precious child grows up to be the most beautiful in all the land, and the land knew it. God sees this soul he has brought up is beautiful and loves her to the point of making a covenant with this young woman. After he establishes this covenant, he adorns this woman in the finest of everything. Clothes? You bet. Jewelry? Only the best. Food? Absolutely, she has it ALL.
This person has gone from abandon baby drowning in her own blood, to a queen with the world at her feet. The story would be simply heartwarming if that’s where it all ended, but as we read further we discover that’s just not the case. The woman with all her beauty defies the very one who raised her from death and starts worshiping the cause of it. She gives all that was not hers to give over to death — over to the devil. Her body, her clothes, her jewelry, her food, even her children she sacrificed to the evil one.
Imagine the man (being God in this case) and what he went through. His heart shattered as he watched his bride give herself to every single whorish desire she had. This man has every single right to turn away and cast this women into darkness because she broke the most sacred of covenants. I mean after all she defiled her very identity to that lower than a prostitute and forgot completely who he had drawn her up to be.
The story isn’t so heartwarming now is it, well it gets worse. This is you, this is us, this is what our sin did to our father above. You have single handedly broke the heart of God. BUT GOD being rich in mercy, reached down to the depth you have brought yourself to and reminded you how much he loves you. Despite the wickedness, despite the suffering you caused him, despite your disgusting sin, he loves you. Not only does he love you but he saw your brokenness as the problem and sent a solution.
This solution as we have finally gotten to is his very son. So just to get this straight, he brought you up out of sacrifice, he was not obligated to take you from that field and nurture you. He then grew you to become beautiful in his sight, sacrificed to gave you the world and then watched in agony as you defiled yourself by giving it away.
Then, in order to save your wretched self from this everlasting pit of depravity, sacrificed the most precious item in all of heaven, his son, to die in your place. He went through all of this so that you might know who you were created to be, so you might taste eternal life. And even after all that this overwhelming God has done to give this invaluable gift to you, all he asks you to do is give up every part of yourself in order to follow him.
Seems to me like this is a pretty good trade. But is it really all that simple? Is that all there is to it? Well, yes and no. yes to the fact that that is all you have to do to become a child of God, and no to what this lifestyle appears to be on the surface.
Following Jesus does not require you simply recognizing he is there, it is being ruined to action by what he did. Again, let us not forget that you are the problem, and he is the solution. It only makes sense that adequately solving this problem within you is dying to what makes you you and surrendering to the saving grace that will transform the very fibers in your soul. What does this look like you ask? Exactly what it says on paper. If you truly desire to actively see Jesus work in your life, you have to adamantly seek him with how you live it.
