For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. – Romans 8:3-4
In July 1941, in the notorious Auschwitz death camp, a prisoner successfully evaded the guards and escaped. As retribution and to deter further escape attempts, ten men were randomly selected for starvation. One of the selected cried out, “My wife! My children!” Moved by his outcry, the polish priest, Maximillian Kolbe, stepped forward, volunteering to take the man’s place in the starvation bunker. The exchange was accepted and Kolbe endured two weeks, leading the men in prayer, without food or water before finally being killed by lethal injection. The man whose life was spared lived on and dedicated his life to making known the sacrifice of this priest.
This is a picture of sacrificial love in the face of horrific torment and suffering. An exchange, willingly made, of one life for another. For most of us, it is difficult to imagine ourselves in such circumstances, but we may be able to appreciate at least the gratitude of the man whose life was spared. He devoted the rest of his life – about 50 years – to telling the story of Maximillian Kolbe.
This was a time where an unrighteous requirement of an unjust law needed to be fulfilled. The only acceptable payment for a life was a life.
Two days ago, we meditated on our state in Christ: there would be no condemnation for us, not past or present or future. But that condemnation did not evaporate. The righteous requirements of God’s law still needed to be satisfied, and so God, in Christ, stepped forward. Christ both fulfilled the righteous requirements of the law, living a sinless life, and He took our sin upon Himself and the penalty – the condemnation – that was ours to pay. Life for life.
The salvation that has been won for us in Christ is free to us, but its cost was immeasurable. It was a cost willingly and lovingly borne by Jesus.
Here is what these verses are saying: God gave us His good law – His good way that leads to life – but in our weakness, we chose the way of death. So God did what we could not do. He took up our humanity in Jesus and lived a perfect, sinless life, which He sacrificed willingly. He took in His own body the condemnation that our sin deserves. All this He did so that He could come and live in us by the Holy Spirit, to change our hearts so that we would be free to really live – to grow and change and become more and more perfect and holy.
Kolbe died to give his fellow prisoner a chance at life outside the death camp. It would have been craziness for that man not to have made the most of every opportunity to get out of the camp and live, as Kolbe intended. Jesus died to secure for us an abundant life outside the realm of sin and death. That abundant life comes by walking in Spirit and growing in holiness.
Growing in holiness doesn’t tend to get us excited about life, but I wonder whether it’s because we really don’t see how destructive sin is. We don’t see that our bondage to sin is death, and we may see holiness as a constraint to life. In our ‘natural’ state, without the Spirit, we have the situation completely upside-down and inside-out. That is the way Satan wants us to remain: thinking that we are living free lives, whilst we are really still thinking and living the ways of sin and death. He wants us to be lulled to sleep, unthinkingly going about our work and study, eating and shopping and raising families all in a living death.
Consider this: Christ died for the sake of our growth in holiness. He counted it of infinite worth. He didn’t die so that we could pay lip service to His sacrifice and then continue in bondage to death.
Over the next few days, we will explore further what it may look like for us to grow in holiness. Would you take some time now to ask God, by His Spirit, to sensitise your heart to the ways of thinking and behaving that He needs to change. Would you also pray that the Holy Spirit would grow your love for the holiness of God.
Prayer focus:
- Praise God that all His ways are good and that He has opened to us the way to life
- Pray that our hearts would be awakened to the beauty of God’s holiness and His ways.
- Pray that we, as a church, would grow in beauty and holiness and be a beacon of life and hope to a dying world
