Set Free

Well, this is what God has done for us through Jesus Christ.

Since the fall of humanity, when the first humans rebelled against God, humans have been born, lived, and died under this oppressive cloud of sin.

That sin is like a debt that we owe to God.

We owe Him our love and our trust, uh, but we all fall short of being able to give it to Him, and we all rebel against Him, whether in really big ways or just really small ones.

We all owe Him something that we don't have the means to repay.

But God, in His love and His mercy, He knows we can't repay.

He knows we need help.

He knows that we're just stuck here under our dark cloud of debt until He declares that we don't owe it anymore.

But He can't just decide that we don't owe it anymore because as much as God is love, God also is justice, and we do owe the debt because we do rebel against Him.

He can't just pretend it never happened because then He wouldn't be justice.

So instead, He contrives a way to make justice happen.

He justifies us because He loved us and wants us to live free of this dark cloud of sin, and so He sends Jesus, fully God with the power to live a perfect life free of sin and fully human, able to represent you and me on the cross.

And the miracle of the atonement happens when Jesus, who has never done the smallest thing to rebel against God in thought, word, or deed, He deliberately dies the most brutal and shameful death imaginable.

He doesn't deserve the curse of death, so He has the currency to be able to pay off the debt that we all owe, and He pays it on the cross.

His final words are, "It is finished," and in His language, He uses a legal term that means the debt is paid.

And when we put our faith in that act, we are able to live vicariously through him and be made perfectly right, justified, just as if we had never sinned in the eyes of God.

We get that experience of waking up to the letter that declares that we are debt-free, not like me and my husband because it was unfairly applied and it's just been cancelled, but it's actually been paid for by someone who loves you and wants you to live in freedom, even though it's a debt you owed.

There is nothing you can do or say to earn it.

You just have to accept the gift of that debt paid off in full by Jesus.

And this idea of God acting first, God going before us to make a way back to him, it's a core pillar of Wesleyan theology.

But Augustine, in the days of the early church, preached it first.

It's called prevenient grace.

And it just means that before you or I ever go seeking God out, he has already come looking for us.

In John 13, sorry, in John 12, verse 32, Jesus proclaims, And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.

And in John 6, 44, Jesus says, No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.