Christ Died for the Ungodly

Introduction

Grace brings hope out of despair, specifically the despair of knowing our sin and crying out to God for mercy. Hope, as we saw last week, faith produces a hope which produces a confident joy in any situation of suffering because we have a 100% chance of being saved. How can such confidence come out of such a place of low, humiliating despair? How can someone who one moment was convinced they were deservedly on their way to an eternity of hell come to a place that they can endure anything in this life because they are so joyfully confident in the grace they have received in Christ Jesus? The answer is this hope, confidence that God is going to keep his promises and that his heart is set on us so lovingly that he sent his Son to die and become a propitiation for us. The faith that is needed to accept this is supernatural, especially since such an act seems so far fetched it couldn’t be true. How could that holy God actually love me? That makes no sense. But when God has set it in our heart for us to believe him, they come and are filled with hope. They now have the witness of the Spirit in them, which is a guarantee of our inheritance in heaven, and have every reason to believe, to know, that this is so. They believe God, it is counted to them as righteousness, and all the promises are theirs. That is how a sinner can have confidence, because while we were still sinners, weak, downtrodden, hurt, guilty, expectant of hell and judgement; when we were disgusting, tainted and corrupt, evil through and through, Christ died because those evil people were loved by God while they were still evil. If God loves you at your worst so far that he sends his Son to die, what is his love towards you now? This passage shows us the beauty of God’s love and how it is expressed in the cross.

At the Right Time.

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

While we were still weak

At the right time. That is, the right time was when we were weak. Us being weak was the right time for Christ to come and die.

Weakness of the Jewish nation. Never before had they been in such a humiliating and dire place. The promises to return to the land were gutted by their servitude to the Roman gentiles. At their weakest hour Christ came and they at there worst on the hill of Calvary along with the worst of the Gentiles who crucify God himself and are guilty of the greatest sin ever committed. If Jesus had come in the days of King David, it wouldn’t have been when they were weakest, but now they were and now the Messiah would come. God weaves a good story, it is right at the moment when you believe all hope is lost because of your weakness that the grand reveals comes. Right at the most desperate moment, Christ died for the ungodly.

Weakness of being a gentile. Relative to the Jew, the gentile was not considerable material for salvation at all.

The ungodly at their weakest point.

Luke 5:31–32 ESV

And Jesus answered them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.”

Christ died. There’s little need to go into the details of this, but it cannot be overstated the weight of the price of our sin. The very death of the immortal God in his union with humanity. To pair this with saving us specifically when we are weakest is to create the most perplexing mystery of all.

The point is detailed more in verse 7. John Gill distinguishes the righteous man from the good man in that the righteous man is one who is seen as holy and religiously devout by himself and others. The good man is someone that is good in his treatment of others, and so one may, the Apostle admits, die for such a person. But all this is contrasted with the fact that Christ died for us.

It is specifically a way that God shows his love for us. Consistently, if it was to show his love for us, it must be to show his love for us while we were at our worst as sinners since that is when Christ died for us.

Justified, therefore Saved from Wrath

This establishes the hope that the Apostle was talking about. Paul logic is established from the lesser to the greater. The fact is that God justified the ungodly while they were still ungodly. It’s not as these are sinners that turned from their ways, changed, and after pleading and pleading with God and after doing penance and maybe doing time in the fictitious purgatory that God finally says, “all right, I’ll justify you with the blood of my dear Son.” No! It is out of love that God sent his Son to die for the ungodly, it is love that justifies and through faith in that love we are justified before God. It was at our worst that God showed us his best in Jesus Christ. How lovely is that? How securing is that? How sure a foundation we may stand on because God loved sinners to such a degree while they were in their worst.

So the argument is, if God justified us while we were at our worst, what will he do when we are justified by the righteousness of Christ. “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.” If God would justify us while we were sinners, how much more will he save us from his wrath now that we are justified?

If you are in custody for a crime you committed and I pay your bail, how much more, after having paid your bail, am I going to make sure that you walk out of the jail? If Christ has already given himself for sinners like you, how much more is he going to make sure you are saved from the wrath of God after that fact? A righteous God will not have you punished when the debt has already been paid.

This is the foundation of assurance of salvation, and ought to bring you assurance in your salvation as well. Will God leave someone he has put his Holy Spirit into? Will he reject one who has been made a son or daughter? We believe in assurance of salvation because the very Gospel is written in such a way that should give us plenty of assurance in our salvation as long as we endure and do not turn aside from the Gospel.

Saved by his life brings in the hope of the resurrection. If our sins are put on Christ on the cross so that he shared in our guilt in his death, in his resurrection we will share in his resurrection life. When the last day comes, we will not be subjected to death by the wrath of God since that has already been removed. Instead, we will be alive together with Christ. If we have been reconciled to God, there remains no possibility of wrath from his justice.

Saved here is a future event and refers to the final salvation we have in Christ Jesus. On the day of wrath we will be saved from the eternal death that sin causes because we have now been reconciled to God and justified. This includes being saved from all that sin tries to work in us now.

Rejoicing in God

Therefore, there is every reason for us to rejoice in God. He has saved while we were at our worst and will save us from the wrath on the day of Judgement. Having been justified, the future looks nothing but bright for you, and so rejoice. I was reading this afternoon from Spurgeon about how unfitting it is for a Christian to be without joy. We have all that we need, all that we could want, all our dreams are coming true. Do you really believe it? Do you live like you are the luckiest man or woman alive? Because in Christ you have every blessing in the heavenly places, blessings that far surpass what is on this earth.

Joy is the natural expression of faith. While Christians may struggle to have joy, it will be the natural language of our lives. In trials we have joy, in sorrow we have joy, in distress we have joy. Why? Because death cannot do anything to us. We have a safety net where if everything in life goes wrong, death cannot win against us. That is why we rejoice in our hope. We must make this hope everything for us.

Joy is not an accident of temperament or an unpredictable providence; joy is a matter of choice.

J. I. Packer

The struggle of a Christian in this life is for joy in our salvation. From faith proceeds joy, and as Spurgeon goes on to say, oh that we have more faith! I know I struggle to have this kind of faith, it is hard for us to see it as real and to see how it solves all our problems if we endure. Let us commit to a life of joy, not false and forced happiness, not joy in worldly things, but joy in what is coming, what we will receive on the last day, joy in what Jesus has accomplished for us when we were at our worst.

Conclusion

Don’t be afraid to look at your sinfulness for what it really is. Since we have this hope, God is glorified all the more when we recognize just how depraved we were before grace came into our lives.

Turn to look at the gift given to you while you were at your worst. While you were a villain, a sinner and evil in every way, God set his love upon you.

Know that since you have been justified at your worst, God has promised to save your from all wrath through the death and life of his Son. Cast your eyes upon him, for he cares for you. He cared for you while you were still in the thick of all your wickedness, how much more now that you are justified and filled with the Holy Spirit will you be saved unto an eternal inheritance.

If you are not saved, think long and hard upon these things. You are not too far gone! Christ died for sinners, and if you can humble yourself to see that is you, you can look to him and know his love will save you.

Give in to the joy of knowing God. Sing songs, quote Scripture, every day do something to reinvigorate your joy. On your worst days seek the joy of heaven, of good future things from the hand of a loving Father. When you faith is firmly established in Christ, you will have joy and life everlasting to follow. We’ll conclude with a short prayer from Augustine;

There is a joy which is not given to the ungodly, but to those who love Thee for Thine own sake, whose joy Thou Thyself art. And this is the happy life, to rejoice to Thee, of Thee, for Thee; this it is, and there is no other.

Augustine of Hippo