Romans 5:8
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
When I was 26 years old I took my first job in ministry at a church in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, working part time with students while I went through seminary.
On one of my first Sundays at my new church, they made an announcement about a college student who had a severe form of leukemia. They asked for prayer, of course, but they also asked for people to consider donating “platelets”.
Now, I had only donated blood a couple of times in my life, and I didn’t even know what platelets were, but I just felt like it was something I should do. So I signed up to donate platelets.
Later that week I drove down to a big city hospital and it was then that I realized it was a bigger deal than I thought. They explained they would hook me up to a machine for 3 hours; and for the first hour and a half of that time they would suck my blood out of one arm, and for the next hour and a half they would put it back through the other arm. Then they put a needle in both of my arms and started the process.
Everything went fine. I really didn’t feel much at all until they started putting my blood back in my body.
Somewhere along the line, probably watching some medically oriented show like “ER”, I picked up that air should never be injected into your bloodstream. Somewhere I learned that if air gets into your veins, and then goes to your heart, you have a heart attack and die.
So I’m sitting there and I’m watching the blood return to my body through the tube into my arm. I can see the end of the blood and the beginning of what looks like to me a giant air bubble in the tube, and it’s headed for my arm.
The nurse hadn’t been in to check on me in 20 or30 minutes; I don’t know where she is; but the air bubble is flowing through the tube and no one is paying attention!
I’m thinking, “If that air bubble hits my arm, I’m a goner!” So I start coughing and clearing my throat like mad, just trying to get someone’s attention without looking like I’m afraid to die.
The nurse finally comes in just before the air bubble kills me and she must have seen the panic in my eyes. She said something like, “Don’t worry, the machine shuts off automatically,” and I tried to act like it was no big deal. “Yeah…I knew that.”
The truth is, I was prepared to donate, but I wasn’t prepared to sacrifice.
The gospel of the cross tells us that God was willing to both donate and to sacrifice!
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
The cross, properly understood, is more than a Roman instrument of torture and death. The cross is more than a religious symbol we wear around out necks, or put on top of our steeples. The cross is the very intersection of God’s holiness and love. God’s holiness demands that his wrath be revealed toward all sin. God’s love offers his own righteousness as a gift of his grace.
The gospel of the cross gives us both in Jesus Christ.
Brian Coffey
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