The same old need and the remedy that’s ever new
The same old need and the remedy that’s ever new
Lots of people are fascinated with idea of travelling through time. I confess that I am one of them. When I was a child I watched a movie called The Time Machine and it fairly captured my imagination. How appealing the thought of time-travelling – especially back through time to see things as they once were.
If we could do that it wouldn’t be long before we found ourselves in a world utterly different from the present. So too if someone were to travel from the distant past to our world. You imagine someone from Jesus’ day, for example – first century Israel – travelling through time to 21st century America. They might almost feel that they were on a different planet!
If you were to show them around your home, for instance, and try and explain to them what some of the things in it are – the TV, the computer, the microwave, the washing machine, the fridge – they would be astounded. So, too, if you drove them to the airport to watch the planes, or down to the docks to see the ships, or to a hospital for a tour of one of the wards. They really might wonder if they were in the same world. It would be just so different from their own.
And yet if they stayed long enough they would realise that for all our astonishing progress, our 21st century world is in many very disturbing respects exactly the same as their own. If they listened to the news on television, for example – what would they hear about? Theft, rape, murder, deceit, cruelty, immorality, war – the very same things that cast a shadow over their own world. And if they were to interact with people at large, what would they see? – the same greed, malice, envy, backbiting, slander, gossip, and hatred so familiar to them from the first century.
Why is this? Why is our world fundamentally no different? The answer is that we human beings ourselves are no different. Back in the first century Jesus said that “from within, out of people’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly. All these evils come from inside…” And our hearts are just the same today. Your heart and mine. To use a Bible word, humans are just as sinful as before. That’s why for all our technological advances we still behave so badly.
Would it have been unjust of God to respond to our sinfulness by washing his hands of us? Not in the least! Our hearts and lives are far more offensive to him than any of us can imagine. We deserve his wrath not his kindness.
But God didn’t write us off. Instead, at extraordinary cost to himself, he sent us Jesus, his own beloved Son. His mission? To perfectly live and lovingly die so that our guilt might be forgiven and our sinful hearts changed. He is the perfect remedy for all our needs as sinners, a remedy that’s ever new and never failing. No one who comes to him (it’s his very own promise) will ever be turned away. Not you, not anyone.
David Campbell
Grace Baptist Church
777 W North Street
Carlisle, PA 17013