Presented to Alberni Valley Ministries, 24 November 2024. By Major Michael Ramsay. Based on a chapter in his book, Salvogesis’ Guidebook to Romans Road and sermons presented to Swift Current Corps, 26 July 2009
To view the earlier sermons, click here: https://sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2009/07/romans-58-while-we-were-still-sinners.html
To read ‘Salvogesis’, click here: http://www.sheepspeak.com/ebooks.htm
See also Romans 5:10: Reconciliation Day. Presented to The Salvation Army Alberni Valley Ministries, 02 October 2022, by Major Michael Ramsay: https://sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2022/10/romans-510-reconciliation-day.html
Romans 5:7-8: “Very rarely
will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might
possibly dare to die but God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we
were still sinners Christ died for us.”
We
have just had Remembrance Day the Monday before last. The Salvation Army plays
a big role in Remembrance Day ceremonies across this country because of the
great work the Lord did through us during the First and Second World Wars.
General
Harry Crerar, former Commander of the First Canadian Army in the Second World
War said, “It would be easier to forget one’s name than fail to remember the
times without number when the Salvation Army was, in truth, our comforter and
friend.” During both world wars and throughout the Cold War, The Salvation Army
provided Canadian military personnel with comforts such as hot drinks and
snacks and helped keep up spirits by manning leave centres. Very close to the
front lines, the Salvation Army showed films, established canteens, organized
sporting events and other recreational activities, supplied reading material,
stationery, cigarettes, and other items for the troops. The Salvation Army also
offered spiritual care and counselling to military personnel: comforting the
wounded and to burying the dead. In short, they did whatever they could to help
maintain morale. The Salvation Army instructed its supervisors to “care for the
body, mind and soul of every [service person] irrespective of creed or
personality.” In the midst of the horrors of war, the Salvation Army aimed to
offer a glimpse of home to the military.[1]
In
Canada, The Salvation Army Home League raised funds and sent thousands of
comfort packages filled with socks, underwear, Christmas presents, and other
items directly to The Salvation Army chaplains for distribution. Salvationists
visited the homes of deceased soldiers comforting and looking into the welfare
of many grieving families. Truly the Salvation Army “provided the reassuring
link between the fighting man and his world of peace and kindness and
sanity”[2].
I have
heard many individual accounts from veterans of WWII or their widows about how
much God used the “Sally Ann” during the War. Canadian soldiers were sent
overseas. Many were saved and many died for our side.
Christ
died for us while we were still sinners (cf. Ro 4:5). Romans 5:10 tells us that
besides our being still sinners, we were more than that: we were His enemies
(cf. 1 Jn 4:10). When we were still apart from Christ, ‘sinners’ as they say,
we were Christ’s enemies. When we were not under Christ’s leadership, we were
not subjects of His kingdom and thus – as we are involved in a spiritual war -
we were His enemies. We, through our allegiances and citizenship fought against
Christ even though His only desire was for all of us to be saved and be a part
of His Kingdom (1 Tim 2:4).
One
might respond, “when I didn’t know Christ, I wasn’t his enemy I led a good
life. I didn’t hurt anybody. I just happened to get to know God later on in
life and become ‘born again’ . . . that doesn’t mean that I was ever God’s
enemy, does it?”
The
Apostle Paul argues that the sinner (a sinner is anyone who doesn’t serve God)
is an enemy of God; the sinner is simply like a citizen of a nation/ group that
is not under Christ and thus is at war with Christ. Paul makes a strong
distinction between the sinner and the saint. The sinners are not on God’s side.
The saints are on God’s side.
A good
way to understand how we were “as sinners” and even “as enemies of Christ”
could be expressed in a further military analogy. We know of the horrors of war
and the crimes that our enemies commit. We, and our allies, however, are far
from innocent. In WWII, the UK and the US created an horrific firestorm carpet
bombing Dresden and killing many innocent women, children and others. And, of
course, the United States intentionally dropped the atomic bomb on an already
defeated Japan. War crimes.
During
the World Wars, in Canada we treated anyone of German, Italian, Ukrainian, and
especially Japanese ancestry as our enemies. We confiscated the belongings and livelihoods
of Japanese-Canadians and put them in internment camps. (The famous Canadian
scientist and environmentalist, David Suzuki, spent part of his early life in such
an internment camp.) We treated innocent people as our enemies. As is shown
through the official government apologies and tax money paid in reparations by
later generations who were not even alive during the Second World War, the
responsibility and the liability for this legally rests with all of us.
In
more recent history, during the “War on Terror,” the American president
declared that “Whoever isn’t with us is against us” and proceeded to sanction
torture of their captives in Guantanamo Bay, as well as elsewhere in the world.
Americans still have their facilities in Guantanamo Bay even today and the acts
committed thete have created many enemies all over the world for the rest of
us. Terrorism, counter-terrorism, suicide-bombing, assassinations, and mass
political murders increase precisely because many countries in this world are
falling short of the standard of the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6).
When I
was younger I worked at CFB Esquimalt; then Canada was seen as a peacekeeping
nation as we recognized more clearly the blessings of being a peacemaker
(Matthew 5:9) Things have changed now.
The consequences
of all our wars affect not only the families our country and our weapons bomb but
they also affect each of us. Especially in a democracy: the consequences of our
country's actions impose guilt on us all. Even today we are choosing to spend
billions of dollars to kill Russians, Ukrainians, Palestinians, and others
instead of feeding and caring for our own families and vulnerable people under
our care. The money we spend killing children overseas could easily be spent
saving children at home.
Now, just
like Canada’s many wars since the end of the Cold War has made each of us (as citizens
of Canada) many enemies; so sin makes us enemies of Christ. Before we were a
part of His Kingdom, we were at war with Christ. And we can never win such a
war so the consequence of this war against Christ; the consequence of this sin is
death (Ro 6:23).
Paul
tells us in Romans that Adam and Eve were the original sinners (Ro 5:12−21;
cf.1 Cor 15). They were the first to transgress the will of God. God told them
that they could do anything they wanted so long as they went forth, multiplied and
did not from eat the fruit of just one tree. He graciously let them tend take
care of His garden (Ge 1:28, 2:17, 9:1). And then what did they do? They
disobeyed God – they sinned. In so doing, our ancestors declared war on God.
Humankind has been in at War against God ever since (Ro 3:23).
Paul
was writing at a time very like our own as our society distances itself from
God. He writes that, “at just the right time, when we were still powerless,
Christ died for the ungodly” (Ro 5:6). Verse 8: “but God demonstrates His own
love for us in this: While we were still sinners Christ died for us.”
I have
heard on several occasions a story about a preacher in an English church whose
sermon one Sunday caught the attention of two young boys sitting in the pews.
He used the account to impress on the congregation how Christ died for us. He
said:
A father and son went fishing off the coast of England with one
of his son’s friends. A terrible storm came. The wind and waves tossed their boat
up and down, back and forth, and both boys were thrown overboard. The father
ran to grab the only life preserver. Even if there had been more than one life preserver
he could not possibly have thrown two of them in time. There was only time to
save one boy. The father threw the life preserver… to . . . his son’s friend.
The boy grabbed it and the man pulled him into the boat. By the time the father
had rescued his child’s friend there was no sign of his son. The father had
sacrificed his only son, so that the other boy could live.
The
story reminds us of our Heavenly Father and His Only Son. God let His Only Son
− whom He loves − die so that even those of us who do not know Him, those of us
who are sinners, those of us who are His enemies, can be saved. God’s son died
for us at just the right time so that all of us can be saved (Eph 1:7; Jn
15:1−17).
After
this sermon, the boys approached the preacher. They asked if he had made up the
story. He told them it was true. They weren’t convinced. One boy asked why a
father would let his own son die for a kid he didn’t even know. The preacher
told him that the father knew that even if his own son were lost, yet he would
be saved. He knew that his own son, even if he died, would yet live; he would
see him again at the resurrection. The point, the preacher explained, was that
the father had sacrificed his son to save the other boy.
“How
do you know that story’s true?” demanded one of the two boys, still skeptical.
“Because
I was that boy who was saved,” replied the old preacher.
And so
it is with all of us. God the Father has already sacrificed His one and only
son so that we can live. All we need to do is to grab hold of the life
preserver of our salvation, hold tight in holiness, and not let it slip away.
Christ died so that we could live. If we grab hold of him we can make it
through any storm. We can.
Do not
let Jesus’ death be in vain in our own lives. We can make it through anything if
we grab hold of him, like a life-preserver, If there is anything we are holding
onto that is preventing us from seizing this salvation, let us cast it aside,
and grab hold of Jesu. If we are holding on to any aspect of our lives so
tightly that we are not fully clutching that preserver of our salvation, let us
cast it aside, let us immediately reach out and grab hold of His life preserver
so that we can all be gloriously saved for now, in the storms of everyone’s
lives and forever more.
There are friends and family members of many of us here who
are being tossed around in the storms of life and feel like they are going to
drown, I am sure. Please share the Life preserver of Jesus and His salvation
with them. Jesus can get us through every storm and every trouble. No matter
who we are and what we have done for, Romans 5:8, “…God demonstrates His own
love for us, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Let us pray
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