Joel Snider's Sermons from FBC Rome

March 2 , 2008

To Die For

Romans 5:1-11

There is an expression which has been used widely within the culture for the past 15 or 20 years. It is an expression that allows us to express the depth of our desire or longing for something in particular. It is one of the highest things that some people can say. If there is something that we really want, we say, “It’s to die for.”

There was a movie about a dozen years ago. I have not seen it and I am not recommending it, but I do know it was about a beautiful woman. We know that sometimes people think of a person of the opposite sex as someone “to die for.” We think that a date or a relationship with Mr. Right or a woman who captivates the imagination would be “to die for.”

I have heard the expression used with clothing, Prada shoes, a Coach bag, a designer prom dress. Women think it is something that would make them look just great and they would be the envy of everyone. It’s “to die for.”

We use it a lot with food, particularly desserts, probably either chocolate or something with cream cheese or preferably both. We say, “Oh, that dessert is just so decadent. It is to die for.” How can we express there is something that we want more than to say that about it? But as soon as the expression is out of our mouths or we hear someone else say it, we know it is a bit of an exaggeration. It is a stretch. What would you really die for? Is there a relationship with someone else that you really don’t know yet, a date or whatever, someone that you would really say, “I would die for that?”

As good as any clothes might make you look or as much as it would be a real coup in your life to be wearing that and no one else have it, would you really die for some clothes? As much as I think that my diet is going to kill me, is there any food that I would really die for? What would we really die for?

I might die for country. We are thankful that there are some people who have indeed died for country. We are thankful that there are people who thought liberty and democracy were something worth sacrificing for and have given all they have for it.

I think many of us, particularly if we have children, would know that we would die for our family. I am reminded of a seminary student when I was in school. During one break, he and his family had gone home to Western Kentucky and were involved in a foggy, multi-car, zero-visibility accident on a bridge. He got his wife and infant son out of the car. Another car came and joined the collision, knocking his son from his wife’s arms and over the edge of the bridge. He jumped because his son was “to die for.” But anything less than that, what would you really die for?

What would God die for? If you were able to ask God, “OK, God. What is it that you would say, that’s ‘to die for’”? What would God say?

If you had never read the scripture from Romans 5, what would you think? If you were sitting around having a discussion and saying, “This is what God would die for,” who would God die for? We think God would probably die for the saints, some nebulous group of people that we think approach perfection. God would probably die for the really good people and for the really religious people and maybe even good people if they have done a few bad things. That’s probably who God would die for, but that’s not what Paul says when he writes to the Christians in ancient Rome. Paul says that Jesus died for the ungodly—not for the good, not for the saints, not for the almost good. Jesus died for the ungodly.

If you had to draw a picture of the ungodly or if you had to make a list of the people who would epitomize what it means to be ungodly, who would be on that list? What kind of picture would you draw? Our minds immediately go to people like Stalin and Hitler who killed millions of people. Our minds go to people like Somali war lords and Colombian drug lords and people who are parts of gangs that have incredible initiation rites and wreak all kinds of havoc and terror. We think about them as the ungodly. Surely, these worst images of human depravity are the ungodly.

I have a friend that when his family and another family go out to eat, he is always dividing up the table for the check to the waitress. He will say, “Us three over here and those four over there,” and he is making hand motions so that the server has a very good idea who is on which check. I think sometimes when we think about the ungodly, we are dividing up the world. Those people over there vs. us people over here. It is kind of us and them. I usually don’t put myself on the ungodly list. I think of the worst people, the people that inspire Law and Order episodes, and the people who have no conscience. But it’s not that easy, is it? When we stop and think about Christ dying for the ungodly, if I examine myself closely, I recognize that sometimes I stand opposed to the way and the work of God. There are times where I willfully, with premeditation and forethought, do something against the will of God. There are times where I am just simply weak and I choose the wrong way. How about you? Do you ever realize those things about yourself? I realize it about myself. Sometimes we just simply sabotage what God wants by not fulfilling all of our commitments or not loving as openly and as completely as we should.

Few of us have ever murdered anybody, but most of us have hated a few people, spoken ill of a few people. Few of us have ever committed armed robbery, but most of us succumb to envy every once in a while, or maybe even worse, wanting to be envied so that we put a barrier up between us and someone else and hope that they will long to have what we have or live the life we live or we feel that way about them and we find ourselves resentful. I hope that few of us tell malicious lies, but many of us, in a moment of weakness, will succumb to twisting the truth or spinning the truth to make ourselves look a little better.

Scripture talks about different ways that we can fail God, different ways that we find ourselves on the opposite side from God. Sometimes it is overtly breaking the rules of God and just doing what we want to do. A lot of times it is just missing the mark. Isn’t that what Paul says elsewhere, that we miss the mark? Sometimes we have aimed but we just didn’t aim very well. There are a lot of different ways that it happens, but I have to confess that I am, and that we are, among the ungodly. There are times that our lives are standing in opposition to what God wants done in this world.

If we were to make a list of the enemies of God, we wouldn’t think to put our names on it but yet hasn’t God had to work around us, over us, and through us sometimes to accomplish his will? Yes. So I have to admit it and you have to admit it. If there is a list of the ungodly, I am on it, and that’s who Christ died for, the ungodly.

This could be very depressing if we simply focused on the fact that all of us have committed sin but this is incredible news. Isn’t this good news? I find that when people go to extremes about their sin they go to different places. They either are so blind they can’t see it or so obsessed with what they have done that they cannot believe that God loves them. How many people do you know, and perhaps you are one, who live with this sense that something they did earlier in life still haunts everything about their lives today? They believe that someone in their family has died because of some sin that they committed when they were younger. They believe that some catastrophe has happened in their family’s life because of something they did once upon a time or they believe that somehow God still visits all these bad things that happened because they know what an evil person they are. Sometimes we are so obsessed that we can’t believe God would love us. If Christ would die for the ungodly, who is not included in God’s love? Who is not outside what God wants to do? It’s not that Christ died for the saints and it’s not that Christ died for the good people who occasionally do something wrong. Christ died for the ungodly. Which one of us, therefore, is outside of God’s love? Isn’t that good news?

I asked you to think what you would die for? Let me ask a question now. Who would die for you? I have a belief that you can really find out who your friends are when you have two tasks. One is moving and the other is painting. If someone will come over and help you move or help you paint, that is a good thing. But who would die for me? Who would die for you? When we stop and think about what that expression “to die for” says, who would put us on their list and say, “Yes, she’s to die for; he’s to die for” and mean it? Who would die for us? The message of Paul in this 5th chapter to the Church at Rome is that Christ would die for us.

Fleming Rutledge is an Episcopal Priest and I borrowed a sermon title from one of her sermons. In that sermon, she asked that we imagine that someone who would die for you not only saved your life but actually stepped into a lethal situation between you and your certain death and died instead of you, taking your place. Can it be doubted that your life would not be changed?

This is not imagination. This is not “what if.” This is true. While we were yet sinners, while we were still in our weakness, Christ died for us. If someone did that today, if someone stepped in front of a bullet, if someone absorbed your cancer or took your bad heart or took your age or infirmity upon them and said, “No, let me die in your place,” where would you hold them in your heart all the days of your life and all eternity? That’s where Christ wants to be because that’s what Christ has done. You and I, each and every one of us, in his eyes, are to die for.

Joel Snider's Sermons from FBC Rome

To Die For

Romans 5:1-11

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