The Cross as Doorstop--March 13, 2024

The Cross as Doorstop--March 13, 2024

"My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world." [1 John 2:1-2]

The world, huh?

Yep. In fact, the "whole world," as the writer, John, puts it.

Just let that sit for a moment. Take it in and let it bang around in your heart. Let it push the boundaries in your heart wider and prop the doors open, too.

There's not even wiggle room to try and rein this verse back in by saying, "Well, obviously, he only means Christians, because there are Christians all over the entire world, and that must be what John meant, otherwise that means Jesus is for everybody. And we can't have that!" John has closed off that possible interpretation for two reasons: first off, when John wrote, back in the first century, Christians simply weren't spread out "all over the entire world." They were beginning to spread, to be sure, out of the cradle of Judea where the movement began, and there were probably growing pockets across modern-day Turkey, Greece, and even Rome. But in the first century, Christianity didn't have franchises in every town like Starbucks or McDonald's today. Second of all, and more to the point, John goes to additional length to make clear that Jesus is "the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world." See--the moment we want to shrink this grace in to keep it more "manageable" and under our control, the New Testament itself blows it right back open like a door yanked by a gale-force wind. In fact, John here seems to think that God has put a doorstop in to prop the thing open in spite of our attempts to shut it.

So there's where we start on this day. The love of God is so wide as to include the whole world, and the love of God is so deep as to offer up God's own life in Christ Jesus for the sake of all of our sins at the cross.

The moment we want to turn this Christianity thing into a club, whose benefits and perks are for members only, the Scriptures themselves slap our hands and say, "No--this is for everybody. Jesus' life was offered up for the whole world, not just yours, not just people like you, and not just people who sit in pews around the globe. The whole world."

So many other voices around us try to make it sound like "Me-and-My-Group-First" thinking is just plain logical, as if, "Hey, that's just how life is, buddy. We've all got to look out for Number 1." But at every turn, the Scriptures themselves redirect us and say, "Nope. God's interest is in the whole world. Jesus didn't just come for you and your group. He is the atoning sacrifice for the whole world." What we have so easily come to accept as "just the way life is" the writers of the New Testament declare to be the opposite of God's way.

Notice, too, that the writer here doesn't try and sneak in a bit of moralizing threat-making in here, either. He says he is writing so that we don't sin, but he doesn't take the leap that so many religious professionals want to make by threatening to withhold forgiveness. He doesn't say, "I hope you don't sin, because if you do, Jesus will rescind the forgiveness he gave you at the cross, and it will just be for other, non-sinning people." In fact, he does just the opposite--John says that we who follow Jesus are called away from sin (the rottenness in us that gets bent-in on ourselves and breaks relationships with one another and with God), but then he makes the point of saying that Jesus is the atoning sacrifice not just for us who are trying to be good little girls and boys, but for the whole world, which includes a whole bunch of folks for whom "repenting of sin" isn't even on their radar. John knows that runs the risk (or rather, that God knowingly runs the risk) that people will keep on being screw-ups. He is just convinced that God is more determined to reconcile with all creation than God is with being a bean-counter.

Today, then, here is the challenge: don't try to close the doors that God has propped open, and don't try to be holier than Jesus closing off entry where God has put a doorstop to open the way wide. Here, despite all the ways we tend to want to control access, to control who gets "in" to God's good graces, and who is "covered" by Christ at the cross, the Scriptures themselves insist that God has had "the whole world" in mind all along.  The moment we try and close the door on somebody to suggest they are outside the bounds of God's saving love, Jesus comes along and wedges the cross in the jamb as a doorstop to keep the way open for all.

Lord Jesus, let our vision be as big as yours, to see that your self-giving at the cross is as wide as the whole world.