unceasing anguish and great sorrow - part 1

Romans 9:1-3 - "I am speaking the truth in Christ, I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit -- that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh"

These verses have been echoing in my head lately. I ask myself questions such as "Do I have unceasing anguish in my heart for my lost family and friends? Do I have great sorrow for the unreached people groups? Would I be willing to spend eternity in hell and be cut off from Christ so that they could spend eternity in heaven (if that were possible which I know it isn't)? I can't say I can honestly answer any of those questions with a resounding "yes". Sure I pray for them and I share Christ with them (though not as often as I should) but I can't categorize my prayers and my heart as one of great sorrow and unceasing anguish. So how did Paul get to this point? How do we get to this point?


I am going to split this blog into a couple different posts over the next couple of days to kind of hit a couple of points. 


First, we need to recognize humanity's state apart from Christ.


Before we really can grasp what Christ accomplished on the cross, we really need to realize who we were before a holy and righteous God prior to our salvation and who the lost are currently without this God that we worship. I think this can be downplayed in some if not most evangelical churches. It’s not popular to tell people how messed up they really are. It’s not popular to tell people that they are sinful and wicked people. People see that as “unloving” however, I firmly believe that the opposite is true. When we tell people they really aren’t that bad and to say this simple prayer and “invite” Jesus into their heart as if Jesus is this little boy crying in the corner just begging people to love him and “accept” him, that is unloving because it can send people straight to hell by producing so many false conversions in our churches for those who believe in Jesus as savior but do not submit to Him as Lord! So many people stake their claim to salvation on when they walked down the aisle and prayed to be saved and yet have no fruit of the spirit since.

It’s like say you had been having really bad head aches and have been getting dizzy pretty often so you decide to go to a doctor to get checked out. The doctor takes you back to get an MRI. After he takes a look at the MRI he noticed a large mass on your brain and determines it is more than likely brain cancer and without proper treatment, you will surely die. Now would the “loving” thing be to tell you, “Don’t worry, everything is all right. It’s not that bad. Just go home, get some rest and maybe try to live a healthier life by eating more fruit and vegetables” or for him to say “You have a tumor on your brain that is going to kill you if we don’t have a surgeon come remove it and I know just the surgeon for the job?”

Paul, preached pretty extensively on the state of all people apart from Christ. Paul talked about being “dead in the trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). We were completely dead, we weren’t dying, we weren’t terminally ill, we were DEAD! We had flat lined spiritually. I have heard the illustration of how it was like we were floating in the middle of the ocean and God threw a life preserver out and we just had to reach out and grab it. No! We were dead! We were face down on the bottom of the ocean and God had to come down in his mercy and love to bring us to life!

We “were by nature children of wrath” (Ephesians 2:3). We were “alienated and strangers” to God (Ephesians 2:12). We didn’t seek God, we did no good, our throat was an open grave, our feet were swift to shed blood, we had no fear of God (Romans 3:11-18). We were slaves to sin (Romans 6:20). We couldn’t please God (Romans 8:8). We were enemies of God (Romans 5:10).

Oh feel the weight of our state apart from Christ prior to our salvation and the current state of our lost friends and family members. Don’t think too lightly on those verses and of what we were before salvation. This is HUGE to realize! We weren’t these cute little human beings that God couldn’t resist saving because we were just so cute. No, we were his enemies, we couldn’t please Him, we had no fear of Him, we did no good, we were children of wrath…to put it simply, we were the polar opposite of God himself.

CS Lewis said “The infinite value of each human soul is not a Christian doctrine. God did not die for man because of some value he perceived in him. The value of each human soul considered simply in itself, out of relation to God, is zero. As St Paul writes, to have died for valuable men would have been not divine but merely heroic; but God died for sinners. He loved us not because we were lovable, but because he is Love.”