Romans 5:8–11 “8...but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. 10 For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. 11 More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”
One of my memories of football practice in high school is the two-a-day practices in the heat of August. These were primarily conditioning practices that weed out the weak and undetermined and condition the determined. At the end of the second practice, our coach lined us up at the bottom of the sandy “Sticker Hill,” and we had to run up and down it five times. The hill got its name because it was full of sandburs that would collect in our socks, and they also provided a strong incentive for not giving up and falling down. At the end of the fifth descent, the coach would say that anyone carrying a teammate up and down the hill on his back without falling would not have to run Sticker Hill the following day. The burden was brutally overwhelming for most of us. Though the incentive was great, and many of us tried, I don’t recall anyone achieving the task successfully.
Make no mistake, the greatest burden in life is carrying the weight of our sin, guilt, and condemnation before the God of all holiness and righteousness. God-wrought conviction for our sins is real and powerful. Furthermore, there is no possible way to shed the damning weight of sin personally. We are guilty before God as sinners without any helpful appeal to our merit or effort. We stand condemned before God, and we know we deserve it.
The unshakeable reality that we are hopeless and helpless before the righteous God of creation is what the Holy Spirit uses to drive us from our feeble attempts at self-justification and drive us to complete dependence on the saving work of Jesus Christ, who became the atoning sacrifice for our sins on the cross. Understanding that our condemnation is both deserved and certain is what makes the truths of Romans 5:8-11 so meaningful and relieving.
God’s love for us in and through Jesus Christ is undeserved and unmerited and is only a result of His kindness and mercy. God graciously takes the burden of our sin that we can’t carry and places it on His Son, who pays the penalty for our sin by offering Himself as our sinless sacrifice that we depend on through faith. We trust Jesus alone to be our means of deliverance from God’s righteous wrath and the provision of peace with God. The resurrection life of Jesus after His sacrificial death is what takes the burden of damnation from our shoulders and grants us spiritual life and peace. The burden we could never carry successfully is removed for us by Jesus eternally.
If you are overwhelmed by the weight of your sin, knowing that you are justly condemned, look to Jesus and trust Him to take the weight of your sin from you completely and eternally. If you’ve trusted Jesus as your Savior and Lord, don’t go fishing for sins buried in the deepest sea by the work of Jesus. Rest now and forever in the peace of Jesus Christ, your glorious life in the New Covenant.
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