For the Helpless and Ungodly

If you read much of my writing, you will find that I love telling about the amazing fact that God would save a ruined sinner, a rebel to His will, a spiritually dead wretch like me. Here I was, rebelling against the holiness of God, and yet God loved me before the dawn of time. I am stunned that He would look down and have pity when I am in the midst of cursing His holy name. In fact, when I am hanging Him upon that cross, He was atoning for my sin. That should only bring me to my knees in awe.

I have many favorite passages of scripture (Ephesians 2, Isaiah 53, Romans 7-8, and Galatians 5) that bring me to that point of awe, but for this I’d like to direct you to a majestic part of scripture, Romans 5:6-11:

For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only this, but we also exult in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.

Helpless and Ungodly

“While we were still helpless.” Here we were, lost. We were so desperately lost in our sin, “having no hope, and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12). We were on a shipwreck, sinking, and in uncharted waters with not even a desert island in sight. We had no hope of getting out alive. Yet we thought we were on a tropical cruise. We were enjoying all kinds of sin and rebellion. We were lost and held completely captive to our dead will. We had no freedom. We hated God.

But at the right time Christ died for us. He died “for the ungodly” and for the helpless.

I hope I can help you see just how sin-filled we were. We were ungodly. We had not an ounce of goodness within us (Mark 10:18); we were living “in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind” (Ephesians 2:3). (Because God is merciful we aren’t always completely given over to our lusts and desires to carry out unspeakable deeds, and He restrains us from doing the desires of our exceedingly wicked heart.)

Jeremiah shows us who we are at our core, and what the heart is: "The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). Of course, only God can comprehend our wicked hearts. “I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, Even to give to each man according to his ways, According to the results of his deeds” (Jeremiah 17:10)

In 1 Corinthians 6 verses 9 and 10 tell us who we are without the Holy Spirit within us:

“Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.”

This is who we were. We were completely helpless, enslaved to our sin. But Paul doesn’t finish with the awful news that we are unrighteous beyond any hope of saving ourselves. He goes on in verse 11: “Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” (1 Corinthians 6:11).

Christ died for those kinds of people in verses 9-10. We were once the unrighteous, ungodly, sinners Paul describes here. But now we are washed! We are sanctified! We are justified in Christ and “in the Spirit of our God”!

Christ Died For Sinners

We find it hard to even think of laying down our lives for a righteous man or even a good man. But when we were sinners, when we were the people described in 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 10, God demonstrated His love for us and Christ died taking our sins upon Himself!

Jesus, our Redeemer, took our sin upon Himself, and took the wrath of the Father for those sins upon himself, so that we would finally have fellowship with our God and freedom from our sin.

He was made as one of us. He was “counted among the rebels” as Isaiah 53 says. So much so that He went to the grave bearing our sins to death! He became like one of us, even to being made dead from sin (not His own, for He is the perfect Son of God)! “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). It must be. Sin only brings death. Christ died because of our sin. He became sin for us: “He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21 CSB)

Our sin was taken to the grave, it was paid for completely. And we have life because the Holy Spirit brought Christ back to life.

We were reconciled to God through Christ’s sacrificial, atoning death on the cross, but as Paul says, “Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life” (Romans 5:9-10).

If He had not risen from the grave, even if He had taken our sin to the grave, we would still be dead to sin if He had not been raised that third day. The only way we have life is through His life, or resurrection. “Much more then”, we are saved by His life.

Exult in Christ

And because of all this and all that God has done for me through Christ, all this leads me to exult in Christ. I don’t ever want to lose that exultation in Christ’s work for me. I exult in and exalt (or hold high) Christ because He has reconciled me to the Father when I had “no hope and [was] without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12).

The hymn by Keith and Kristyn Getty, “In Christ Alone”, exults the work of Christ so well that I wanted to write out the lyrics to finish this post up. I stand in Christ alone and am no longer under any condemnation. “Sin’s curse has lost its grip on me” because I have been redeemed and raised to life in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

 “In Christ alone my hope is found;
He is my light, my strength, my song;
This cornerstone, this solid ground,
Firm through the fiercest drought and storm.
What heights of love, what depths of peace,
When fears are stilled, when strivings cease!
My comforter, my all in all—
Here in the love of Christ I stand.

In Christ alone, Who took on flesh,
Fullness of God in helpless babe!
This gift of love and righteousness,
Scorned by the ones He came to save.
Till on that cross as Jesus died,
The wrath of God was satisfied;
For ev’ry sin on Him was laid—
Here in the death of Christ I live.

There in the ground His body lay,
Light of the world by darkness slain;
Then bursting forth in glorious day,
Up from the grave He rose again!
And as He stands in victory,
Sin’s curse has lost its grip on me;
For I am His and He is mine—
Bought with the precious blood of Christ.

No guilt in life, no fear in death—
This is the pow’r of Christ in me;
From life’s first cry to final breath,
Jesus commands my destiny.
No pow’r of hell, no scheme of man,
Can ever pluck me from His hand;
Till He returns or calls me home—
Here in the pow’r of Christ I’ll stand.”