Over the past few months I’ve started getting involved with The Porch at Watermark. Initially, I started going to be able to hang out with one of my cousins more, but God’s doing something more here. That’s another blog for another day though. One of the best coincidences of deciding to start going to The Porch is that Shane and Shane lead worship there now, and one of their songs has stuck with me since I first heard it.
You died the death oh that I deserve
You rose to life and now You live
That’s how Your forgive
That’s how you forgive
The measure of Your love
That You came and died for us
Let us not forget
That’s how You Forgive.
The reason this hits me and sticks with me is because it doesn’t really get any more “pure gospel” than this. I mean, just recite the lyrics to this song and you’ve told someone the focal point of Jesus when it comes to man’s redemption. I completely agree that there are more reasons for Christ’s incarnation, as I’m sure they would, but this is a brilliant and succinct starting point.
Even for Christians, or perhaps especially for Christians, this serves as a much needed reminder of the weight of our sin and our need for a Savior. So often we get caught up in “church” life and hanging around “good” people that we tend to gloss over the weight of our sin. This song has served as a consistent reminder to me that my sin played a part in the death of Jesus. That my sin was part of the reason that God Incarnate felt flesh ripped from bone; that Jesus hung naked on a cross, bearing my shame while suffocating and choking on his own blood. Extending grace even in that moment with “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
But this song also reminds me of the rest of the story. I feel that we are so quick to point to the cross, and rightly so, but sometimes we fail to point to the empty grave. It was Christ’s resurrection that declared him to be the Son of God (Rom. 1:4 ) and it is in his resurrection that we have confidence in our forgiveness and eternal life with God (1 Cor. 15:12-29).
He lived the perfect life that we couldn’t, died the death that we deserved to absorb the wrath of God toward us for our sin (Rom. 3:25), and by his resurrection we know that his sacrifice was declared enough by God to pay the penalty for our sin and remove our sin from us so that we “might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21).
In this, in all of this, we find life, freedom, and forgiveness.
