God on the Side of Sinners
“You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England. I did not then see what is now the most shining and obvious thing; the Divine humility which will accept a convert even on such terms. The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape?”(1)
C.S. Lewis, the most reluctant and dejected convert in all England, penned this now famous and oft-quoted account of his conversion. Unlike some who decided to follow Jesus with urgency and willingness of heart, Lewis came into the Kingdom of God kicking and screaming! While some of us resonate with Lewis’s dread of conversion, most of us, like the Prodigal Son, gladly pursued the path home.
Lewis’s reluctance fascinates me, but I am even more moved by the portrait of God presented by his conversion story. Lewis reminds us of the love of God that relentlessly pursues even the reluctant prodigal who would turn and run in the opposite direction in order to avoid God’s gracious embrace. The God revealed in Lewis’s account is a God on the side of sinners. Indeed, even the reluctant convert is wooed, courted, and pursued by God’s love. How sadly ironic, then, that the reluctant are often the ones I am quick to reject and judge.
The apostle Paul often talked about the love of God for sinners. In what is perhaps the apex of his letter to the Romans, Paul writes: “For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous person; though perhaps for the good someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates God’s 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 the Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life” (Romans 5:1-11).
Paul’s progressive description of our condition before God reveals the greatness of God’s love. First, Paul notes that God’s love pursued us “while we were still helpless.” Then, Paul states that God loved us “while we were yet sinners,” and finally, God loved us and reconciled us even “while we were enemies.” At the end of this section of Paul’s letter, he exalts in God’s great love towards even the vilest offender through the death of Jesus in order enact a most glorious reconciliation. He doesn’t do this as one who stands removed from the vilest offender. Indeed, he identifies himself as one who found mercy as the foremost sinner of all.(2)
Paul, the “chief of sinners,” knows this great reconciliation personally. As Paul grasped the depths of God’s reconciling love in his own life, it led him to desire reconciliation for others. To the Corinthian church he wrote, “Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us through Christ, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:18-19).
This profound allegiance of God with sinners raises many questions for us. Do we witness to the God who is on the side of sinners as we share the gospel of Jesus? Are we as reconciled sinners proclaiming the message of reconciliation in our words and our deeds? Have we been so moved by God’s alignment alongside us as the helpless, the sinful, and even as enemies that our first motivation is reconciliation, and not judgment, towards those God loves? Miroslav Volf beautifully sums up these questions when he states “God does not abandon the godless to their evil but gives the divine self for them in order to receive them into divine communion through atonement, so also should we-whoever our enemies and whoever we may be.”(3) As we reflect on our own standing before God, may we not be reluctant converts blind to the depths of our own reconciliation. Rather, may our common heritage as sinners move us to pursue others as God has pursued us.
Margaret Manning is associate writer at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.
(1) C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy as cited in James Loder’s The Logic of the Spirit (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998), 311, emphasis mine.
(2) See 1 Timothy 1:12-17.
(3) Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996), 23.
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