Friends? With Him?
Romans 5:6-11

† Jesus! Son and Savior! †

May the grace and peace of God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ embrace you!

• Can you imagine?

I want you to picture yourself, sitting in a limousine. You have been invited to spend some time with one of the most famous people in the world.

On your way the excitement grows, as you consider what was said in the invitation.

“I would like to get to know you, for I think you are a person I want to count as one of my closest friends.”

And as you drive to where they are… you even get nervous, this could be an incredible day.

As you arrive, you notice what you think is pretty heavy security, as you get closer to his home, you realize they aren’t his security. They are a SWAT team, and there are police officers all over his property. The limo stops, and a police captain walks up to the window and says that your friend is about to be arrested and taken away—if he’s lucky he will only get life in prison, but if not, the death penalty awaits.

THe paperwork is on the way, and your new “friend “ has promised to surrender when it gets here. But there is an hour or two before that will happen, and the Captain asks, “do you want to spend that time with your “friend” in his garden?

What do you do?

• Here is why we need it…(saved from condemnation)

We need that “friend” who was arrested by a police many times the size that was needed. He would have surrendered anyway, for he knew we needed him to be punished for our sins.

Hear again the apostle Paul,

When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. ⁷ Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. ⁸ But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.

I really don’t like people knowing how helpless I am, physically or spiritually. I suppose some suspect it, but I still don’t like it. Yet, amid the brokenness, Christ came to being healing, to restore what sin had damaged.

We needed, no, we desperately needed Jesus to come and deliver us….

And the only way to do that—was to die on the cross.

And so we need to be befriended by this Jesus, this one who would die as a criminal.

• Here is why You want it…

But here is far more to the cross than the forgiveness of sins.

When I started my illustration, I mentioned the invitation to meet was based on the celebrity saying He thought he wanted you as a close friend.

Going back to our reading that started the service….

¹⁰ For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son. ¹¹ So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God.

Therefore, we don’t care about the shame of the cross, or associating with someone the world has written off as worthless, c as wrong. But He invites you to spend time with Him, both now and for all eternity.

This is what the cross is about—our invitation to join Christ in His death, that with all sin and injustice cut away, we can live as His friends… now and forever.

And as His friends, we dwell in His unimaginable, unexplainable peace. For God has placed us there—in the death of Christ, so that we share in His resurrection and eternal life. AMEN!