“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” — Romans 5:6-8
Today we prepare to celebrate the greatest spiritual events that ever happened in human history. And they happened, as the apostle Paul tells us, “at just the right time.” Of course, I’m talking about the death, burial and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ!
When the Bible speaks of time it uses two different words. The first one is chronos. It focuses on the passage of time. We get the word “chronology” from it. A few minutes from now you’ll be finished reading this devotion. That’s chronos time. The other way the Bible views time is through special moments when something more than just the passage of time is in play. During this special time, layers of life and reality come together at a given moment and provide something dramatic. This kind of time is called kairos and that’s the word Paul uses here for “time.” It’s often translated, “appointed time” and it’s always a God-ordained moment.
You and I by nature view life in chronos time. We’re like the prophet Habakkuk who complained to the Lord, “How long, O Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen?” (Habakkuk 1:2). We get anxious when we have to wait for God to answer our prayers or meet our needs. What’s He waiting for? I need the money in 24 hours. Next week will be too late. I’ve got to have an answer right now. Doesn’t God know that? Yes, God knows that but He operates in kairos time. God always seems to have a few things he wants to accomplish in our lives first. He supersedes chronos time. This is the way He answered Habakkuk’s complaint, “For the revelation awaits an appointed time; . . . though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay” (Habakkuk 2:3).
Now everything that God does is great—but there is one thing He has done that is His greatest work of all, He sent his son, Jesus Christ, “at just the right time,” to “die for the ungodly” — that’s you and me! Think about that. Paul says “we were still powerless,” meaning we all were living a life of absolute ungodliness—we had no merit in ourselves, no goodness, no virtues to speak of—we were continually in sin and there was nothing we could do to change it. We were 24/7/365 sinners on our way to eternal judgment, destined to be separated forever from the God who loves us. We were like the little bird in the illustration above that was about to be devoured by the serpent. But Jesus showed up my friends, “at just the right time” in human history to save us even though we were still sinners. He died on a cross to make a way for us to restore our broken relationship with a Holy God.
The coming of Jesus into the world was not a matter of years, days and hours — He was coming since the foundation of the world to a world that was lost. That’s why we remember and celebrater this week in the life of Christ. Aren’t we glad?
Pastor Don